Our synopsis goes like this: “Bangkok based Crime reporter Dao (Susie-Susira Angelina Nanna) has to uncover strange and unexplainable incidents in the next 24 hours. She received news from the hospital that her father (Yodchai Meksuwan) has been miraculously resurrected from the death after being dead for more than 15 consecutive years since the departure of her mother.

She experiences few incidents that are related to death such as feeling wanting to die and is determined to find out the truth about it. Joining her is an old-time police friend, Wut (Jason Young) who is interested to discover the truth about her father’s resurrection story. Both are battling the power of death and she may as well become the next victim…”

Yep…. this one most certainly sounds like one of those films your Favorite Catgirl can’t get enough of…. Weird supernatural hauntings… the dead refusing to stay dead…. babies refusing to be born…. old family secrets that lurk in the closet like skeletons….. Naturally I’m all for snugglin’ in to make a night of movie watchin’ bliss. Not to worry though, I’ll tell ya all about it.

Psssst!! That means it’s time to “Read On”, you silly lil’ doofus!!

Our story starts with intrepid photo journalist Dao on the prowl in some ruined building on the trail of a juicy story…. but while this is going on, her father is setting fire to his study and preparing for what appears to be a rather messy bit of suicide by gun. At exactly the same time as this, Dao gets a bit more than she bargained for when the meeting between a crooked businessman and his hired gun goes so, so wrong and ends in a violent murder. Worse… the killer spots her and tries to kill her, shooting her in the chest at point blank range just as her father puts a bullet in his head on the other side of the city. Somehow… miraculously she survives without a scratch…. But then, things in a horror movie are never that easy are they?

Dao figures she just got lucky… the flash of her camera must have thrown the killer’s aim off at the crucial moment, right? Her watch is shattered… maybe it deflected the bullet and saved her… that could explain it. That or he just plain missed her. Either way… with the photos of the murder, she’s got one hot scoop for her editor and a shot at making quite a name for herself. But… before she can celebrate, she gets the bad news about her dad. In shock, she hurries to the hospital where her father’s body lays in the morgue as cold and dead as anybody can be. …..Or is he? Only moments after her arrival, he’s up and moving and very much alive…. fairly well messed up, the way only a bullet in the ol’ noggin’ is likely to leave you, but despite all sensible logic, alive.

Here’s where our film starts to build it’s tension and suspense. Seems Dao and her professor father haven’t spoken in years…. ever since he killed Dao’s mother by unhooking her from a respirator when she was a little girl. To an outsider… this was an act of mercy, ending the suffering of someone he loved, but to Dao it was a betrayal she’s never been able to get past. Unknown to her, her father had become obsessed with death itself….. and specifically the idea that one could use mathematics to unravel the universe’s secrets to finally know the exact moment of any person’s date of death. His rooms are filled with all sorts of creepy news clippings and the cryptic scribblings of either a genius or a madman…. culminating in his seemingly inexplicable suicide attempt. Doubly strange given the discovery of the calculations showing his own death to be some 15 years away.

In some way, and for reasons he’s now unable to explain… Dao’s father has managed to disrupt something in the very fabric of the universe. The Buddhist cycle of birth, death, and rebirth has been thrown completely out of whack by his actions. Now… it seems… no one can die, and no one can be born either. So what’s the problem with that you ask? Well…. not dying doesn’t mean that you can’t get terribly, horribly messed up by accidents, or spend the remainder of your existence trapped in utter agony. Oh yeah…. and that really sucks just as much as it sounds…..

In true “Final Destination” fashion, “Death Happens” doesn’t leave it at that either. Seems some dark force is now following Dao… who by now we understand was supposed to have died by the hand of that killer on that fateful night, but who was spared by her father’s sacrifice for the little girl he still loves more than his own life itself even if she still hates him. Yep…. Death, or Karma, or the Universe wants things back to normal and it’s gonna do that by trying to finish off Dao to put things back on track. We get several hallucinatory episodes as Dao is killed… over and over in various ways, yet somehow surviving those events as if they never happened at all.

So… basically the Universe is screwed. Dao is slow to figure this all out of course, and much of the movie revolves around her and Inspector Wut as they go about encountering these bizarre “non-deaths” and “non-births” while piecing together what her father had been up to all those years they were estranged. Ahhh…. and naturally, the murderer she photographed is on her trail too. He wants her photos and to eliminate any witnesses to his crime…. but darn it, Dao is just one tough lady to kill these days…..

Eventually, it gets revealed that all this stuff her father was up to was to discover not his own death date, but hers… the exact moment her watch was broken… and to save her the only way possible, by substituting himself for her in the cosmic calculations of life and death. Unfortunately he didn’t understand what saving her would mean to the “Big Picture”. So what’s the ultimate resolution here? Hmmmm? Well Neko’s certainly not gonna tell you…. you’ll probably want to find out for yourself. Let’s just say this… the Universe can certainly be one mean uncaring bitch when it comes to rules and regulations….

So… to wrap things up, Neko can give “6:66 Death Happens” a reasonable 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a competent lil’ thriller, but I wish it had been just a wee bit more original. The effects are good…. and you’ll get more messed up nearly dead guys than any movie really needs here, along with one truly creepy scene where a baby pops out of a pregnant woman for a look-see before being sucked back in… painfully, I might add…. The acting is acceptable if not inspired, and our heroine Dao appealing enough to hold your sympathy as you figure out the world of shit she’s stuck in. All in all a nice film, but not a groundbreaking one. The original Thai  Region 3 PAL disc is nothing special…. but it is up to their usual competent standards. Sigh…. yes, no English subtitles… yet again (Booooo!!!)…. but the fansubs available for this one are timed properly and more than adequate for you viewing pleasure. Still… I expect this one will pop up in HK eventually, so unless you speak Thai… (or are a hopeless Thai movie junkie like a certain lil’ Catgirl) you could wait a bit to catch this one when it becomes available there with subtitles in place.

Yep… there’s a subtitled Trailer available… and here it goes just for you!

It’s synopsis reads like follows: “Remember your university days, when you traded scary urban legends with your friends? Prepare to see some of those legends brought to life in the Thai horror anthology Haunted Universities. In the tradition of the hit “Phobia” franchise, young directing team Bunjong Sinthanamongkolkul and Suthiporn Tubtim frame four loosely connected school-related horror stories around a young volunteer paramedic with a special gift.

In “The Toilet”, a group of bad guys goes to a school to retrieve drugs from a young student’s locker. However, they didn’t expect the terror waiting for them in the school’s haunted fifth-floor bathroom.

A bad case of hazing sends a young girl into “The Elevator”, where she attracts the attention of wronged spirits. Worst yet, the young girl’s grandfather was the one who wronged them in the first place.

The darkly comedic segment “The Morgue” tells the story of a cowardly medical student assigned to look over the corpse in a hospital. The wilder his overactive imagination runs, the more paranoid he grows.

