Crocodile Fury (1988)

... aka: Sorceress of the Deep

Directed by:

"Ted Kingsbrook" (Godfrey Ho? Tomas Tang?)

Neramit (uncredited)

Sompote Saengduenchai (uncredited)

Only one of the four crocodile movies Sompote Sands worked on in the 80s received much in the way of international distribution and, sadly, that was CROCODILE (1980), easily the blandest and worst of the lot. His three other ventures into croc territory: KRAI THONG (1980), CROCODILE THERAKWAD (1982) and KRAI THONG 2 (1985), are all a lot more fun despite not being as well known. While none were released here in America, both Krai Thong movies received English releases in other countries. The first was given VHS and VCD releases in Hong Kong with subs, while the second received the cut-n-paste, or as I like to call it, the rape-n-pillage, treatment from Tomas Tang and his Filmark International. As per his usual, he extracted the more entertaining parts from the source movie, tacked his own newly-shot footage to it and basically created a brand new story via the dubbing. The bad part is that a lot was cut from the original KT2 to make room for the new stuff while the original version that hasn't been tampered with is only available in Thai.

What's strange about this particular title is that even though it was dubbed into several different languages, it was never released in any English-speaking country. As far as I know, there were just two versions: a widescreen release that's dubbed into French and a full-screen Greek release that's dubbed into English but has burnt-in Greek subtitles. The latter is also the source print used for all the bootleg DVD versions currently on the market.

We first meet a blonde witch named Monica (listed in the credits as either "Trudy Calder" or "Nina Ferrer") and get a tour of her home, which is filled with candles and various little trinkets, including a skull with red-blinking eyes that shoots smoke out of its nostrils and the Onibaba mask. Monica, decked out in what appears to be the top half of a red clown costume but with garters and stockings instead of pants, waves her hands around a crystal ball. We then cut to two guys with machine guns chasing after a group of other men in the woods. That's followed by a sort-of "best of" montage of crocodile attacks taken from Krai Thong 2; most of which had themselves already been used before in Crocodile Therakwad. Since I've recently viewed both of those, and now this, I've seen many of these attack scenes used no less than three times in three different movies over the past few months!

We then cut to a man named Rudolf ("Lucas Byrne" / Ernst Mausser) wandering around an old temple. He stumbles upon a corpse hanging from a tree, is bitten on the leg by a reanimated skull, finds a worm-faced corpse and then starts throwing up yellow slime filled with maggots. Afterward, he wipes his chin, says "Better!" and then casually walks away (!?) He encounters a pair of jianshi (hopping vampires) but Monica swoops in long enough to save him with the old spell paper to the forehead trick.

According to this new plot, both Monica and Rudolf used to work for some guy who ran something called "the vampire business." Though their former boss is now dead, they're still carrying on doing whatever it was he was doing, which is left so vague (like most of these Filmark releases) it hardly even matters. They make mention of a special agent named Bruce Thompson ("Nick Reece" / Kent Wills), who's trailing them. Monica is encouraged to "keep casting your evil spells to create chaos and divert the agent's attention." One of these involves her making circle motions with her arms and chanting "hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba," which causes one of her pet jianshi to puke black fish into a bowl, which then hop into the mouth of her second jianshi and, uh... does something, I guess? I'm just not entirely sure what.

All of these new scenes are spliced between the KT2 footage, which thanks to the new English dub offers up a similar though somewhat different story with different motivations for the characters. At a village party, a crocodile snatches a guy and starts to drag him off when Jack (Sorapong Chatree) jumps in the water and pries the crocodile's jaws off of him. The crocodile then transforms into Maria (Aranya Namwong), who was Jack's lover in her human existence but is now changed / reincarnated / cursed into being a crocodile-woman. Seems every time Maria is ordered to kill, Jack stops her by reminding her that if she keeps from murdering anyone that the two can be reunited as lovers once again after he passes on.

Maria spends most of her time in a golden underwater cave called "Sea World" along with another croc-woman (Duangcheewan Komolsen), Shamu (just kidding about that one) and the evil Master Cooper (Sor Asanajinda), who plots "world domination" and is in cahoots with Monica. Cooper resurrects a "crocodile spirit" of "an evil sort of man" named Don Moore (!) in his human existence. Don (Lak Apichat) immediately gets to work slaughtering animals (he rips a water buffalo's head clean off) and more villagers in his crocodile form, plus tries to rape all of the croc-women in his human form.

