Snaker

Director: Mr Fai Samang
Writers: Mr Fai Sam Ang, Mrs Mao Samnang
Producer: Mr Thunya Nilklang
Cast: Mr Vinal Kraybotr (Winai Kraibutr), Miss Pich Chan Barmey, Mr Tep Rindaro, Mrs Om Portevy
Year of release: 2001
Country: Cambodia/Thailand
Reviewed from: Hong Kong VCD (Winson Entertainment)

Now this is a film I’ve been wanting to see for a while, the first Cambodian feature film for years (even if it is a co-production with a Thai company) and a premier example of the prolific snake-woman genre.

Nhi (Om Portevy aka Ampor Tevy, star of a popular TV soap) lives in the forest with her boorish, alcoholic husband Manop and their about-twelve-year-old daughter Ed. One day Nhi and Ed encounter a giant, talking snake in the forest while looking for bamboo shoots - they have lost their spade and the snake agrees to let them have it back if Nhi will love him and be his wife. Mohap is away in the city (where he sells jewellery) so that night the giant snake crawls into Nhi’s bed and transforms into a handsome man who makes love to her. Afterwards, Nhi is frequently seen by her daughter stroking the snake and talking lovingly to it.

I tell you, folks, this thing is a Freudian’s dream!

In the city we meet rich art dealer Wiphak and his wife Buppha, who is pregnant. When their friends Pokia and Mora discover this, Mora decides to become pregnant too and goes to a local witch for a potion which will make Pokia subservient to her, and therefore compliable.

Back in the forest, Mopak returns and notices Nhi’s bump, the result of her tryst with the Snake King (he’s not actually named as such, but one of the alternative English language titles of this film is The Snake King’s Daughter). Mopak accuses his wife of being unfaithful because they haven’t had sex for months, but she points out that no-one else lives within miles of them and claims that he was drunk at the time.

Ed tells her father about the snake but begs him not to hurt her mother. He follows his daughter to where the snake lives and cuts its head off. This is very clearly a genuine shot of a live snake being cut in two with a machete, and though it’s brief it’s a bit disturbing. He also makes Nhi eat the cooked snake meat. Then he takes her to the river, ostensibly to bathe, where he kills her for being unfaithful by slicing open her swollen belly. Out pours plenty of blood and a dozen or so small snakes which Manop kills (again for real). One tiny snake escapes and as Manop goes after it he slips on a rock and falls on his own sword. Ed finds her dead parents and also slips on a rock, cracks her head open and dies.

But a passing holy man finds the surviving snakelet and sees it transform into a baby as the sun rises. He takes the child home, naming it Soraya after the sun.

Scoot forward ten years or so and Soraya is a girl, rebellious but not disrespectful, living in a cave with her ‘grandfather’. But she is not any girl, for her head is a mass of writhing snakes!

This is one of the most interesting aspects of this film. Famously, when Hammer Films made The Gorgon in 1964, actress Barbara Shelley offered to play the title role wearing a headpiece with some live grass snakes attached (provided that the RSPCA were happy with the set-up). Unfortunately, the producers decided instead to depict the transmogrified version of Shelley’s character using a different actress (Prudence Hyman) with a headpiece that looked fine in stills but was obviously a bunch of rubber snakes when seen on screen.

Snakes are supposed to move. They writhe, they wriggle. And these ones do!

Because the makers of Snaker have used that very same technique: most of the snakes are actually still rubber but there are enough live ones attached to provide sufficient movement that it genuinely does look like a writhing mass of snakes on the actress’ head. It was astounding enough when Nhi lay down with the giant snake - a huge python (I think) which must have been twelve feet long if it was an inch. And it was disturbing enough when we had that real snake-beheading shot. But here we have live snakes not just stuck on somebody’s head but stuck on the head of a thirteen-year-old girl!

The actress who plays young Soraya, it must be said, is very good anyway (so was the girl playing Ed, to be fair) but for her to be able to act while live snakes hang in front of her face is surely worthy of some sort of award. (According to a piece about this film in the New York Times, young Soraya is played by Ms Danh Monica, although there is no name like that in the credits.)

Anyway, down at the river Soraya - with her head covered - meets three children of about her age (ten or eleven). These are Veha, son of the kindly Wiphak and Buppha (who died in childbirth), and Kiri and Reena, son and daughter of the snobbish Pokia and Mora. Veha and Reena are devoted to each other, according to their parents at least. Soraya asks to join their game of hide and seek, and though Veha is welcoming, Reena is rude and asks her brother to get rid of the new girl. He pulls the wrap from Soraya’s head - and the three children understandably run away screaming, while Soraya returns, tearfully to her grandfather.

A caption tells us it’s ten years later, so of course by now all four kids are young men and women. Returning to the river, kind-hearted Veha (Vinal Kraybotr: Nang Nak, Krai Thong, Kaew Kon Lek) gets into a fight with aggressive Kiri, who pushes him over a waterfall. Kiri and his sister head back to town and tell a distraught Wiphak that his son fell accidentally and, though they searched, there was no sign of him.

But of course, Veha isn’t dead - he is found and nursed back to health by Soraya, now played by Pich Chan Barmey (aka Pich Chanboramey). He’s handsome, she’s beautiful; his name means sky, hers means sun; they both have good hearts - so of course they start to fall for each other, especially as Grandfather has given Soraya a magic ring which transforms her snakes into beautiful long hair.

Veha and Soraya return to his overjoyed father, where Reena is understandably jealous of the new arrival because she and Veha have technically been engaged since they were children. Mora and Reena go to see the old witch who gives them some more of the bewitching potion that worked twenty years earlier on Pokia; they put it in Veha’s goblet at dinner but Soraya’s magic ring warns her and she knocks it from the table.

The witch works out that Soraya is a snake - not a reincarnation of a snake but the real thing - but that her magic powers will be lost if she loses her virginity. So Kiri sneaks into Wiphak’s house and tries to rape Soraya, but her hair turns back into snakes, one of which falls off and bites Kiri, killing him instantly.

There then follows one of the most unsubtle tourism product placements you are ever likely to see, although as Snaker was the first Cambodian feature film to receive international distribution for many years, it is perhaps allowable. Veha and Soraya spend several minutes wandering around the magnificent ruins of Ankor Wat, and Veha tells her that his love for her is as strong and everlasting as the temple walls.

Eventually, the two young lovers do sleep together, and while Veha sleeps, Soraya finds patches of snake skin on her arms. She runs back to her grandfather, but Mora and Reena appear with the old witch, who battles the holy man in a pretty cool magic fight, which leaves both of them dead. Mora and Reena run away but are bitten by a snake, as Kiri was. The Snake King reappears, along with the magically revived grandfather, and they use their combined power to make Soraya fully, permanently human - just as Veha appears to sweep her off her feet and carry her home.

What a great film! It’s got romance, action, intrigue, fantasy, and even a travelogue in the middle. It does have at least one snake deliberately and unpleasantly killed in the name of entertainment, which may be okay in Cambodia but is not a terribly bright idea for a potential export. But given how out of step with global popular culture the Cambodians were during - and in the wake of - the Khmer Rouge regime, again this is sort of allowable.

Pol Pot and his secret police outlawed all forms of popular entertainment including cinemas, so making a Cambodian film was a bit of a gamble as far as domestic distribution goes. It was apparently shown drive-in style at various outside venues. It must be said that, for a country with effectively no cinema industry, this is a fine-looking film. The cinematography is excellent (Mr Saray Chat is credited as cameraman) and the production values are well above the B-movie level that one might expect given the film’s origins. There is no actual special effects credit, but Mr Chhun Achom was responsible for the make-up, which may or may not include getting actresses to wear snakes on their heads!

Translating from the Thai alphabet into English is always a matter of debate and creates different spellings, so the actor credited on screen as ‘Mr Vinal Kraybotr’ is also listed on various websites as Vinai Kraybotr, Winai Kraibutr and Winai Kraibutra. And the writer/director’s name is spelled differently in each of his on-screen credits! The packaging calls the film Snaker although the on-screen English title is Snakers. The original title is generally given as something like Kuon Pus Keng Kang which everyone seems to agree means ‘The Snake King’s Child’ although apparently it was filmed as just Pus Keng Kang (or Pos Kairng Korng or whatever) which was the title used for the first of four Cambodian versions of this much-filmed story (the second was called Neang Lavear Haik and the third was Neang Preay Sork Pos). I have also found the film listed as Snaker: Ghost Wife 2 which is a translation of the Chinese title which markets the film as a fake sequel to Ghost Wife (ie. Nang Nak). Having seen this and Ngoo Keng Kong I definitely want to see more snake-woman films - this is my new mission!