The directors save the best for last with “The Stairway”, about two girls who participate in a web-cam chat that ends with a creepy man vowing to kill them both. What they don’t know is how far the man will go to keep his promise.”

Neko certainly liked “Phobia”…. and I’m thinking it’s a pretty good bet I’ll be enjoying this one just as much. Ghosts…. creepy haunted Asian schoolkids…. and knowing Thailand, some particularly nasty, gory horror the way only they seem to do it these days. It’s popcorn crunching time this evening for me…. and a new review for all of you, so hang in there, Gentle Visitors and “Read On”!!

Given the success of GMM Tai Hub’s “Phobia” it wasn’t hard to guess that even more anthology horror films would soon be coming out of Thailand, and this one is Sahamongkol Film’s answer to that obviously lucrative trend. Despite it’s title, only three of the four stories are actually tied to a university setting, but hey…. that’s a fairly minor quibble. Only one real question matters…. How does it stack up as a horror film?  Hmmmm? Let’s see….

Our four tales are all told around a main character Muay (played by Panward Hemmanee), a young girl working the night shift with one of those Urban Rescue teams you see in Thai (and Indonesian) movies…. That’s right, those “corpse collectors” who generally show up at crime scenes and accidents to deal with the unpleasant (and spiritually unclean) task of cleaning things up and seeing that the bodies are properly delivered to the morgue. She seems a bit out of place to her more seasoned and weary co-workers, never ready to jump right into the thick of the job and always… always… talking away on her cellphone to an unknown friend rather than attending to the grisly business at hand. But….. unknown to them, Muay has already had her own brush with the supernatural and can see ghosts…. a definite downer given her current job. Her mysterious friend? Well, that’s something we’ll get to later….

Our other tales involve the various corpses and victims our Rescue Crew encounters during a typical Bangkok night shift. First up, a young couple of lovers who run afoul of drug dealing gang members and the angry, restless spirits haunting “The Toilet”. Here two thugs get their just desserts when they are sent to straighten out a young university student selling dope for them on campus. He’s fallen a bit behind on his sales quota and has apparently been ducking our two tough lads for some time before getting caught by them during an evening out with his girlfriend. They want their money and they want their dope even more….. Too bad our boy hid the stuff in his locker on campus, it just means we’re in for a midnight trip to the school where the leader of the thugs is vaguely amused by the story of a haunted restroom on the fifth floor that the two students are seemingly scared silly of. Needless to say… his attempt at bravado while torturing his two captives with their “superstitious” fears ends rather badly… for everyone.

Next up, in “The Elevator”, an auto accident brings Muay and her co-workers into contact with Nok Noi, the young granddaughter of a notorious army general who ordered the shooting massacre of protesting students on campus some 20 or more years earlier. (Probably a well known event, but not being up on Thai history I’m a bit vague on the date, so I’m guessing simply from the look of clothing and equipment seen in the flashbacks…) She’s tried to put her family’s ugly past behind her and simply be a freshman student, but there are those on campus that seem unwilling to let the past die with the victims. She eventually gets introduced, rather unpleasantly, to another haunted locale on campus…. an elevator where a group of students were shot to death by soldiers. Today so soaked with blood and misery that school officials first had it painted red to hide the blood that refused to be cleaned away, and now is planned to be removed altogether to end the controversy and rumors. Noi experiences all that misery…. and the ghostly spirits of two young lovers forever separated by that tragedy. It’s here we learn about Muay’s peculiar affinity for the ghosts…. but exactly how, Neko’s not going to spoil for you.

Our third tale, “The Morgue” takes us to the portion of the campus devoted to medical studies and a poor dental student named Prasert with a wee  lil’ problem. He’s a medical student who’s deathly afraid of corpses and ghosts. Considering he has to take anatomy classes as well as do the occasional postmortem dental examinations for the morgue as part of his training that’s a really big problem indeed. How’s a guy to cope?

Well it helps if you’ve got a best buddy like “Joke” to smooth things over, generally take care of the more grisly elements of anatomy class for you and cover your ass…. except when he doesn’t. Thanks to him failing to turn an assignment in for Prasert on time, he’s forced to score some quick points with his professor by covering a colleagues night shift….. in the morgue. D’ohh!! Well… at least Joke will stay with Prasert and keep him company…. right? Ummmm? Nope.

Our boy “Joke” has a big date that evening…. so Prasert is on his own to wait out a lonely night… just him and a room full of corpses. It wouldn’t be so bad if Muay and company didn’t deliver the body of a possible murder victim that the police are ever so anxious to know more about. They’ve only got one simple request…. just take a peek at the body and tell them if she’s got a tattoo on her back. If only Prasert wasn’t sooooo scared…. and if only the body wouldn’t keep disappearing!! This story is more comedy than full on scares…. but it works pretty well at both and it’s good to see “Joke” pull a cruel stunt on Prasert only to finally figure out why the dead are something to fear after all.

At last… our story wraps itself back to Muay and her friend…. her roommate Sa (played by Anna Hambouris) in “Stairway”. Muay and Sa are best friends and roommates sharing a tiny little upstairs one-room apartment. Sa like to flirt… and chat rooms on the Internet seem safe enough for a lil’ anonymous sexy fun, despite Muay’s unease. But after a chat session in which Sa goes a bit too far in her teasing results in a guy threatening to kill her and Muay, the fun is ruined. At least Sa assures Muay that the guy has no idea where they are… he probably isn’t even in Thailand…. so what’s there to fear… right? We’ve all heard that before…..

Unfortunately she’s wrong, of course. “Beckham” is actually her socially maladjusted next door neighbor…. and worse the protege of a smooth and sophisticated serial killer who cruises the Bangkok nights in search of vulnerable young women to slaughter. “Beckham’s” been waiting to finally get the chance to perform his own torture/ murder just like his friend…. and now he’s got the perfect victim in mind.

Sa leaves Muay to slip out for some late night take out food, only to run afoul of a group of dangerous looking guys on motorbikes. Saved from a probable rape by “Beckham’s” smooth partner, it’s off to the boondocks for a vicious bit of torture at the hands of her captors before being dumped in the swamp to be forgotten forever. The two killers decide to go and get creatively messy with Muay as well, tying up all loose ends, but Sa did promise her friend she’d bring home noodles……

Our two evil killers slip up the staircase to Muay’s room, knock quietly at her door and wait for her to sleepily wake up expecting her friend to have locked herself out. It’s the perfect plan…. but it fails to take into account Sa’s burning desire to protect Muay and seek revenge on her killers. The two are terrified…. as the shattered, bloody remains of Sa slowly…. agonizingly…. crawl up the stairs to frighten them away from her friend’s door. By the time Muay finally gets to the door and opens it, they’re gone for good, leaving only a grisly blood trail upon the stairs……. and a takeout bag of Pad Thai hanging from her doorknob.