Supansa Nuengpirom and Ampha Phusit, who played Krai Thong's spoiled wives in KT2, have been turned into a couple of bitchy, hilariously-British-accented (!) gossips named May and Peggy here. Thankfully, what hasn't changed is that the entire crocodile massacre at their home (probably the best scene in KT2) has been kept fully intact here. Maria convinces Don to kidnap Peggy and bring her to the cave, where she can be tortured and raped. Maria's motivation? Well, she thinks that Peggy "seduced" Jack away from her. When Maria teams up with Don and the two threaten to overthrow Cooper, he transforms another reptile into a diamond-fanged "crocodile spirit" named Steven (Sombat Methanee). While Don and Steven fight for supremacy of the underwater kingdom, Jack uses magic powers he's just learned from an elder to do battle with both of them.

Annnnd, as that's going on, special agent Bruce starts closing in on Monica. Rudolf attempts to shoot him, but he accidentally kills a villager (Sun Chien) instead. After that failed assassination attempt, Monica sends a bunch of green-blooded, kung fu fighting zombies after him. And when that doesn't work, she unleashes both her hopping vampires AND the zombies on him. Monica, who suddenly sprouts Freddy-like clawed hands at the very end (?!), and Rudolf then attempt to kill him themselves, which somehow results in her stomach swelling and a skull-baby bursting out of it. Yeeee!

As far as Filmark mash-ups are concerned, this is one of the better ones I've seen. "Better" being a relative term, of course. Not that it's really any good or makes a whole lot of sense but it benefits a lot from using an entertaining original film as its backbone while basically just throwing a bunch of entertaining supernatural mumbo jumbo into the mix. This results in fast-paced, seldom-boring good dumb fun, which is the most one can ask from something like this. Thai funnyman Lor Tok and Tanit Pongmanoon appear briefly in the recycled footage.

The pseudonymous director is probably producer Tomas Tang. Some online sources (including some of the posters) claim that Godfrey Ho directed, wrote and / or edited the film, though neither his name nor any of his regular aliases appear in the credits, which are almost entirely fake, anyway. Hard to tell!

SBIG

Khun Chang Khun Paen Prab Jorrakay Thaen Kward (1982)

... aka: ขุนช้างขุนแผน ตอนปราบจรเข้เถรขวาด

... aka: Crocodile Therakwad

... aka: Khun Chang Khun Paen

... aka: Khun Chang Khun Paen: Defeat the Crocodile

Directed by:

Neramit

Sompote Saengduenchai

The team behind KRAI THONG (1980) are back with yet another crocodile film, again based on an old Thai folk tale / epic poem. Only a tiny portion of that folk tale is covered here. The inspiration is Khun Chang Khun Phaen, which was passed down from generation to generation by troubadours, who traveled from village to village giving sepha performances (basically telling the story while clicking together two pieces of wood). After surviving for centuries by oral tradition, the poem was finally written down and published in 1872, while the mass-published standard edition occurred in 1917 in three separate volumes totaling 1082 pages! Though it was finally fully translated into English in 2010, it remains virtually unknown here in America. However, it is universally known in Thailand and has been ingrained in their culture to the point where Thai children learn passages from it in school and it's the source of various common Thai sayings. In addition to the book versions, it's also been the basis for comic books, songs, paintings, stage plays and a whole host of film and TV adaptations.

On the small screen, televised versions date back to 1955. An epic 500 episode version aired on Thai TV in 1970 and then it was also serialized in 1985, 1998 and 2021; the latter adaptation free to view on Youtube. There have been at least five film versions, the first of which was a silent two part film dating back to 1936, with the most recent theatrical film being made in 2001.

For all its bells and whistles and politics and adventures, Khun Chang Khun Phaen, the literary work, is basically a love triangle at heart. Wanthong, lead female in the piece, is torn between two men: Chang, who's rich but unattractive, and Phaen, who's good-looking but poor. I don't even know if black magic and crocodile attacks figure prominently anywhere in the original epic or if Saengduenchai just wanted an excuse to reuse the models from his previous film CROCODILE (1980) but this does at least retain the love triangle plotting somewhat, though it's more like a love hexagon here. Neither the Chang nor Wanthong characters are here and the sexes have been reversed for the key players. Oh, and nearly everyone is very good looking.