This VCD is not a terribly good transfer, though it is widescreen. Perhaps it’s just my copy, but neither disc loaded straight off and both, when cleaned enough to load properly, jammed every 10-15 seconds for the first five minutes. In addition, the sound on disc 2 was way, way quieter than on disc 1. However, reviews of the DVD (also from Winson) say that the quality is not much better on that and there are no extras, so I can’t really complain. The subtitles are full of mistakes; I’m sure whoever did them speaks much better English than my Thai (or Cambodian or Chinese), but I can never understand why they don’t check with a native English speaker before putting the subs on the disc....

The disc also includes a trailer for the Jean-Claude Van Damme SF actioner Replicant (Van Damme fighting himself - blimey, there’s an idea that has only been done about eight times before).

MJS rating: A-
Review originally posted 27th November 2007.

Three

Directors: Kim Jee-Woon; Nonzee Nimibutr; Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Writers: Kim Jee-Woon; Nitas Singhamat; Jojo Hui, Matt Chow
Producers: Oh Jung-Wan; Nonzee Nimibutr, Duangkamol Limcharoen; Jojo Hui
Cast: Jung Bo-Seog, Kim Hye-Soo; Pongsanart Vinsiri, Suwinit Panjamawat; Leon Lai, Eric Tsang
Year of release: 2002
Country: South Korea; Thailand; Hong Kong
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

New to Asian cinema and not sure which country’s films you want to explore? Why not try this convenient sampler movie, a horror anthology comprising three segments of 40 minutes or so from three Pacific countries. Applause Pictures (Hong Kong) and Cinemasia (Thailand) had previously collaborated on the dramas Jan Dara and Montrak Transistor, and for this movie South Korea’s Bom Productions was brought into the fold.

The first story is Memories, written and directed by Korean hotshot Kim Jee-Woon whose directorial debut The Quiet Family was ‘remade’ by Takashi Miike as Happiness of the Katakuris. Jung Bo-Seog (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) stars as an un-named man who is starting to go mad since his wife (Kim Hye-Soo: Dr K, Eternal Empire) disappeared and can see her ghostly apparition (a stylistic nod to Ring’s Sadko). At the same time, the wife (neither character is named) wakes up on the street and wanders around, trying to work out where she is and indeed, who she is.

This is a very stylish, slow-paced film - it opens with an agonisingly slow closing-in shot which barely merits the term ‘zoom’. While it’s fairly obvious that there is some sort of Carnival of Souls deal going on with the wife, the resolution is suitably shocking and unexpected and really very nasty.

Nonzee Nimibutr, who directed the Thai segment The Wheel, was an award-winning director of TV commercials and pop videos before scoring a smash hit when his second feature Nang Nak outgrossed Titanic at the Thai box office. Internationally, he has established a reputation as a producer, being the man behind both Bangkok Dangerous and Tears of the Black Tiger. For Three, he co-wrote a story with Nang Nak art director Ek Iemchuen but the finished screenplay was written by Nitas Singhamat.

The Wheel is based around a Thai theatrical troupe, highlighting the intense rivalry between the lowly masked players and the respected puppeteers, and the tradition that puppets must not be used by anyone except the puppetmaster who created them.

Puppetmaster Tao suffers agonising visions after his wife and child are drowned while following his instructions to “drown the puppets”. After Tao also dies, mask actor Master Tong (Pongsanart Visiri) sees his chance to take over the puppetry and move up a caste. He tries to remake the puppets and claim that they are new ones, but the curse holds him in its sway, destroying not only him but also the troupe’s young stars/lovers through the supernaturally orchestrated jealousy of his son/apprentice Gaan (Suwinit Panjamawat: Tears of the Black Tiger).

Puppets are always scary. From the ventriloquist’s doll in Dead of Night through to Chucky in the Child’s Play movies and beyond, those grinning, lifeless mockeries of real people can, when well-handled, scare the life out an audience. The puppets in The Wheel are traditional, scary-faced Thai demons and though they never ‘come to life’ they exert a terrifying influence over those who seek to control them. With some gruesome, ghostly goings-on and a shadowy, night-time setting, The Wheel is easily the scariest of the three segments in Three.

The Hong Kong segment, Going Home, was originally announced as being directed by Teddy Chen (Purple Storm) but in the end he received only a ‘story by’ credit (along with Su Chao-Pin). Detective Chan Kwok-Wai (Eric Tsang: Project S, Gen-X Cops) and his young son Cheung (Li Ting-Fung) move into a semi-derelict apartment block, the only other occupants being the mysterious Yu Fei (Leon Lai: Wicked City) and his wheelchair bound wife Hai’er (Eugenia Yuan). Cheung is perturbed by Yu’s young daughter, a little girl in a red coat (a nod to Don’t Look Now of course) but his father tells him not to be silly.

When Cheung goes missing, Chan naturally makes an enquiry of his only neighbour and finds himself trapped by the deluded Yu whose wife - though he has conversations with her - is not so much paralysed as dead. But there’s a lot more to the story than a simple Psycho knock-off: Yu is suspicious of western medicine and is using traditional Chinese medicine to cure/revive Hai’er. Like all the best ghost stories, Going Home has not just a simple twist at the end but a succession of increasingly horrific/enigmatic revelations.

Peter Ho-Sun Chan is the director (with, interestingly, an Australian DP, Christopher Doyle: Rabbit-Proof Fence, Psycho remake). Chan helmed He’s A Woman, She’s a Man, was named as one of Ten Directors to Watch by Variety in 1998, and more recently produced the superb HK/Thai horror flick The Eye.

There are rumours that Three, following its success at a couple of film festivals in London, may be heading for a UK theatrical release, but I jumped the gun on this one and picked up a Thai VCD, which has a decent widescreen transfer, though it naturally suffers from typical VCD artefacting and The Wheel in particular is overly dark. But it was only a fiver, though I’m going to spend as much again anyway when/if this comes to my local cinema. Being the ‘International Version’, this disc has good English subs (though there are a couple of spelling mistakes in them) and also includes a trailer for Three (which interestingly shows the films in the order: Memories, Going Home, The Wheel) plus trailers for The Eye (in Thai) and Michelle Yeoh’s action fantasy The Touch (in English).

[Three was followed by a second anthology, Three... Extremes which was released first in the west. Consequently the US release of this film was retitled Three... Extremes II. - MJS]

MJS rating: A-
Review originally posted 19th April 2008.

Tah Tien

Director: some Thai guy
Writer: some other Thai guy
Producer: some guy from Thailand
Cast: Sombat Methanee, Supuk Likitkul, Thep Tienchai
Year of release: 1973
Country: Thailand
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

Several reviews of Mars Men mention that the character of Yak Wat Jang, the giant Thai demon/superhero character in that Thai/Japanese co-production, also appeared in an earlier movie. Well now - here it is.

And let me tell you, folks: it’s bonkers.

In a prologue, we see a ragged-looking chap carrying a gold statue of Buddha which he has presumably stolen. Chortling with glee, he sits down at the foot of a large, gaily painted statue of Yak Wat Jang. Bad mistake. The statue lifts its staff and pounds the thief into the ground - literally. Hooray for Yak Wat Jang!

This is the last we will see of Yak Wat Jang for more than an hour.

So here’s what happens in the rest of the movie. A comet hurtles out of the sky and crashes into the sea (or at least, we see a still illustration of a comet followed by a small explosion in the water). From this comes a giant snake which crawls up onto the land and coughs up an egg. The egg is then eaten by a giant frog, which subsequently spits it out and expires. The egg promptly explodes to reveal a beautiful young woman, who somehow magically melds with the dead giant frog, who then gets up and walks away.

The snake (which we’ll see again) is basically a life-size prop. The frog is a man in a costume. It’s utterly, utterly extraordinary.

An old guy with a comedy moustache (let’s call him Roy) is riding his water buffalo along, minding his own business, when he is startled by a giant frog, which talks to him in the voice of a young woman. He takes her home to his shack, which has a tiger skin on the wall, and they share a comedy scene with a two-foot-long cigarette. Now tell me this folks: what other movie offers you a scene where an old man and a giant frog share an enormous roll-up?