To finish…. we see Muay finishing her shift as dawn breaks. A final phone-call from Sa lets her know she’s leaving…. that she’s found those two at last and that Muay shouldn’t worry about her. It’s a sad, bittersweet ending but somehow satisfying for all that. Of the four stories, this one resonated most clearly for me…. as an oft-times timid Asian woman sharing an apartment alone with my girlfriend and often more than a little scared of the very real things that might just be lurking outside my door at night. Of all the possible things about the film to remember, I think that image of the bag of take-out food hanging from a doorknob, lovingly delivered from beyond the grave, will stick with me the longest. Sometimes the scariest ghosts aren’t the ones who hate you, but the ones who love you more than their own life itself……

So. How did this one compare? In general, I have to say it’s a restrained film compared to “Phobia” and it’s sequel. While all of the stories were good, the final story “Staircase” worked best for me and gave me some very squeamish moments, mostly I think, on a personal level. But overall, the entire film works very, very well. It’s properly filmed, and acted with good, simple little stories that won’t have you going “Huh?” too many times, but probably could have stood to have been a bit more bloody to satisfy the gore fans out there. Still, for my money this one gets a well deserved 3 “Meows” out of 5 for bringing on the scares the way I like them.

The Thai DVD itself is well done as always, listed as a Region 3 (but actually a Region Free disc) in anamorphic wide-screen PAL format. No subtitles are on board at all, but luckily the English fan-subs Neko managed to find are remarkably well done, grammatically correct and properly timed for use with the Thai DVD. I imagine either Singapore or HK will release a version eventually, but if you, like this impatient lil kitten, can’t wait for your Thai movie fix, they’ll more than do the job. Given the 6-10$ cost of a Thai import though, it’s hard to wait for them to get around to it…..

Don’t worry, it’s Trailer time…. so take a look at all the creepy fun of “Haunted Universities” for yourself!!

The synopsis goes as follows: “Three ex-girlfriends, three dates with death

Has she really left you?

Ken (Chakhrit Yamnan from Bangkok Dangerous) is a ravishing young superstar and the dream date of every girl. While he can attract any woman he wants, every detail of his life ends up in gossip columns and tabloid magazines.

Two of his previous girlfriends — high-society girl Meen (Navadee Mokkhavesa) and innocent college student Bow (Atthama Chiwanitchaphan) — have already been exposed by the media. After dumping the pregnant Meen, he is now dating gorgeous young actress Ploy (Wanida Termthanaporn) and their every move makes the headline.

When news leak that Ken will marry Ploy, the media goes into a frenzy and the couple’s dream life turns into a nightmare. It seems that someone is stalking them, day and night. Is it an ex-girlfriend, an obsessed fan or vengeful paparazzi? Ken’s agent, Nimit (Bordin Duke), encourages him to take a break at his beachfront house but the problem only escalates as Ken starts to have visions of a woman and mysterious scratches begin to appear on his body. One by one, the people around Ken start to disappear…”

I just know this one is gonna be good! Wanna find out for sure? Then you’re just gonna need to “Read On” and find out…. silly!!

Another recent Thai goodie… this time coming to me from Malaysia all happy and English subtitled, and ready for my viewing pleasure. It’s the simple story of Ken…. a big movie-star who likes to think of himself as just another ordinary guy….. but who is obviously anything but. It’s just his way of dealing with the simple fact that his dashing good looks, fame and money seem to make him irresistible to lots of women. Seems he really needs some excuse to explain why he loves them and leaves them faster than he does new films…. all juicy fodder for the tabloids of course.

We start this one off just as he’s switching girlfriends… ditching both his pregnant rich girlfriend Meen as well as naive college girl fling Boy for his latest film co-star, sexy Ploy…. This results in some problems of course… first of them being the fact that Meen is pissed off!! I mean  completely crazy ass gonna go all “Fatal Attraction” on your butt kind of pissed off. Then there’s Boy’s tragic death during her attempt to call him and beg him not to dump her… cut short when she’s smashed to death in a phone booth by a runaway truck. Ouch!! That had to hurt…..

This leads to a series of nasty things happening to both Ken and Ploy… Vandalism… weird figures stalking Ploy and Ken… just out of sight, but always there. So what’s going on? Is Meen stalking them? Or….. Is Boy’s ghost haunting them? It’s not really clear but Ken just knows something up. Here the film does a reasonably good job of making us wonder if the problems are supernatural or not… but it doesn’t take long to decide which is which. Given this is a Thai horror movie… it doesn’t take long before things get gooey, bloody, and downright messy either.

Basically… the whole movie is driven by the character of Ken… unfortunately he’s not all that sympathetic a figure. Maybe it’s just me being a woman… but his whole narcissistic idea that the world isn’t fair… that he should be able to fall in and out of love with no consequence or shred of responsibility “just like every normal guy”…. really rubbed me the wrong way. The female characters aren’t much better… just why they waste their time..and some of them, their lives… on him is just incomprehensible. The most regrettable death in the whole movie is probably that of Ploy… but even she truly knew deep inside that Ken was playing her… she just keeps trying to ignore it… with tragic consequences.

As to our ghost…. well, it’s “Spoiler Alert” time…. although it doesn’t really come as any actual surprise by about halfway into things. Our ghost is Meen… not Boy… as one might have thought. Seems she commits suicide early on after giving herself the bloodiest “do-it-yourself” home abortion you’ve ever seen. Then she drinks a biiigg ol’ bottle of cleaning fluid… and finishes off by slicing her wrists with a carving knife (as if she wasn’t bleeding enough from the self-abortion… EWWWWHHH!!) Since then, she’s been going about making life miserable for…. well…  just about everyone in the film.

Carolyn couldn’t figure out why Meen kept killing all the other girls… after all,“Aren’t they Ken’s victims too?” she asked. I told her it’s just one of those “begrudged ghost” thingees…. Still.. she had a point. I know I’d have enjoyed the film more if she had merely used her ghostly powers to drive the women away rather than killing them outright. Revenge driven horror always works better if the audience can feel the horrible stuff is actually sorta deserved by those it happens to. Poor Boy certainly didn’t deserve her awful death… and Ken had already broken up with her by the time it happened anyway. Meen had even heard the exchange between Boy and Ken in which he seduces the poor girl, swearing that he’d already broken off things with Meen. So why kill her? Just plain meanness?

Other ghost stuff is handled much.. much… nicer. A sequence in which Ken gets attacked in a big bathtub full of blood springs to mind…. some serious long haired action here!! There’s a nice bit where she goes after a paparazzi photographer who’s been capturing her in “ghost pictures” as he secretly followed Ken around taking tabloid shots of him and Ploy. But… probably the niftiest and downright grossest death is reserved for Ken manager…. let’s just say he’ll not be talking trash to any of Ken’s lady friends in the future!! Nope.