Bald, pot-bellied and fifty-something Master Taen (played by comedian Charan "Gray" Petcharoen) has found a new way to invigorate his love life. Using black magic "love spells," he's able to get lush young beauties to fall head over heels for him, lust for his dad bod and try to rip the clothes right off of him! He also has the ability to snap these ladies right back out of their horny state by simply blowing on them, which he does whenever they become too annoying or he's merely wanting to move on to his next victim. Afterward, the women have no clue what they've even done with this pervert. Master Taen also knows a spell he can use to transform into a giant crocodile. His young understudy (D. R. Samart) has also learned some of his magic and can also transform into a crocodile. During one incredibly tasteless scene, the apprentice uses the love spell on an adult woman, gets her to climb into bed with him and remove her top. This probably wouldn't be so tasteless except for the fact the understudy is just a child and looks to be about 8 or 9 years old!

We then meet the other main characters and get involved in their seriously screwed up love lives. Handsome, wealthy young nobleman Phra Phi (Toon Hiranyasap) has two pretty wives: the gracious and sweet Simala (Naowarat Yuktanan) and the bitchy, possessive and jealous Soifa (Duangcheewan Komolsen), Despite Soifa's best efforts to gain her husband's attention (like basically tackling him as soon as he enters the door!), Phra Phi is almost entirely interested in Simala, which had me wondering why he even married Soifa in the first place. Yes, I know polygamy was widely practiced in Thailand at the time, but just because you can doesn't mean you should, right?

After having a temper tantrum and stomping on a bowl of fruit, Soifa and her sleazy servant (Janthana Siriporn) go to Master Taen for help. The servant is actually already very well acquainted with the Master because she's been sleeping with him and trying (in vain) to get him to stop molesting every other woman he meets. Taen levitates, floats around, disappears and creates two voodoo dolls of Phra Phi and Simala, which he uses to inflict pain on them to the point where they both pass out. Soifa then sneaks into their bedroom and slips the voodoo dolls inside a pillow, which causes Phra Phi to lust after her while making Simala look like a disfigured freak in his eyes (she looks normal to everyone else). Phra Phi immediately rejects Simala and starts treating her like dirt. He slaps her around, ties her to a pole and then whips her with a stick. Soifa has Master Taen then cast another spell to try to get Simala to seduce Phra Phi's brother, Chumphon (Tanit Pongmanoon), so she'll get kicked out of the home for good. However, Chumphon manages to resist the spell and runs off into the woods.

Suspecting something is afoot, Phra Phi and Chumphon's father, Phaen (Sombat Methanee), shows up to get to the bottom of things. Phaen is not only a high-ranking army captain but also has magical abilities of his own and is immediately able to see that a spell has been cast. He goes to King Panwasa (Sor Asanajinda) to ask for permission to conduct an investigation. Now cornered, Master Taen reverts to his crocodile form and starts attacking and killing off soldiers and villagers. The guilty non-crocodile parties all get dragged into court, where the two wives are forced to walk on hot coals. If they're innocent, Buddha will keep them from harm. Needless to say, Soifa fails the test. Meanwhile, Master Taen and his pupil escape and continue slaughtering people; prompting Phaen to lead a crocodile hunt with other villagers.

The plot here reminds me a lot of those older Japanese ghost films with a bunch of people conspiring against the tormented female protagonist until they finally get their just desserts. Only here, it's balanced out with a lot humor and, instead of ghosts, we get some black magic and a bunch of crocodile attacks. I'd say that's a fair enough trade. This also occasionally throws in some truly bizarre stuff like a living skeleton that also appears as a white-haired witch with bloody skin and eventually gets one of its eyes ripped out, a lengthy catfight between two servant girls where they pull hair and bite each other, brief and very crude stop motion animation as two voodoo dolls come to life and something that looks like a leftover character from one of Saengduenchai's unauthorized Ultraman movies (either that or a giant piñata) that's just randomly floating in the sky until it gets blown up!

I'm also glad I watched this soon after KRAI THONG 2 (1985) because now I can confirm that many of the croc attack scenes featured in KT2, which actually lifted that movie considerably, were just stolen from this one. The repeated scenes include the military guys and naked boys getting attacked, the guy trying to teach his daughter how to row a boat getting attacked (the daughter somehow ends up with slit throat but awful editing keeps us from even seeing how), the family fixing their roof getting attacked, the guy trying to lasso the croc and the funny scene of the man trying to save a young woman and pulling off her pants instead. However, in this longer version of the scene, thong girl actually escapes from the croc and then it swings back around and kills the guy instead!

This is another one that's never been released in English though the plot isn't that hard to follow. It was released on VCD and DVD by Tisa Company in Thailand and runs 113 minutes.

★★1/2