Cut to an underwater kingdom where a woman with a head-dress like a cobra is discussing something with a young man who is probably her consort. I don’t know who this woman is, but we never see her again, which is a shame because it raised my hopes that this might be yet another snake-woman movie. Instead we see that old giant snake again, coming ashore and transforming into a young man (could be the one from the last scene but I really was by this point too engrossed in this weirdness to go back and check). He wears a snake-skin jerkin and red leggings and has a belt shaped like a snake. So this is a snake-man movie. Ooh, so close.

Back at Roy’s shack, we find that the frog can turn into the young woman but only does so when he’s not there. She magically creates a lot of food and drink, cushions and carpets, which impresses him, but he still thinks she’s a frog. The next day, she sees him off to work, but he sneaks back and peeks through the window, where he sees her in human form. Being a lecherous old comic relief character, he tiptoes in, grabs her from behind and steals a kiss - during which she of course transforms back into a frog.

Wait, what’s this? It’s some copyright-ignoring Sergio Leone music as another old guy rides up to Roy’s shack. He wears a stetson and a sheriff’s badge and a sarong. Clearly he’s a mate of Roy, unlike the young man dressed in black with a bandolier over his shoulder who follows him. I really didn’t understand this bit, which finishes with the young villainous guy chasing after the sheriff to give him his horse back. We never see either again, but we do get to see a giant frog chatting with a talking horse.

Okay, let’s leave Roy and Frog Girl for the moment and follow the adventures of Snake Boy as he comes across a small camp, occupied by a tall, good-looking hunter in a safari suit and his two assistants, who we’ll call Woolly Hat and Orange Vest. Snake Boy magically turns his belt into a (real) python which attacks Orange Vest, but Snake Boy then steps in and rescues him from the (drugged) snake. Snake Boy and Safari Suit swiftly become best friends.

Woolly Hat, being a lecherous young comic relief character, goes down to the river where he spies on two naked women. But who’s this coming up behind him? Why, it’s a man-in-a-crappy-suit gorilla. This movie just gets better and better. Back at the camp, the foursome pair off: Woolly Hat and Safari Suit forming one team, Orange Vest and Snake Boy the other. I assume they’re going to hunt for the gorilla but who can tell? The former pair are attacked by a rhinoceros, which consists of a combination of a dodgy puppet head and stock footage of a rhino clearly shot in a zoo.

Intermission. Change discs.

Snake Boy and Orange Vest find themselves in a rocky landscape where they see, well, a sort of dragon-dinosaur-monster. It’s about eight feel tall with a short tail, spikes up its back and a sort of beak - a stunning piece of ultra low budget suitmation. They kill it with a grenade but when Orange Vest checks the body the thing turns out to be still alive and promptly kills him. Snake Boy gives the beast a flying kung fu kick and knocks it over a cliff. Looking down, he sees that it has not only survived the fall but is now fighting a different dragon-dinosaur-monster! (This one has a longer tail and masses of big teeth.)

Wait a minute - the monsters are now fighting on top of a cliff, where they knock each other over the edge (cue shot of two monster suits being flung down a cliff). Snake Boy runs up and checks that they really are dead, despite the fact that he should technically be two cliffs above them.

Safari Suit, Woolly Hat and Snake Boy meet up back at camp where a sudden storm causes a flash flood which sweeps them and everything else away. Safari Suit is discovered the next day, unconscious, by... Roy, who is out spear-fishing. Roy takes him back to his shack where he meets and falls in love with Frog Girl (who is staying human for the moment).

We do briefly see what happened to one of the others - a bloody great crocodile (stock footage/puppet) chomps down on his limp body, causing vast amounts of blood to flow into the river. We can’t actually see if this is Woolly Hat or Snake Boy, and we never see either of them again.

Safari Suit and Frog Girl go to Bangkok where they visit various temples and speak with an ancient, white-haired hermit who magically disappears. Finally, 76 minutes into the film, Yak Wat Jang reappears. The young couple admire the 15-foot tall giant statue then discover the Buddha from the prologue hidden in some shrubbery. While Safari Suit is taking that somewhere, Frog Girl transforms into her amphibian persona and talks with Yak Wat Jang who magically turns into a human version of himself, retaining the extravagant costume and with a hat depicting the statue’s scary face.

Now appears the weird old man statue character who we previously saw in the cobbled-together-from-TV-episodes abomination Yak Wat Jang wu Jumbo A. Frog Girl turns him into a human version of himself too. The two gods argue like little children and eventually start fighting. In the last few minutes of the film, we finally get to see what the inlay promised: two giant beings devastating downtown Bangkok.

Well, it’s the cheapest, least thrilling giant-vs-giant rumble ever. The only miniature on show is a bridge, next to which Yak Wat Jang trashes some toy boats. All other shots achieve the impression of gigantism by simply shooting the two costumes in Bangkok itself from a very low angle. A few shots are even done over-the-shoulder, looking down at the tiny people and cars below, by putting the costumes on a hotel balcony! Eventually, the old man statue is defeated and Yak Wat Jang turns back into a statue. Frog Girl and Snake Boy live happily ever after.

Even by my standards - and I do have standards, believe it or not - this is one of the weirdest films I have ever seen. It looks like it might be based on some ancient Thai legend about a frog princess and a snake prince or something. The scenes with the giant frog are really quite creepy, like one of those scary East German fairy tale movies. In terms of battling giant demons it’s a bit of a swizz since they’re only on screen for about five minutes. However, the two dinosaurs and the gorilla go some way towards making up for that.

The only information on this film I can find anywhere is the list of three actors on the eThaicd website. Other than that I know nothing. Oh, but what a joy to watch such weirdness. It’s cheap and tatty but it is also clearly intended, at least in part, as a comedy. Whatever, it is a unique film.

MJS rating: C+

Update: In 2008, several years after this vague review was first posted, I received a very helpful e-mail from Eric Hurd, to whom I am indebted, not least for his kind comments about this site:

“Long time listener, first time caller” as they say here on the radio in the US. I’m a big fan of your website and love reading your reviews.

"I’ve especially enjoyed reading all the stuff you’ve written on the 'Yak Wat Jang' character’s appearance in films, most notably since it is the only major mention of these babies in English! I enjoy seeking out information on unknown giant monster films, particularly foreign ones (I hope to write a book on them someday) and finding anything at all not in foreign typefaces helps my searches greatly.

"Well, in my findings, I’ve come across some added info and links you may wish to take note of for your wonderful articles, especially in light of Chaiyo and company finally getting dusted in their whole Ultraman lawsuit fiasco. Firstly, you probably know good ol’ Yak is a character taken from real life, specifically from the statues in front of the temples in Wat Chaeng and Wat Pho (see these pictures). I’ve found that there is some sort of classic mythology there, which is the basis for the Tah Tien movie. The grey stone fellow is apparently, another temple guardian, which seems to go by the name 'Yak Wat Pho', pretty much due to his location. This was confirmed by a couple references to the same statue by that name online.

"In the picture link I mentioned above, Wat Pho’s picture is a couple shots down on the page. Note also the two Wat Jang guardians in the first two pictures on the page. Both ‘guard’ the same building on either side. One is the ‘movie’ green color while the other is white and seemingly painted in the colors of Chaiyo’s Hanuman! You wonder if that's where they came up with them? Note also the many varieties of stone guardian statues on the page, particularly the armless female. There was definitely wasted giant creature material there, I tell you.

"Meanwhile, another page has surfaced, showing some information on Tah Tien in English. It appears to be from a 2006 screening and gives a little more detail, chiefly that the two giants were fighting over money! You may also take notice of the biased information on Chaiyo creating Ultraman- Bwa ha ha ha!!!!!

"And finally, there may be even one more appearance by the big green guy, this time teamed with Chaiyo’s other franchise player, Hanuman! (I was always surprised this wasn’t an obvious pairing from the get-go.) Made in 1984, some 10 years after the last Yak appearance at the time (Tah Tien being made in 1973 and the first Jumborg Ace and Giant pairing coming in ’74- dates found by cutting and pasting the original language into online film databases), it’s called The Noble War aka Suk Kumpakan and is supposedly based on the Ramayana. It, like the others, is available at ethaicd.com."

Yak Wat Jang wu Jumbo A

Director: various, cobbled together by someone on a Friday afternoon
Writer: as above
Producer: as above
Cast: Naoki Tachibana and a bunch of guys in rubber suits
Year of release: difficult to tell, probably late 1990s
Country: Thailand/Japan
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

When I invested in a VCD of this Thai film (aka Yak Wat Jang Vs Jumborg Ace, Yuk Wud Jaeng vs Jumbo A and many other varient spellings) I expected it to be an undubbed, slightly different edit of the Tsuburaya-produced, Thai/Japanese co-production which I had previously reviewed in its Italian incarnation as Mars Men. In fact, this is an almost entirely different film, sharing probably no more than 20 minutes out of its 80-minute running time.