So OK…. how about Ken? Does Meen finally kill him off? Given that he’s the source of her misery, you’d certainly think she’d get around to it eventually…. and she does, but ultimately ends up feeling sorry for the goofy bastard at crunch time. Sigh….. So much for revenge, eh? Guess she can just chalk up poor Boy and Ploy to “bad decision making”…. So… that means Ken learns his lesson… repents his foolish ways and spends his days making amends for his stupidity? Ummmm… nope. But don’t worry… Meen’s keeping a ghostly eye on him so he’ll get his just deserts.

Neko liked this one soooo sooooo much more than yesterday’s “Paku Kuntilanak”. But even so, it wasn’t a perfect movie. The lack of a character that I could empathize with made this one just another ghost revenge film… not bad, just not great. The effects, acting, and overall presentation were good. I can certainly give it a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 with several purrs for those nifty bloody bits scattered throughout. Certainly the Malay disc helped me enjoy this one… it’s done in a good letterbox format, with accurate English subtitles (although at times those subtitles did display rather quickly… so you’d better read fast!!). As for the price…. well at 8$ US, it certainly won’t break your wallet or force you to start eating ramen noodles to afford your Thai movie fix. That’s always good, isn’t it?  So… I guess “My Ex” will keep me happy till the next time Thailand beckons me with a tale of ghostly shenanigans… till then, “Meow, meow, for now!!”

Trailer? Trailer? Has Neko got a trailer? Yep! ‘Course I do, so here we go!!

Your favorite Catgirl really lucked out this last month, scoring nice Fansubs for both this one and “Coweb”, allowing me to finally enjoy these two in one single glorious evening of popcorn fueled martial arts movie mayhem for my wee inner Kickboxing Princess….

Our synopsis for it goes something like this: “Deu, a girl with equally high degree of recklessness and beauty has never experienced “true love”. Her life changes completely when some gangsters try to kidnap her and she narrowly escapes with the help of Sanim, a sad looking stranger with a painful past. Waking up in an abandoned factory, she joins his friends who practice a form of drunken Thai break-dancing martial arts. Sanim and his friends, having had loved ones abducted, join forces to get back at the kidnappers.”

Drunken Kickboxing? OK…. now you really don’t get to see that everyday of the week…. (at least not in my neighborhood…) so this one promises to be something waaay different from my usual fare. But will I get all nutty for it as I did her last effort, “Chocolate”? You all know by now that I’m gonna have to watch it anyways… (just to be sure…). So let’s skip right to the juicy parts and “Read On!”, shall we?

I had saved this film for second that night, already suspecting that I’d like it…. and of the two films, it was definitely the better. However… not all was happiness here. Jeeja is still the amazing kickboxing wonder we all remember, but “Raging Phoenix” gives her nothing in the way of character to grab your feelings the way her role in “Chocolate” did…. Her acting has improved… it’s just the film just doesn’t reach for the heavens the way her first film did, content instead to use the old tried and true Martial Art formula we’ve all seen waaaay to many times before. There were certainly moments I could swear the Thai filmmakers had simply decided to remake Bruce Lee’s “Game of Death”….

Without any doubt the simple plot is easy to follow…. and the stunt work and fight scenes are top notch in their execution, but the whole film has too simple and linear an approach to telling us the story to feel fresh. A simple story in and of itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but the hype had led me to expect something more from this one. Still… for all it’s flaws, I was right about it being the better of the two films, leaving “Coweb” a distant second for that night’s film enjoyment.

This time out Jeeja plays Deu, a thoroughly modern  urban punk rocker girl on the rebound from a bad relationship who unfortunately happens to be one of those women with a certain special… “smell”….. (Really!! I kid you not! At least that’s how the Fansubs I found translated it… I’m sorta hoping that it gets changed to “scent” for the eventual US release…. Trust me… None of us girls like to be told we smell… “special” or otherwise!! Hehehehe!!) Drunk and despondent she wanders aimlessly into that part of Bangkok where no reasonably cute petite lil’ lady ought to go alone. Naturally that means our evil villains try to drug and grab her right off the bat, a kidnapping thwarted only by the timely intervention of the hunky Sanim. He saves her in a battle against some rollerblading thugs armed with crazy razor-skates in the first of the films many well choreographed fight sequences.

He takes her back to the dilapidated abandoned warehouse where he hangs out with his two drunken kickboxing buddies. Sanim, along with these friends, has been trying to locate the hidden lair of a kidnapping ring that has been grabbing pretty Thai girls for some unknown but definitely heinous purpose. Luckily for her, he just happened to be on a stake-out when Deu accidentally stumbled into the middle of things. All of their girlfriends or wives or fiances have already been kidnapped…. and they are all desperate to find them and get some payback….. Deu decides to help… feeling a desperate need to belong to something…. and it’s handy that, with her special “smell” (Hehehehe…. it’s still sooooo funny….), she’ll make the perfect bait for a trap to catch the bad guys. But first she’s gonna need those mad combat skills all heroines just have to have, so it’s time to cue that funky “Training Montage” as she gets all down with the particulars of “Drunken Hip-hop Kickboxing”….

So how did that particular Martial Art mish-mash work out? Well…. it lacked the bonebreaking brutality we’re used to from Thai Kickboxing…. but action choreographer Panna Rittikrai did a pretty good job making it sorta work… although you get the definite feeling this one was an idea forced on him by the film’s marketing guys…… (Gotta grab as many young urban demographic groups as you can…. ). Ultimately it ends up requiring fights to look very choreographed overall…. either with Hip-hop dancers trying to look like they can fight, or kickboxers looking like they can dance…. Jeeja does look good… this sort of acrobatics and theatrics suits her petite lil’ body and, as before, she makes the most of what she can do while fighting bigger, stronger looking opponents. Is it a bona-fide success? Well… I don’t think any “Hip-hop kickboxing dojos/bars” are gonna start springing up anytime soon….. but it’s not as embarrassing as it could have gone.

We get the prerequisite plot twist regarding Deu’s place with the heroes… and there’s that doomed romance angle between Deu and Sanim, but he’s all hung up on his lost fiance, and somehow you just know they’ll never get together. There’s a couple more fights…. and then our guys finally find the gang’s hidden lair in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the streets of Bangkok. Now here things get weird…. this place is freakin’ unbelievable…. with bottomless pits and crazy rope bridges….. caves…. secret high tech labs…. and a drug den full of semiconscious young girls being forced to cry constantly so the villains can make some amazing ginseng-like potion out of their tears. How this place could ever possibly exist is never explained….. and I kept expecting Indiana Jones and a horde of Nazis to come running out of the darkness at some point….. It’s best to ignore the strangeness and just enjoy the action.

Finally the fights get downright mean…. and Jeeja gets a real workout defeating the leader of the gang, a big hormonally challenged woman fighter and her two top henchmen. They find Sanim’s fiance…. alive, but in a stupor… and manage to save her although, in true heroic fashion, not without sacrifice. (It’s easy to figure out who’s not gonna make it… but darn it, you still wanna cry anyway….Sniff, sniff!!) Of course…. the bad guys get smashed, the girls get saved… and Jeeja gets to walk away, battered, bloody, but victorious. Cue that Hip-hop end theme and roll those credits!!

So…. was “Raging Phoenix” a true “Kung-Fu Classic”? Ummm…. not really. However, “Chocolate” was so good that it was gonna be a hard act to follow anyway. This one at least was another nice chance to see Jeeja do what she does best…. Neko wasn’t disappointed, and neither will fans of the genre who came to see some serious action and fighting. It’s got a plot that takes real “suspension of disbelief” to swallow, but the action is what sells it. Overall, your Favorite Catgirl Princess can give it 3 solid “Meows” out of 5 with a couple of nice purrs for some good fighting and action sequences. Here’s hoping Jeeja continues to hone her skills and give us more!! (Now… if only “Coweb’s” Jiang Lu Xia and Jeeja could do a movie together….. Hmmmm? There’s a fight I’d like to see!!)

The Thai DVD for this one is up to the usual fine standards of other high profile films out of Thailand, but sadly as always, has no English subs to make all we non-Thai fans happy. Luckily for us, the Fansubs floating around are more than adequate for your viewing pleasure and a nice Singapore or Malay release can’t be too far away, so keep your eyes peeled!!

Yep….. a Trailer I got…. so get yourselves ready for the crazy hip-hop kickboxing of “Raging Phoenix”!!

Our synopsis goes along these lines: “Detective Techit’s biggest case calls for the ultimate sacrifice – his life.  In order to investigate the existence of mysterious spirits called Opapatikas, he must follow them to their dwelling in eternal limbo.  When an otherworldly warrior promises Techit incredible powers of intuition upon entering the spirit world, he leaps at the chance to be a better detective, committing suicide and using death as a doorway into the supernatural world populated by ghouls, warriors and spirits.  Once there, Techit becomes involved in intense and violent battles with the immortal Opapatikas, and quickly discovers that each time he fights one, he loses one of his five mortal senses.  Surrounded by enemies and running out of power, Techit must conquer the afterlife or face an eternity of misery.“

Hmmm? So how come it’s taken me soooo long to get around to this one? I usually jump on most Thai films pretty quickly, once I can find them with some decent subtitles, but for some reason I passed on the earlier releases and didn’t snag a copy until I was grabbing some Region 1 DVD’s in my mail orders just the beginning of October…… and then it took some time for me to actually get the chance to watch it. (Bad, bad kitty!!!)

But watch it I now have, and it’s time to weigh in my my two cents on this one. So…. did your Favorite Catgirl Princess like it? Yeah…. you know what’s next, silly….. you just gotta “Read On” if you wanna know!!

Now… the DVD itself tries to sell this Thai film as being just like “X-Men”….. But as with much of such advertising, that’s really just a whole bunch of… er… ummmm… “fertilizer”… if you get my meaning. It’s not a superhero movie at all…. it’s a straight up Thai actioner with a supernatural element added for a bit of spicy flavor. In this case, reanimated dead guys, each with their own singular freaky magical ability. I’m not really certain who is even considered the “hero” in this one as they don’t actually go very much into the background of these guys, or even focus on any specific one of them. And that’s a problem…..

“Opapatika” is certainly atmospheric and stylish…. with some nifty different folklore… but somewhere they forgot to build in any lead in for the story. Detective Techit starts right off putting a bullet in his head in some deserted building….. Why did he do this? We never actually do find out…. A bit of back-story here would have made it a lot easier to accept a plot where guys are told that if they commit suicide they’ll come back from beyond the grave complete with a nifty magic power. Do you get to pick it?…. Nope. Do you even know what it’s gonna be before you kill yourself?…. Nope. Not only that…. but your one secret power also comes with a terrible downside to pay it off….. and naturally you don’t know what that’s gonna be either…. I’d hate to be the doofus who, say, slits his throat only to gain the mystic ability to talk to plants ( who are notoriously dull and uninformed…) but only if flowers grow out of your nose every time you do it….. Sigh.

Anyway…. our boy Techit (played by Leo Putt), strikes a deal with the mysterious Sadok to locate 4 other specific Opapatikas….. again why is never made clear….. and the bulk of the film deals with that. Techit shoots himself in the head and gains the power to read minds….. but each time he uses it he loses one of his other senses permanently…. boy what a crappy deal that was…. He and Sadok’s chief henchman the vicious mercenary Tuwachit (played by Pongpat Wachirabunjong), are in pursuit of Jiras (played by Somchai Kemglad) who has the power of immortality and regenerates every time he gets himself killed; Paisol (played by Shahkrit Yamnarm) an assassin whose power is to know the one vulnerable point of anyone he sees, allowing him to kill anyone with a single attack, but whose curse also causes him to suffer the same wound (painful, but strangely not fatal) on his own body; Arus (played by Ray MacDonald) who is a split personality….psychotic killer with super speed by night, and weak, inoffensive and gentle man during the daytime; and Ramil (played by Athip Nana) who can release his own demonic soul from his body, and use it to fight for him while his real body stands catatonic and vulnerable.

Ah…… and then there’s the mysterious piano playing beauty Pran….. All the Opapatika’s…(with the exception of Jiras) are absolutely smitten with her seemingly ethereal beauty and intimate understanding of each of them and their problems…. What’s her story? Well, we do find out at the very end, but it is part of sort of an overall silly plot twist that doesn’t really ring true. Can’t really explain without giving away the ending…. and if you plan on seeing this one you’ll need something to look forward to.

So…. what do we get for our time here? Well… some fairly elaborate fight scenes mostly…. and nifty they truly are. The Thai’s certainly know how to lay the serious smackdown on people when push comes to shove. We get knife fights…. gun fights…. some kickboxing…. and a whole bunch of neat stunts. We even get to see what happens when the guy who knows how to kill anybody instantly tries his luck on the immortal guy…. Yep. No kidding.

All in all, this one is just an OK film. With some extra character development and a wee bit of backstory to get us involved and interested in any of these characters it could have been a really good film that would make me want to see more…. but while it’s technically well made, I have to give “Opapatika” an average 3 “Meows” out of 5…. mostly for some nice visuals and stunt work…. tasty and nice, but still only eye candy junk food. Magnet’s Region 1 DVD is up to their usual excellent standards…. letterboxed, uncut and with both an English audio dub as well as the original Thai with English subtitles on board for we connoisseurs. There’s a good “Making of” feature and some additional Trailers….. (One for “Big Man Japan” that certainly has this lil’ Catgirl interested….)

Trailer? Hehehehe…. as if I’d let you guys go without one….