What we have here is a mishmash of footage from the original Yak Wat Jang Vs Jumborg Ace, footage from the Jumborg Ace/Jumbo A television series (which ran for 50 episodes from 17th January to 29th December 1973), and newly shot footage. It is edited together so haphazardly, with characters appearing and disappearing at random, that it’s debatable whether there is in fact supposed to be a single narrative thread here or whether it’s just a compilation of Jumborg Ace’s greatest fights. I’ll try and sum up what happens, but be warned, this is a lo-o-o-ong summary!

We open on Earth with Dr Suriya and his wife Nipha from the Protective Attack Team exploring a Thai temple using their geiger counter. They don’t find anything but do stop to look at a giant statue of Yak Wat Jang. An alien then sends a bunch of cyborg-monsters down to earth and from five minutes in we have unfettered, unexplained, massive destruction of property by giant kaiju, which is frankly what we’re paying to see here.

In their control centre are a team of five people in silver suits who are possibly meant to be a new incarnation of the PAT. There’s a couple, a young boy (with a shaved head) and two extremely camp and unfunny comic relief characters, one with dark skin and red hair, the other very tall.

Cut to golden-haired Jump Killer and spiky-shouldered Antigone, two evil Martian types in their flying saucer who were the principal villains in Mars Men (one difference is that Jump Killer is female here). They watch some TV footage of Thailand.

A Cessna light aircraft is caught up in the big kaiju destruction and goes spinning into a blob of green light. When the pilot Naoki Tachibana (played by... Naoki Tachibana!) comes to, he is in a misty limbo, being addressed by an Ultraman-style character who shows him the mighty cyborg Jumbo A which can turn into his plane. Then he’s suddenly back in his plane so he tries transforming.

The alien we saw earlier sends a robot double of Jumbo A against our hero so we get to see the giant cyborg fight himself, or at least a version of himself with detachable flying forearms. He defeats the evil doppelganger by turning into an animated green streak which decapitates it.

Then we get the creation sequence of Jumborg Nine. The Ultraman-style character is seen again, this time giving Naoki the power to create a giant, world-saving cyborg out of, not a Cessna, but a Mini! The Italian Job was never like this... We then get a brief shot of the two Jumborgs fighting each other.

Jumborg/Jumbo Nine (wasn’t there a pop hit called ‘Jumbo Number Nine?’ oh, please yourselves) fights the alien we saw earlier (who is now giant) and a goofy muppet monster. He blasts the monster’s head and arms off with a fireball and stabs the alien with a sword from a slot in his chest; the alien collapses and spurts blood from his mouth.

Back in the New PAT’s control centre (the location of which is never hinted at), a strange, dark brown idol of an old man frightens the two camp characters, though it’s not clear why. This is the same character who battled Yak Wat Jang at the end of the Thai demon’s first cinematic appearance, Tah Tien, although I still don’t know who he is. Outside, there are a couple more Jumbo vs monster fights.

At 28 minutes in, we get the first bit of footage recognisable from Mars Men, as Dr Suriya and Nipha put on silver protection suits and helmets - complete with face-plates which steam up as the poor actors try and breathe - and explore some caves. There they spot Antigone fighting a three-headed dragon (not Ghidorah or even a rip-off of same) with his glowing sword - footage which was missing from Mars Men, possibly wisely given the awful dragon costume. Antigone takes from the cave wall a massive crystal, the solar eclipse diamond, which causes uncontrolled extreme weather conditions to suddenly hit the planet.

As a giant Antigone trashes the city, the boy and two camp blokes from the New PAT send the old man idol to become giant size and fight him, with all the traditional collateral damage that ensues.

Elsewhere in the city, the appearance of the Martians’ flying saucer causes stock footage panic. The Mini that can turn into Jumbo Nine (the Jum-Car or Jum-Z) stops and out get Naoki and Lin, the little kid from the original PAT who is (I think) Nipha’s little brother. A white-wigged woman dressed in black beams down from the saucer and says something to the crowd, before turning into the giant Jump Killer and trashing nearby buildings. Back in the control centre, the five members of the New PAT and the old man idol watch this happening.

Now we’re 47 minutes in, more than halfway through, and we get another bit of footage from the original film, as PAT aircraft blast at a giant laser which Jump Killer has set up on the Moon, using the solar eclipse diamond, to blast Earth. One of the craft crashes. At the old control centre, Naoki dashes off to his Cessna to create Jumbo A and other members of the team blast off in the, um, aircraft which we’ve just seen them piloting to the Moon. Hmm...

In the New PAT control centre, a doll of Yak Wat Jang which we saw earlier being waved about is made life-size somehow, then becomes giant and flies off, but this is new footage, vastly inferior to the creation scene in Mars Men (imagine - something actually being inferior to Mars Men!). Meanwhile, Jumbo A straps himself onto a space rocket to launch himself at the Moon, where he proceeds to fight Jump Killer and Antigone.

The second disc kicks off, 53 minutes in, with footage from the original movie of Yak Wat Jang and Jumbo A fighting each other on the Moon before realising their mistake and teaming up to battle Jump Killer and Antigone, plus a subplot of one of the PAT craft coming to rescue the downed ship. One thing that is very noticeable is that throughout the fights the giants never shut up. It seems you can never have just action, the character must always be saying something like, “Ah, Jumbo A! I will defeat you! You are no match for me! And then I will defeat Yak Wat Jang too! Hahahahaha!” and, “No, you will never defeat me! For I am Jumbo A!” etc.

After our two heroes defeat Antigone, Yak Wat Jang wanders off into a cloud of purple smoke, leaving Jumbo A to fight Jump Killer.

Next up is the most extraordinary scene of all, lifted from the old TV series. Jump Killer is back on Earth and is human-sized (continuity be damned!). She and three of her anonymous alien goons fight Naoki, who gets out of his Mini but obviously doesn’t think to turn it into Jumbo Nine and just squash her. Captured, he is strung up from a scaffold by his feet, while other members of the old PAT, even little Lin, are strapped up around him - crucified! Even by the outré standards of this ‘film’, this is an incredible scene, made all the more memorable by the soundtrack which eschews the normal vocal, orchestral pomposity (“Yak! Yak! Yak! Yak Wat Jang!”) for a lone trumpet. This plaintive music gives the scene the air of a spaghetti western, an idea exacerbated by numerous atmospheric shots of crows perched on the scaffolds and crucifixes. Sadly this can’t last long, as the PAT ship returns from the Moon, causing Jump Killer to grow giant and try to swat it out of the sky.

This is followed by inexplicable footage of Jump Killer on Mars looking at the graves of Antigone and two other Martians, Betagone and Satangone.

Jumbo A appears and fights her, then Jumbo Nine appears and fights her, but not both together because these are from two separate episodes it seems. She counters by transforming into a super-scary version of herself, complete with horns. Jumbo Nine grabs an enormous shard of crystal and rams it straight through Jump Killer’s stomach, causing an eruption of green blood and killing her.

Then, because continuity is for wimps, Jump Killer is fine and is setting two monsters against Jumbo A, the two who fought him on the Moon in Mars Men but we now seem to be on Earth (possibly, some of the time) because there is vegetation on the set. Defeated, Jumbo A lies on the floor but - hooray! - here comes Yak Wat Jang out of his cloud of smoke to kick Jump Killer’s arse! (All this with occasional cutaways to the New PAT team in their control centre, following the action on video screens.)

Jumbo A recovers and helps Yak Wat Jang defeat the monsters but Jump Killer disappears. The smoky atmosphere clears and the sun shines through on our planet. Huzzah!

But the solar eclipse diamond-powered laser is still on the Moon, blasting at Earth and causing millions of dollars of stock footage destruction. Jump Killer and Antigone appear on the Moon in their flying saucer but Yak Wat Jang and Jumbo A turn up to fight them, which they do by deflecting the laser onto each villain in turn, causing them to catch fire and then explode. Our two giant heroes destroy the laser, take the diamond, thank each other and fly back home to Earth.

Well, what the bloody hell was all that about? Here’s what I can determine: there are two Protective Attack Teams, the old 1970s lot which included Dr Suriya, Nipha and Lin and had access to the Jum-Cessna and the Jum-Car, and a 1990s version with two camp, irritating twats. Jump Killer is very much the main villain, or rather villainess, and has at least two other forms of herself into which she can transform. When I originally posted my Mars Men review I had Jump Killer and Antigone (aka Anchigoné) mixed up but I have now corrected this. Jumbo A, who was described in Mars Men as ‘il gigante robot Americano’ is very definitely Japanese here as he can be heard saying “Arigato” and “Sayonara” at the end. That’s about it.

Although the main plot of the original film - Antigone’s theft of the diamond from Earth and its use in a giant Moon-based laser - is still just about visible, it is mixed up with way too much footage from the TV series to make any sense. Characters die hideously and then are fine (and somewhere else) a moment later. And the inserted footage of the crappy new version of PAT is just horrible, especially their two gibbering ‘comic relief’ characters.

Actor Naoki Tachibana was also in a TV series called Kagestar and allegedly was imprisoned for murder in 1985! There are no on-screen credits on this movie.

I’m not fond of recommending bootlegs, but I have to say that if you only want one film of a giant Ultraman-esque cyborg hero teaming up with an enormous living Thai stone idol to defeat giant Martians - and it’s difficult to see who would want two - then you’re better off getting Mars Men, even with its Italian dubbing. I can also recommend the two other Tsuburaya-produced Thai kaiju movies Hanuman vs 7 Ultraman and Hanuman vs 5 Kamen Rider. This VCD on the Tiga label is only of interest as a sort of Jumborg Ace sampler.

MJS rating: D

The Poison

Director: Ch Ratchapol
Writer: Yodnam
Producer: Jirun Rattanaviriyachai
Cast: Nantawat Arsirapojanakul, Julaluck Kittiyarat, Sushao Phongwilai
Year of release: 2002
Country: Thailand
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

In the jungles of Thailand, a group of young men gather, armed with swords and bows. In another part of the forest, atop a sort of altar thing, a ceremony is taking place. A young woman in a white dress stands before a priest. Behind her is an older woman (her mother?) in a blue dress, and numerous villagers are stood around.

The girl in white (let’s call her Su) gives the priest a small statue. He invites her to touch a sort of stone font with a candle in the centre; when she does so a small, golden snake magically appears from her arm and melts into a pool of blood-like liquid which runs down carved grooves in the stone into a brass cup. The priest takes this cup and anoints a baby held by one of the other women.

Suddenly the men we saw at the start attack, brutally cutting down men and women left right and centre. There are even young boys of 12 or 13 hacking away with their swords. Only Su (Julaluck Kittiyarat aka Ying Jularuck, also in epic mermaid-vs-giant fantasy Phra-Apai-Mani), her mother and the priest escape to a big temple, but the young men follow them there. The priest is cut down, Su’s mother is grabbed and spits two jets of poison from her open mouth into a man’s face, but is then killed with a flaming arrow in the back.

Bad idea. Su glowers, her eyes glow, her skin starts to change colour, and before our eyes she transforms into an eighty-foot long giant cobra! She whips men with her tail, crushes men in her coils - and we even get a quick POV shot as she eats one whole.

Eleven minutes in and this is instantly the best snake-woman film I have ever seen! (And regular readers will know that it’s a genre I’m very fond of!) This isn’t just a very large snake, this is a supernaturally giant serpent rendered in very good CGI. If Bert I Gordon was alive today and making snake-woman films, this is what he would make.

The only downside is that this VCD, distributed by Right Beyond, has no English subtitles. That’s why Su (and everyone else) will have to have made-up names in this review. There are apparently English subs on the DVD - maybe I should have spent that extra five dollars.

One hundred years later...

Five young men and a woman, laden with cameras and video-cameras, arrive at the altar. I think they’re shooting some footage for the Discovery Channel or something. The altar looks a good location but one guy (let’s call him Andy) is unhappy about shooting at what was obviously once a sacred place. So they all pack their equipment again and set off. Across a river, through an amazing cave.

As they walk through the jungle, Andy is suddenly shot dead. And so are three of the others. This is a shocker. We’ve spent the past ten minutes with these people and assumed that they were the main characters. Now suddenly they’re under attack from a couple of dozen bandits armed with M-16s and AK-47s. The leader of the video team (let’s call him Joe, played by Nantawat Arsirapojanakul aka Tor Nantawat: Lhob Pai Tang Ar-kad, Bullet Teen, Rang Pen Fai, Hunch) shoots back with an automatic pistol as he leaps for cover (someone has been watching too many John Woo movies, methinks).

Joe escapes, along with a moustachioed guy but to be honest there’s no point inventing a name for him because he took a hit and he dies shortly afterwards.

The bandits - whose leader wears a Ramones T-shirt! - make their way through the forest and suddenly come across a young woman who seems to appear from nowhere. It’s Su, dressed in white still though a more modern dress. They challenge her but are distracted when one of their number is bitten by a snake, and when they look back she’s gone. The bandits continue through the jungle but suddenly find themselves surrounded by hundreds of snakes which attack and kill several of them, including the Ramones fan.

Joe is hungry, tired and lost when he comes across Su sitting by the river. She takes him to the temple, which is well lit with flaming torches, and explains something that is probably important but I don’t speak Thai. At one point there’s an insert shot of her naked except for a twenty-foot snake strategically wrapped around her.

In the dark jungle - actually it’s extremely well-lit, considering that it’s the middle of the night - the bandits continue under a new leader, whom we’ll call Zack. He spots a snake in a tree ahead and shoots it. Back at the temple, Su feels a sharp pain in her arm. She goes out into the jungle to confront the bandits but they evidently now know who/what she is because they hold her with two magically glowing lassoes. But Joe appears and shoots through both ropes, makes the bandits drop their weapons, then helps a weakened Su back to the temple. He spots a patch of scales on her shoulder and she explains everything to him, including flashbacks to the prologue.

To be honest, the film goes downhill on the second disc and I had to keep reminding myself “Eighty-foot cobra, eighty-foot cobra...” to stay interested. Joe carries Su through the jungle to a road where the video team parked their vehicles - blimey, that’s easily found! He takes her home and tends to her and there are lengthy, soft-focus romantic scenes. With no subtitles, these are just boring.

Then who should turn up, in a very expensive red sports car, but Joe’s girlfriend Amanda (or whatever), evidently very rich and beautiful but not a truly nice person. Joe explains that he has found someone new and she slaps him and runs out crying - straight into Zack...

Another night-time scene of Su and Joe together by a lake is interrupted by the arrival of Zack and co., with Amanda and with plenty of guns. Jealous Amanda grabs a pistol and shoots at Su but Joe leaps forward to protect her and takes three bullets in the back. Su is mad now and does the eighty-foot cobra thing again - yay! - but rather than attacking Zack and Amanda she just grabs Joe in her coils and disappears into the lake.

Back at the temple, Joe is stretched out on the stones and Su is praying to a broken statue of an eight-armed god. Zack, Amanda and the bandits arrive and there is a tense stand-off. Unfortunately, rather than another giant cobra, we get the clichéed spectacle of Zack and Su blasting bolts of magical energy at each. She knocks out all the bandits and knocks down but doesn’t stun Amanda, but Zack has her cornered when - zap! - Joe comes to her rescue with his own bolts of magic.

That’s right, once again we have someone with no magical ability suddenly acquiring it in the final scene to save the day. It’s a shame the cobra didn’t reappear but as if to make up for this, Su turns Amanda into a snake which slithers away.

The first disc starts with unavoidable trailers for dreadful Vin Diesel action stinker A Man Apart, the latest one-word-will-do film from Nu Image Submarines (which evidently reuses sets and CGI models from Octopus) and Japanese scarecrow horror flick Takashi. After the film finishes, disc 2 has trailers for Australian train-surfing film The Pact and Hong Kong human-canine soul-swap comedy Every Dog Has His Date.

Nantawat Arsirapojanakul and Julaluck Kittiyarat seem to be quite big stars in Thailand (Julaluck has even released her own yoga video!) but I can find nothing on any of the other cast. If you know anything at all about Sushao Phongwilai, Lakkhet Wasikachart, Tasanawalai Ongartsittichai, Krt Suwanaphap, Yanwisat Bokert, Orawan Terrakirilin, Jinsujee Namthong, Arch Wangtaweephaiboon, Sakwich Timsan, Tanapon Teerasin or Thuanthong Teerawat Phokasap - please drop me a line!