Our synopsis is as follows: “A horrific incident takes place when a woman suddenly bursts into flames for no apparent reason. She becomes victim to the phenomenon known worldwide as Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC). Mona (played by Bongkot Kongmalai) is the victim’s daughter, who is forced to get involved with the case. She meets a nurse named Ploy (played by Archiraya Peeraphatkunchaya) whose mother also is killed by SHC. Don (played by Charad Na Songkhla) is a police investigator who gets suspicious of the cause of these incidents. With his investigator’s instinct and a devotion to justice, Don takes on the mysterious fire case to try to stop it from happening again. Will the truth behind the deadly fire be exposed as a suicide, murder, accident or the sacrifice to superstitious belief? The mystery must be solved before the dreadful fire burns another victim alive!”

This one isn’t actually a horror movie… more of a Scifi oriented Conspiracy Thriller…. but hey, it’s got people “Spontaneously Bursting into Fire”!! That sounds like it’s up this lil’ Catgirl’s alley… So will it be a nifty Police Procedural? A preachy warning about science and evil corporations run amok? Or just a really… really dumb excuse for a movie?

Hmmmm? Guess you’ll all just have to “Read On” and find out!!

Back in 2008, when I first heard of it originally, I thought this one was a horror film…. and early marketing for it certainly didn’t dissuade me from that notion, but having finally watched this one, I can now say, that rather than being yet another entry into the ranks of Thai horror films, “Burn” is instead firmly a Thriller…. no doubt about it. But that’s OK… Neko likes those too, if they are well done and thought provoking.

This one definitely plays to a Thai audience and their general feeling that most foreigners are out to exploit  the hard working honest Thai people….. Sigh….. I suppose it’s not a new notion, but it’s certainly a hard one for a non-Thai to constantly run up against watching Thai films. At least this time it’s more about the evils of Mega Corporations and their seeming ability to be “above the law” and beyond the power of any government to control them instead of a tirade against any specific country. I suppose a culture needs to clearly define themselves with this sort of “Us versus. Them” kind of ideology but it’s still a bit of a pain. I guess it’s why I prefer fantasy films….. everybody can hate and fear monsters, aliens, or zombies without invoking any objectionable bias.

Anyways…. this one is mostly the story of Mona (played by Bongkot Kongmalai) a modern Thai woman working a modern job for a multi-national securities trading corporation. She’s doing everything she can to climb the ladder of success…. including living in a swank high rise condominium that is waaay out of her price range. She’s ashamed of her roots as the only daughter of a simple merchant woman, living out a day to day existence in Bangkok. They don’t get along at all…. Mom feels her daughter is too wiling to give up her “Thai-ness” to fit in with her bosses and is constantly being asked for money to help her “affluent” daughter maintain her lifestyle despite barely scraping by herself. Mona feels her mother is foolish  and old fashioned and should be proud of her for making something of herself… and thankful for the free health care benefits Mona’s job provides her mother. They exist in different worlds…. and it’s this reason that causes Mona to be unaware of just how sick her mother really is. Until the terrible night she bursts into flame alone at her tiny home……

Thus begins Mona’s quest to understand just what happened to her Mom. She gets only limited help… despite the weirdness of the death. The Thai police seem only interested in making the incident just go away…. except for one officer, Don, who makes it his personal mission to unravel the mystery behind not only Mona’s mother’s death, but the seemingly unrecognized epidemic of similar deaths cropping up all over Thailand.

Naturally all the clues eventually lead them to the Terradyne corporation…. and to their new osteoporosis drug. It’s a killer…. causing humans who take it to suffer terrible pain and eventually causing them to burst into flame….. just why is only hinted at. We get told the drug has great potential as a bioweapon for military use…. but this has to be the stupidest way to test such a weapon ever thought up. Still… if you ignore this little flaw, the film itself has all the trappings needed for the genre. Nasty CEO’s, vicious unprincipled doctors, and a crack security force willing to kill for them all to cover up their little secrets. There’s even the prerequisite dirty cop on the payroll…

So… does all of this work? Well… sort of. I can’t say “Burn” is a bad movie…. in fact it’s technically very well made, but it certainly isn’t a new idea. I suppose I’m a bit disappointed it wasn’t a horror movie, but even that doesn’t truly explain why I was unimpressed by this one overall. The characters weren’t really all that sympathetic to me…. even hard working cop Don came across as sort of wooden to me, and Mona herself was too self involved and spoiled to have appeal even when she’s seeking justice for her Mom.

Given that, I guess I’ll have to give “Burn” barely a grudging 3 “Meows” out of 5…. (mostly for honest cop on the beat Don and his CSI buddy….) it’s simply unremarkable for the most part with nothing new or surprising… nothing scary… and nothing uplifting or touching to make me feel involved in the story at all. The Singapore DVD is well done as usual, with wide screen format and good sound and nice accurate English subtitles, if nothing beyond that. Unless conspiracies are your thing, I’d give this a pass unless you are a crazed film junkie like this lil’ girl who just has to watch about any Thai film that HAS subtitles…. but next time it’s a real horror movie for me!!

Naturally…. I’ve hunted down the Trailer… promptly pounced on it, smacked it around to calm it down and dragged it back here for your viewing pleasure!! Enjoy!

Our synopsis reads as follows: “Meat Grinder” takes you to taste the bizarre horror of traditional noodle recipe cooked by Boot, a woman who owns a noodle stall, a unique noodle stall.

Boot has been living with tension and stress for all of her life, she works hard for her family as a noodle cook. Sometimes, she is controlled by a mysterious voice that suggests her to do or not to do things. One day, she encounters a chaos in town and is rescued by a guy named Uttapol who later becomes her companion. That evening after the chaos, Boot discovers a guy lying dead inside her pushcart, she discreetly looks at him and comes up with her new recipe. Boot begins to slice his flesh, mix it together with spices, and throw it into her noodle pot.

After her secret recipe is introduced, Boot gains so many customers and reputation of her delicious noodle. Meanwhile, the haunting voice still keeps talking to her, and tell her what to do. Boot tactfully starts to lure and murder people. The more she kills, the more of her dark side reveals. And when Uttapol begins to suspect Boot’s behavior, he stumbles on the evil of her and becomes the hunted.”

Ooooohh!! Cannibalism and murder…. now that’s just gonna make me squirm and give me all sorts of bad dreams….. but is it gonna be really, REALLY scary? Lets all “Read On” and find out shall we?

Now…. most of you Regulars here at the ol’ Litterbox know that really graphic horror isn’t exactly my normal cup of tea….. (I’m just tooo timid and easily frightened by truly graphic images…..) But every once in a while, something so obviously crazy and over the top is great fun for me…. as long as it’s sooooo crazy and out there that I don’t have any trouble accepting it as pure fantasy. It’s one of those things about me that confuse and confound my friends….. I just like to say “Flesh eating Zombies Goooood…. Nice normal seeming guy-next-door serial killer torturers Baaaad!!!”