Nor can I find anything else directed by Ch Ratchapol, though that certainly doesn't mean he hasn’t done anything else. The excellent cinematography is by Artit Hongrat with special effects by Michelle Thi and Jeab Ssi.

The Poison (original title Asirapis) is a mixed bag. A terrific first half is let down by a slow, talkie second half (though I’m sure it’s more interesting if you can understand what they’re talking about) and the ending, though it notches up the interest again, is an unimaginative hoary old ‘you zap me, I’ll zap you’ cliché. But that can’t take away the fact that the production values are top-notch, the effects are great, the direction is slick, the acting good, the cinematography superb and, most importantly, a woman turns into a giant cobra! The first eleven minutes alone are worth the price of admission and although this VCD was very good quality (almost no artefacting) I would recommend the DVD.

MJS rating: B+

Night Falcon

Director: Ram Thanadpojanamart
Writer: Ram Thanadpojanamart (possibly)
Producer: Ram Thanadpojanamart (probably)
Cast: Peter Louis Mioxy, Areesuang Nilwan, Nukrob Tripoh
Country: Thailand
Year of release: 2004
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

I feel sorry for Ram Thanadpojanamart. He made a storming, expensive-looking superhero film which was very obviously aimed at the international market. It’s not as good as the best that Hollywood can offer, but it’s a lot better than its worst. And yet Night Falcon seems to be virtually unknown outside Thailand. I can find one French language review on the web and that’s it. The film isn’t even listed on the Inaccurate Movie Database and you would expect something this flashy to be there. It looks like Night Falcon might have been a bomb, especially as Thanadpojanamart does not appear to have worked on anything else since.

Peter Louis Mioxy (Iron Ladies 2) plays the eponymous superhero, clad in a stylish red and black leather/kevlar outfit with a pointy, slightly birdlike mask. He has no superpowers, just top-of-the-range strength, agility and fighting skills. But the real star of the film is Areesuang Nilwan (La Fe’lina, Kiss) who plays a young woman named (I think) Mae.

Driving home one night with her husband/boyfriend, Mae’s car is forced off the road when she runs into a battle between Night Falcon and local drugs baron Mr White (the characters are all helpfully introduced with English captions in this surprisingly unsubtitled film). Mae’s boyfriend is killed and she blames the kevlar-clad vigilante that she saw at the scene, who left a red, falcon-shaped throwing star that she keeps as a reminder of the event. She trains herself up in martial arts, determined to track the costumed man down and take her revenge.

Mae has two friends who we will call Peter and Sarah because I don’t know their real names. They are close but we never see a kiss so my guess is that they’re brother and sister. I don’t know how Mae knows them or whether she knew them before encountering Night Falcon - maybe that’s in the dialogue that I can’t understand - but I do know that Peter actually is Night Falcon. I don’t think Sarah knows this and I’m almost certain that Peter has no idea that Mae was the girl who was peripherally involved in his battle with White (which ended when White’s face got accidentally hit with acid that spilled from a large barrel).

Mae and Sarah are sparring beside a public swimming pool when a drugged up guy wanders into the building and starts knocking people around. They do their best to restrain him but he pulls a knife and slashes Sarah’s arm. Fortunately Peter turns up and kicks the guy into the pool, then Peter and Mae take Sarah to the hospital.

By this time we have been introduced to our villain, Iron Mask, who wears a full-cranium mask and and 1920s-style greatcoat, both shiny silver (which is kind of odd because iron is a dull grey in colour - steel mask would have been a better name). He has a squad of anonymous masked goons and three equally image-conscious sidekicks: Nikolai is a big guy with a robotic left arm and semi-robotic head, a stock cyborg strongman as found in everything from Fudoh: The New Generation to Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn; Kojiro is a lean guy with a long ponytail, a deadly samurai sword and a painted face that makes him look like the fifth member of Kiss; Black Swan is Iron Mask’s moll, a whip-cracking redhead dominatrix pricktease sex-kitten with metal eyebrows and a leather bustier designed like a skull. These four are seen cracking down hard on a rival gang, establishing Iron Mask as the local Mr Big.

As well as his costume, Peter/Night Falcon has a high-tech computer at his secret base; one of those futuristic ones with a multiscreen interface that hangs in the air, requiring him to make dramatic sweeping gestures to do things and allowing us to see his face while he’s doing it. Basically it’s a rip-off of Minority Report, or possibly a rip-off of the Currys TV ads that ripped off Minority Report.

Mae is on her motorbike when she spots a suspicious lorry and follows it to find Kojiro overseeing some sort of drug-smuggling malarkey. Then Night Falcon turns up and fights Kojiro and Nikolai, watched by Iron Mask and Black Swan. Our hero takes a serious wound from Kojiro’s sword but he makes it into his high-tech car and drives off, followed by Mae on her bike.

At Night Falcon’s base, some sort of large warehouse-type building I think (we never get a good look at the exterior), Mae follows a trail of blood, slipping in through a closing door. When she finds Night Falcon in the corridor, she beats him up, determined to avenge her boyfriend but Peter removes his mask and reveals himself. Unfortunately, Iron Mask and his gang have followed Mae and confront them, the supervillain removing his own mask to reveal - good grief, it’s you - that he is acid-marked Mr White. At this, Mae realises that it was White, not Night Falcon, who shot her boyfriend; White’s distinctive pistol, now pointing at her, confirms this.

Peter/Night Falcon and Mae have a big set-to with Kojiro and Nikolai, escaping just before the building blows up (two of Iron Mask’s goons stand in front of Night Falcon’s computer, evidently confused by the digital countdown hanging in mid-air just underneath a big flashing caption that says ‘Red Alert’; possibly they can’t read English...). Anyway, Mae bundles Peter into his high-tech car which has its own mini-computer that guides them to somewhere which I initially thought was the hospital but is actually a second base (which we also don’t get a good look at). Here we meet a bespectacled young scientist - let’s call him Jeff - who is basically Deacon Frost to Night Falcon’s Blade. I think.

With Peter critically ill, Jeff tells Mae about the set-up and shows her a room where the Night Falcon costume and weapons are kept. This is a rather groovy bit of production design with a giant Night Falcon logo cut in the back wall, behind which are extremely long wind-chimes creating a slightly zen ambience.

And what of Sarah? She is kidnapped by Iron Mask and strung up by her wrists in a warehouse somewhere. The villain calls Sarah’s cellphone, Mae answers and realises it is up to her to rescue her friend. Fortunately Jeff is a dab-hand with a needle and a soldering gun and promptly runs up an outfit that resembles Peter’s but fits Mae’s hot body with satisfying snugness. Mae is now... Falcon Girl!

Mae/Falcon Girl tracks down the place where Sarah is being held and rescues her but then Iron Mask, Black Swan and Kojiro turn up. Fortunately Peter is back to full fitness and he arrives in the nick of time, all costumed up, to even the odds. (It’s a good job that Nikolai is on annual leave, or whatever.) Kojiro gets his arse kicked and Black Swan runs away but Iron Mask proves a formidable opponent, topping himself up at one point with a needle of his own drug (which we follow in extreme close-up through his CGI veins to his CGI heart).

Things get knocked over, flames leap around and it comes down to Night Falcon and Falcon Girl versus Iron Mask while Sarah looks on helplessly from beyond a flame barrier which doesn’t look insurmountable but we have to assume, is. Then, would you believe it, the silver-clad arch-villain grabs hold of a barrel of acid which tips up, depositing more of it on his face and blinding him. How unlucky is that? The two heroes give him a good kick as he flails around ineffectually then Night Falcon throws Falcon Girl bodily over the flames to the safety of Sarah’s arms, courageously sacrificing himself.


The building then blows up, although apparently not in the bit where Sarah and Mae are crouching.

There are two epilogues. The first sees Black Swan, now apparently defacto leader of the gang, with Kojiro and - where were you when we needed you, mister? - Nikolai, plus a couple of unidentified knife-wielding rogues. There are two bodies on trolleys, swathed in bandages. One of them opens its eyes - but which one is it? That’s intriguing but I didn’t fully understand it. What I did understand was the second epilogue which shows us that Jeff has now made a costume for Sarah - Falcon Woman, no less - so that she and Mae can take up the mantle of her brother. The final shot is the two women standing moodily atop a tall building, matching our initial view of Night Falcon at the start of the movie.

There is some behind-the-scenes footage under the end credits and the VCD finishes with two videos for songs from the soundtrack (one of which seems to actually be called ‘Night Falcon’). These consist entirely of clips from the film and include several plot twists so it’s a good job they’re at the end of disc 2, not the start of disc 1. (Before the film are trailers for Gra-hung, Lizard Woman and another supernatural horror movie that I could not identify, plus an advert for Re-teen soap!)

I’ve got to say: I enjoyed Night Falcon a lot. It’s a good, solid, unpretentious superhero movie, not bogged down by adaptation from a comic-book. Much as I enjoy the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Superman et al, those are a different sort of film - and not just because of the A-list stars and enormous effects budgets. Night Falcon reminds me of Krrish in the way that it simply takes the concept of a costumed superhero, accepts it and runs with it, using the story as a framework on which to hang character development and action scenes. Any tale where the main protagonist leads a double life naturally leads to questions of identity and trust; that’s what Night Falcon does, and does well.

Billed on its cover (in English) as ‘the new ultimate Thai action hero on digi-film’, the movie has its problems although I’m always hesitant about discussing the script quality of any film where I can’t understand a word they’re saying. The first half is somewhat fragmentary with a series of apparently unconnected scenes showing the three friends in various situations or cutting away to other material such as news reports. Some of these seem designed to simply showcase flashy moves; for example a sequence in a skate park with lots of shots of Thai kids on skateboards and BMX bikes. We see Mae chatted up by a cocky guy in a pink shirt (toting a big ghetto blaster and an even bigger afro!), then Sarah and Peter arrive.

But did we really need so many cool shots of skateboarders jumping hither and thither? At 95 minutes, the film could lose a few minutes of this footage without coming to harm. There is also an all-pervading pop soundtrack, much of it just endless techno beats, which gets a tad irritating at times.
But mitigating this are sympathetic leads, delightfully over-the-top villains and a bunch of exciting fights. These are shot flashily - Ram Thanadpojanamart loves using his ‘digi-film’ to blur movement - and there are a lot of fast edits. We’re not watching a Tony Jaa film here, though I’ve no doubt that the actors are all accomplished martial artists who could kick my white arse. Thanadpojanamart has a nice eye for composition and frequently sets up the characters in poses which manage to look cool without looking silly.

Above all, what impressed me was the story. Granted, the whole drugs thing disappears fairly quickly (I assume that White/Iron Mask’s imported smack was responsible for the zombified knife-kid at the swimming pool) but in terms of character development through plot development I really can’t fault this. Even without understanding a word of dialogue I could understand motivations and actions (eventually) and in fact there are lengthy sequences with little or no dialogue.

A few subtitles and an international distributor could have made Night Falcon a hit, I’m sure and I’m intrigued about why the movie seems to have gone nowhere. It’s stylish, laden with neat-looking production design, rarely drags and delivers both plot and action. Maybe it will be rediscovered one day.

The film’s terrific website has now closed but fortunately most of the pages are archived at Thai Toku, a groovy Thai superhero website. The text is all in Thai but there are lots of great photos. The cast also includes Nukrob Tripoh, Prapimpom Kanjinda, Pinpetch Goonshorn, Taweesuk Suwanpist and Natawoot Chaijaroen although I don’t know who plays which character.

MJS rating: A-

Ngoo Keng Kong

Director: Charint Phromrangsi
Cast: Kwanphirom Lin, Withid Ladd
Year of release: 1995
Country: Thailand
Reviewed from: Thai VCD (Solar Marketing)

In the jungles of South East Asia, a group of hunters are trampling through the undergrowth in pursuit of a large snake, but a young village woman hides the serpent behind her basket and misdirects the hunters when they come looking for it. Returning home, she falls into a river and is saved from drowning - by the snake.

So begins this entry in the surprisingly extensive snake-woman sub-genre of Asian horror movies. Unfortunately the version I’ve got is in Thai and has no subtitles, so I will struggle through the plot as best I can.

The young woman (I don’t know any character names but we’ll call her Anna for convenience) lives in a hut in a village, where she takes in washing. One night she is visited at night by the great snake, which magically transforms into a handsome young man and makes love to her. Nine months later, heavily pregnant Anna is ostracised and criticised by her neighbours for being a single mother. She gives birth alone, in the jungle, in a torrential downpour. At first she fears that the baby is dead and covers it with broad leaves, but she hears a cry and takes her daughter home with her.

Several years on, we meet the daughter (let’s call her May) as a happy child playing with the other village kids, but something strange happens to her head. Unwrapping the girl’s headscarf, her playmates find that her hair is a mass of snakes and run screaming to their parents. Anna and May prepare to flee the village but before they can leave, a mob of angry villagers - carrying flaming torches in the grand tradition of horror movie angry mobs - surround their grass hut and set light to it. As the girl and her mother huddle together in terror, the heavens open and a sudden rainstorm douses the flames.

Anna and May move into a cave outside the village, and we jump ahead another ten years or so - May is now a gorgeous young woman with a propensity for sexy sarongs and leopard-skin bikinis (actually it looks more like civet-skin, but you get the picture).

Two scientists (let’s call them Fred and Joe) are out capturing lizards for study when Joe catches sight of May in the jungle and is instantly smitten. Later that night, Joe and Fred are attending some sort of festivity where an extravagantly dressed, jewel-draped entertainer sings... ‘Hava Nagila’! Joe spots May on the edge of the clearing and follows her, but is bitten by a snake in the jungle. May sucks out the poison and they’re in love.

At this point, the film turns into a completely different movie as we meet various gangsters, starting with a drugs deal which ends in a shoot-out between rival gangs. The movie gets very talky from here on in, so the plot is necessarily more vague.

Joe and May are now living in quite a nice house on the edge of town. Joe runs afoul of the gangsters and is beaten up but escapes. As he runs through the jungle, he is recaptured but May tries to save him. With Joe unconscious on the ground, one gangster attempts to rape May but she spits a small poisonous snake out of her mouth into his face. The other hoods run away in fear but one of them is brought down by a group of cobras which appear in their path.

It’s clear that the gangsters have a hold on the entire community, but the final straw is when three of them encounter Anna, washing clothes down at the river. She tries to run but is grabbed and has her head smashed on a rock. When May finds her mother’s body, she swears revenge using all the supernatural powers at her disposal.

Cue the finale, in which May transforms into a full-on snake woman, as depicted on the VCD inlay, with a full body-paint make-up job of serpentine scales. Her hair is again a mass of snakes, and there is another mass of coils around her hips to preserve the actress’ modesty. The effects budget doesn’t extend to making any of these snakes actually move, but it is still a pretty impressive sight. And in any case, there are plenty of real snakes on show.

May uses her mastery over snakes to summon dozens, maybe hundreds of the things, of all sizes and species. They swarm into the gangsters’ house and one by one the terrified bad guys fall prey to their attack. The villains are dead, Anna’s death is avenged, the local people are safe from the criminals - May and Joe live happily ever after.

Ngoo Keng Kong (aka Devil Medusa) is a surprisingly well-made film. Despite the rigidity of the snakes attached to May (as both adult and young girl) there’s enough of them that the appearance is pretty scary - though not as scary as the vast numbers of real snakes on show. All the animals - except those actually growing out of May - appear to be very real and very much alive, and all the actors interact with them on screen, especially the actress who plays Anna, who has to lie down and let a large python crawl all over her. There is very little by way of gore - mostly people are just seen screaming as a snake winds round them - and no sex or nudity.

The cinematography is extremely good, with rich blue shades in the many night time scenes, skilful photography of the fire attack on the grass hut, and other very credible uses of coloured lighting. The direction is slick, and the acting seems good. The only descents into comedy are ‘Hava Nagila’ (are these Jewish villagers?) and a speeded-up shot of Joe pulling his trousers on as he runs from a snake, following his first night with May.

So what is this film? What can we find out about it? Answers: dunno and not much. I thought at first that I might have bought the acclaimed 2001 Cambodian-Thai co-production Snaker, which is widely available on VCD. The original title of that film is Kuon Puos Keng Kang (‘The Snake King’s Child’) but I have also seen it on dealer’s lists as Ngu Geng Gong. However, I have tracked down some frame-grabs from Snaker [And in fact I’ve seen it since I wrote this review - MJS] and this very definitely isn’t it.

The story of the snake woman seems to be common currency throughout the region; The Illuminated Lantern website has some information on other Asian snake woman films.