Luckily for me…. Thai horror movies are rarely unwilling to be all subtle and realistic. Nope…. why do something as lame as that when you can have somebody puke up a whole box of razor blades? “Meat Grinder” belongs firmly to that tradition of Thai horror indeed. Phranakorn Films obviously wants this one to appeal to the same audiences that went crazy for rival Five Star Entertainment’s “Art of the Devil” film franchise. That particular series of films benefited greatly from having been made well before the newly installed stricter Thai Film Ratings system went into effect, whereas “Meat Grinder” had the bad luck to be the first extreme horror film subjected to the censor’s knives….. Did it survive unscathed? Let’s find out….

Our film follows the descent into madness and cannibalistic horror of a simple Thai woman named Boot… an ordinary enough young woman living day to day her hard life raising a crippled daughter Bua all by herself. We get flashbacks showing Boot’s early life…. her cruel domineering mother struggling to keep a worthless husband in line while keeping her family together. It’s easy to see that hard life mirroring itself in Boot’s own grown up life…. her own husband is gone…. having apparently run off with the young sexy baby sitter hired to watch over Bua while Boot makes her living with a noodle pushcart in the back streets and alleys of Bangkok. Or did he really run away….? Don’t worry… we’ll find out.

Our first hint that trouble might be afoot comes following a terrible street riot that happens to stampede through the alley where Boot has her cart… There’s confusion… tear gas…. fleeing rioters… and the Thai army shooting everybody that gets in their way. Luckily a handsome young student saves her… pulling her to safety amid the chaos only to lose her when she returns for her cart. Back home, Boot gets a surprise….. withing her cart, dead from gunshots is one of the rioters…. so she does what she needs to to hide the body. Yep…. it’s break out the knives and make that body…. just…go… away. Eeewwwwhhh!!! (Well… actually, not so much so. The official Thai DVD doesn’t really get as graphic in this respect as I though they might. There’s no doubt what’s happening here… you just don’t actually see any of the body get dismembered in any truly violent fashion.)

Much of the film is like that… and I got the feeling there was some serious editing involved to manage it…. some of it not particularly subtle either. There is, at times a sense that something was removed without any attempt to make it seem seamless. The result is some truly nasty ideas…. but not a lot of actual nasty images. Still… there’s a lot of the gooey red stuff to go around and plenty of bits of people that pop up in some grisly places, so you can’t say “Meat Grinder” doesn’t deliver some queasy shocks at times.

Naturally, the plot develops so that Boy meets Girl… Boy helps Girl run her restaurant… they fall in love…. then the discovery that Boot is hallucinating and crazy drives them apart. So… of course… Boy meet another, less insane Girl, first Girl gets jealous and still owns a wickedly sharp cleaver… you know where we’re heading, right?

The moment Boot is shown to be completely unhinged and on shaky ground, the viewer immediately starts going… “Ahhhh!!! Now I know why nobody saw her daughter….. and I just knew unfaithful hubby and his girlfriend were already dead.” Not a big surprise, but well used here….. I just wish the Thai police had actually been a bit more active in their investigation. I mean, Boot barely hides her crimes…. and you’d have to be pretty blind to miss the clues that something is amiss. They do…. but then so does our hero, and he spends huge amounts of time with Boot in her restaurant and never once finds the skeletons in the garden…. the little dead girl in the garden water urn, or the big vat of body parts in the cellar, right next to the meat locker where the bodies are stored while being butchered.

Ultimately…. the story gets to the point where Boot throws herself into the river to drown herself… and naturally that ends with our clueless doofus of a hero nearly framed as the mastermind behind all the murders. But don’t worry… they leave just enough of a set up just in case there’s gonna be a “Meat Grinder 2″…..

This one was… well…. ok for a horror movie, but I have to confess, it’s definitely not the match of “Art of the Devil”…. seems the new ratings system did take some of the “X” out of “extreme” after all. Neko gives this one a decent, but unspectacular 3 “Meows” out of 5….. It’s not a bad gore film…. it’s just not a “great” gore film. The Thai disc itself is more than adequate… and thanks to the beautiful english fansubs I managed to find,  very easy to enjoy for a simple evening’s “Guilty Pleasure” gore time. Still… I wouldn’t rush right out and grab this one yourself until a decent HK release with those subs already on board comes along unless you, too, are a dedicated Thai horror junkie like this lil’ girl.

Trailer, you ask? Naturally!! And here you go!!

Our synopsis reads:“Nawin, an army secret service agent decided to withdraw from a scientific investigation because of unlawful procedures that involved International forces. Although he had tried desperately to avoid the illegal acts of the armed forces, it seems the harder he tried the more involved he became. He was constantly under surveillance no matter where he went or what he did which made him realize there was more to the situation that meets the eye.

Jin, a young woman who Nawin once saved from a brutal attack is undergoing a strange transformation within her body as her blood circulates through mutation. This transformation on Jin, is what Nawin believes the International forces are after. The half breed mix between animal and human.

Nawin decides to help Jin by taking her back to her birth place. As he leads her home, her illness seems to subside. They will soon grow close and fall in love. When it comes time for Nawin to choose between her and his life, he awakes to find that it has all been an image of his imagination…or was it?”

Hmmmm? Certainly sounds like this lil Catgirl’s kind of movie…. so naturally I wasted no time in watching it as soon as it arrived. Was it up to my expectations? Let’s all find out then, shall we?

We get a cryptic start here… with some mythological flashback romance thingee between some hunky guy and a scared girl being chased to the edge of a cliff by some pissed off villagers. They convince him to abandon the girl, it seems she’s not actually…  completely….. human….. Devastated by his betrayal, she falls from the cliff just as the guy realizes what an utter dumbass he is for treating her so shabbily. Cue the credits!!

First we get a voice-over tells us all about these two snake-god children, Jin and Jai, the last of their kind who are destined to roam the earth in human form until the time when the all nine planets reach a mystical alignment. Then they’ll feel drawn to return to the sacred cave in the mountains and finish their transformation into the giant serpents that are the true form of the Nagas. Got it? Okie dokie then…..

And then before you can blink, we’re in the present day jungles of Burma (or Myanmar if you prefer)…. somewhere waaaay, waaaay out in the boondocks, with some commando guys sneaking around what looks to be the camp of a group of unnamed bandits, drug smugglers, or human traffickers. You know the type of scumbags we’re talking about… all bad and nasty and just the sort of thugs you hope get soooo killed in large numbers in a film like this. Just when it looks like it’s time to whack these guys, they get visited by some other scumbags…. not the low rent type, nope these guys are a decidedly different kettle of fish. Worse, our hero, Nawin, (played by Jesadaporn Pholdee) the leader of the special forces, recognizes their head honcho, Manus (played by Pasin Ruengwut). They’ve got “history” you see…. and you know that just can’t be good in a movie like this. Manus’ “men in black” are here looking for somebody…. and they find her in amongst a pitiful group of refugees caught by the bandits. A beautiful prisoner, (played by Ploy Jindachote) who seems like she’s in bad, bad, BAAAD need of saving. What Nawin doesn’t know, or couldn’t even suspect, is that pretty prisoner is actually that very same little girl, … errr?… snakegirl…. errrr?… whatever. Before he can decide to do anything though, he gets orders from his commanders to back off…. seems they are privy to the goings on down in the camp. But then aren’t they always?