Assuming that the various synopses/reviews which I’ve found are correct, I can definitely state that this film is not any of the following: The Snake Girl, Snake Girl Drops In, The Snake Woman, Nagin, Devi, Naag Shakti, Valetina, Hungry Snake Woman, The Snake Queen, Green Snake, Phantom of Snake, Sex Medusa, Love of the White Snake, Killer Snakes, Lady Master Snake/Snake Woman’s Marriage, Madame White Snake, Blood Snake Human Devil, Snake Devil, Snake Devil Woman, Snake Charmer, Calamity of Snake or The Ugetsu Story. The closest I’ve found so far is a 1970 Hong Kong/Philippines production called Devil Woman; the plot summary in Pete Tombs’ book Mondo Macabro has some similar elements to Ngoo Keng Kong - birth in a rainstorm, gang of toughs - but too many differences. So it’s not that either.

So it looks like I’ve got yet another First English Language Review. My disc is on the Solar label, catalogue number SZVCD 0027 - but there’s not one other word of English anywhere on the packaging or print. The disc itself is not great: the print is quite scratchy in some places and the image is very pixilated - even by VCD standards - in fast-moving scenes. Withid Ladd was also in the awful ghost movie Hunch.

Nevertheless, should you have a chance to see Ngoo Keng Kong, you should certainly take it. It’s a well-made film and an interesting example of the prolific Asian snake-woman subgenre.

MJS rating: B+

Addendum: After I first posted this review, the Marketing Department at Solar very kindly replied to my enquiry about this film, providing me with the names of the director and lead actors, and also a translation of the title: ‘ngoo’ means ‘snake’ and ‘keng kong’ is, I’m told, a species of snake.

Nang Nak

Director: Nonzee Nimibutr
Writer: Nonzee Nimibutr
Producer: Visute Poolvaralaks
Cast: Indhira Jaroenpura, Winai Kraibutr
Year of release: 1999
Country: Thailand
Reviewed from: HK VCD (Ocean Shores Ltd)

I had heard good things about Nang Nak: I knew it had won some prizes and I was very impressed with Nonzee Nimibutr’s contribution to Three, so this was a film I went looking for.

The story, based on an ancient Thai legend, is very simple. Mak (Thai heartthrob Winai Kraibutr: Snaker, Krai Thong, The Hotel!, Kaew Kon Lek) and Nak (19-year-old Indhira Jaroenpura) are a young couple, split up when Nak is called up to fight in a war. He is almost killed but nursed back to health by monks. Nak was pregnant when her husband left and she gives birth while he is away, not knowing whether he is alive or dead, but she has sworn to wait for him.

Eventually, Mak returns to their little house beside the river, away from the village and there is a tearful reunion with his wife and their baby Dang. But why do the villagers, including his best friend Um (Pracha Thawongfla), shun Mak? The answer, as shown in a flashback, is that on the stormy night when Nak went into labour, she died. Nak and Dang are both ghosts.

This is a heart-wrenchingly sad and romantic, as well as occasionally scary, movie. Nak has no reason to think that his beautiful wife is anything other than normal, and he rejects attempts by Um and others to persuade him that he is living with ghosts. Nak is feared throughout the village and people are dying through her supernatural intervention. One group wants to burn her house down, while others are bringing in an exorcist (rather unfortunately called a ‘ghost banister’ in the generally okay subtitles - that could be a corruption of ‘ghost banisher’ or ‘ghostbuster’!).

But Nak isn’t evil, just dead. She has sworn to stay with her husband and her only crimes are loyalty and love that reach from beyond the grave. The film culminates not in the usual magical battle between good and evil but in a goodbye scene between two tragic lovers, just as it started, but with even less hope of salvation. Along the way, there are some horrific images, from the mutilated bodies of Mak’s regiment to a desiccated old woman’s body being eaten by lizards. One of the few major special effects sequences is a dream when Mak sees his comrade Prig crumble and die, which only just works, suggesting that Nimibutr was well-advised to concentrate on horror that emanates from character and situation.

On the basis of this and Three, there’s no doubt in my mind that Nimibutr is the hottest Thai director at the moment, especially as he was also producer of Tears of the Black Tiger, the first populaist Thai film to get UK theatrical distribution since, well, probably ever. What is particularly gratifying is that his work is true to its origins. He’s not imitating western or Japanese cinema but making genuinely Thai films that explore the feelings and fears of people living in the Thai countryside. The forests and rivers of Thailand are as much a part of his work as the people. The limited settings of this film don’t give cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun much of a chance to shine however, although the night-time scenes are well handled.

Unfortunately this Hong Kong VCD (in Thai with Chinese and English subs) is lousy quality, an overly dark transfer with far, far more and worse artefecting than I have ever seen on a disc before, which distracts from the film. Maybe I should have invested in the DVD. The work of production designer Ek Eiamchurn (who conceived the story with Nimibutr and scriptwriter Wisid Sartsanatieng) and art directors Akkadej Kaewhod and Ratchanon Kayunngan is severely hampered by the poor image quality, although Pakawat Waiwittaya and Chatchai Pongprapapun’s evocative music is unaffected.

The biggest loss however is a crucial scene when Mak sees his wife reach through the floorboards of their house-on-stilts, stretching her arm to retrieve something several feet below, which finally proves to her horrified husband that she is a supernatural entity. I only know this scene is included because other reviews mention it. On the Ocean Shores VCD it’s completely impossible to tell what Mak is looking at.

There is a movie called Nang Nak Part 2, as yet unavailable with subtitles, but it seems to have no direct connection with this one. Unfortunately the website at www.nangnak.com appears to have been taken down but the Thailand Life website has some useful info about the legend which has been filmed more than twenty times. Nonzee Nimibutr’s version was a massive domestic hit, grossing more at the Thai box office than Titanic, and has been rightly compared to The Sixth Sense in terms of not just its serious, thoughtful, character-led approach to horror but also its enormous success with both audiences and critics. Nang Nak won four awards at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival; Nimibutr took home the Golden Elephant from the Bangkok Film Festival as well as scooping a prize at Rotterdam.

Kraibutr and Jaroenpura are the only two cast members credited in the English opening titles. The rest of the cast includes Manit Meekaewjaroen and Montree Katekaew as priests, and also Pramote Suksatit, Patchariya Nakboonchai and the gloriously named Boonsong Yooyangyeng.

So - who is Nonzee Nimibutr? Born in 1962, he was raised by his grandmother after his parents abandoned him. When he was 17 his mother re-entered his life and told him to become an engineer but instead he studied Audiovisual Communication at the University of Silpakorn alongside Wisid Sartsanatieng (aka Wisit Satsanatieng) with whom he would later collaborate. Nimibutr made his name as a director of TV ads and music videos, working for a company called Music Train for four years before founding his own company, Buddy Film and Video Productions in 1988. To date he has directed more than 180 commercials and more than 70 videos.

In 1997 he moved into feature directing with 2499 Anthaphan Khrong Mueang (various spellings exist!) which was well received at festivals under its English title Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters, but more importantly it was a massive domestic hit and is generally credited with kickstarting modern Thai cinema. The records set by Dang Bireley were then broken by Nang Nak, which was Nimibutr‘s second feature and raked in 150 million bhat at the box office, equivalent to 3.9 million US dollars. Nimibutr has also directed for Thai television, receiving a Gold Award for the miniseries Monday Short Story.

As a producer, Nimibutr oversaw Bangkok Dangerous, the award-winning first film from Danny and Oxide Pang who went on to make the international smash The Eye. He also gave his old friend Wisid Sartsanatieng, who had written the screenplays for Dang Bireley and Nang Nak, his first directing job. The result was the internationally acclaimed Tears of the Black Tiger, possibly the first ever Thai western.

Nimibutr was credited as co-producer on Tanit Jitnukul’s war epic Bangrajan - a sort of Thai Braveheart - in 2000 and also produced the 2001 romantic comedy Monrak Transistor, directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. That same year he returned to directing with the controversial erotic drama Jan Dara, the first production from his new company Cinemasia, which was based on an infamous 1966 novel. Even though Nimibutr himself was by then sitting on the Thai Film Censorship Board, the film still had to be trimmed before its domestic release. Last year he directed ‘The Wheel’, the Thai contribution to the three-way co-production Three, and he is now reportedly at work on a movie set in a monstery called Mai Hed Prated Thai (which translates as something akin to ‘Footnote, Thailand’).

Nimibutr is divorced with one daughter, born in 1995. There is a January 2000 interview with him, conducted by Canadian film-maker and festival organiser Mitch Davis (Divided Into Zero), in the excellent FAB Press book Fear Without Frontiers.

MJS rating: A-

review originally posted 15th February 2007