But what self respecting action hero could just let things go that easily? One well placed shot later and Nawin and his guys are running for the Thai border in a gunfight for their lives. They escape… just barely, but Manus knows it’s his old “buddy” screwing with him…. and that just means it time to show him who’s higher on the food chain. Nawin escapes… but not without getting shot up pretty bad.

Naturally he’s now in some real trouble. First thing that happens? Some helpful doctor tries to kill him. Yep…. seems the “powers that be” want Nawin, his guys, and all the people who know anything about Jin dead…. Luckily Nawin’s a tough guy… and he’s got the help of the only one of his men still alive who shoots the “doctor”, and tells Nawin to trust nobody but their old friend Sergeant Dang, who left the service some time past, but who still knows all about those dirty little secrets that the black ops boys try to hide so well.

What we get for the next 40 minutes or so, is a big pissing match between Nawin and Manus as they both try to find and keep Jin away from the other… Manus wanting her for his mysterious Western backed superiors (read evil CIA) and Nawin who wants first to thwart his rival, but who eventually comes to feel love for the mysterious Jin. Throw in Jin’s brother Jai sneaking around looking for her as well, killing anybody stupid enough to get in his way and you get a fairly simple, yet well done bloody love triangle that you just know can’t end well for anybody.

Eventually the planets all align…. Jin feels the need to return to the ancient cave of her ancestors, with Manus and his goons, and Jai all following close behind. There’s barely time for the obligatory “back to nature” sequence as Nawin and Jin spend some idyllic time living simply as guy and girl in love with the peaceful hill people before a brutal atrocity filled raid by Manus and the military kill everybody but them.

So…. how does this all end? Well, if you think Neko’s gonna tell you, you are just sooo outta luck. Let’s just say this…. when the girl of your dreams is, in reality, a giant snake, your love life is just soooo gonna suck. Big time.

Hmmmm. So lets see then…. did I enjoy this one you ask? Well, by now you all know I’m a sucker for these weird romance stories… and although this one didn’t have a whole lotta meaningful romance between Nawin and Jin, it was sorta OK.

I managed to see this one on the Malay disc, which, I have to say, was actually an excellent bargain with a nice price (8$ US), a letterboxed image, and yes… those wonderful english subtitles I so need and love (also surprisingly accurate and well done for a Malay disc I might add). Neko gives the overall film a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5. Had they actually had more to the love story I might have gone a whole “Meow” more, but then, you takes what you get sometimes…. (but “Chinese Ghost Story” calibre this one just ain’t… Sigh.)

Before we wrap this one up, I just had to hunt down a Trailer for ya, just to keep things all cozy and familiar!! So enjoy the snaky romance action!!

Our synopsis reads: “What kind of scenes in a horror film scares you the most? When a ghost appears totally unexpectedly? When the main character does not see the ghost sneaking up behind him? When at the very end you find out that the main character was actually a ghost all along? But none of this compares to the feeling of arriving home alone and suddenly being stuck by a feeling of déjà vu that you are reenacting the very same scenes in the horror movie you just saw! This movie will scare you from the second you step inside the movie theater. It will get you thinking if Something or Someone might be waiting for you to let your guard down. The horror movie that you just saw is about to happen to you in real life!”

Hmmmmm? Not much on details, but then maybe that’s a good thing. Let’s all “Read On” and find out what “Coming Soon” is really all about, shall we?

So OK… we start this one in a Bangkok movie theater, with projectionist Shane (played by Chantavit Dhanasevi), who thanks to serious money problems, has agreed help the brother of his ex-girlfriend pirate the movie “Evil Spirit” from his theater’s advanced film reels for some seedy gangsters. But things don’t all go as expected. For starters, his friend mysteriously disappears while he falls asleep at the projector, as his friend camcorders it off the cinema screen during a late night illegal showing.

Together with his estranged ex-girlfriend and cinema usher Som (played by Vorakam Rojjanavatchra), Shane becomes enmeshed in an eerie investigation into the film and a search for Som’s brother. Here’s where the film is at it’s most interesting. I really liked the whole “movie within a movie” subplot, it’s a clever twist that helped conceal the true nature of the haunting until much later in the film. A definite plus… and the relationship between Shane and Som comes across as very real as too…. it’s obvious they care for each other, but demons from Shane’s past, in the form of a drug problem that drove him to abuse Som, stand between them like a wall. Their friends and families know they should be together… but the scar on Som’s forehead just wont let her forget what happened between them.

Anyway…. once our heroes get involved it isn’t long before they attract the attentions of the ghost. A really nasty ghost…. who takes the form of the crazed child torturer, Chaba from the movie. Have the filmakers angered her spirit? Hmmmm? That could be it… after all “The Evil Spirit”, it turns out, was “based on true events”…. For you see, it seems there really was an old crazy hermit named Chaba who did abduct the children of a small rural village as replacements for her own dead child. Insane, crippled, and uglier than the Wicked Witch of the West, she dragged those poor children into her macabre lair where she systematically blinded them to keep them from escaping her clutches. Naturally the villagers all band together to rescue their kids, and they go a little crazy themselves when they find out what she has done to them. In a frenzy, they beat and nearly decapitate her, finally hanging Chaba from the ceiling of her hut to slowly strangle to death.

Yep…. sounds like Chaba has all the necessary perquisites to count as a “begrudged spirit”… and it doesn’t take our hero Shane long to figure out that all it takes to draw her deadly ire is to watch the final scene of the film, where she slowly chokes to death. Do that, and it wont be long before she shows up to take her revenge on you, dragging you into the film itself and killing you…. and Shane has seen that ending!! Can he convince Som he’s not hallucinating or still on drugs and keep from meeting the same fate?

It’s “Spoiler Alert!!” time now…. (and don’t say your Favorite Catgirl Princess didn’t warn ya…) cause I can’t get to the meat and potatoes of this one without giving away the clever twist that finishes out this one. As our body count rises… and our two plucky heroes do the investigation, they discover that isn’t what’s happening….. You see, Chaba isn’t even dead. In reality, she’s confined to a mental institution, nearly catatonic and no threat to anyone. They just assumed it was her…. but the real ghost is that of an actress, a poor woman verbally abused by a demanding director and then killed accidentally during the death scene by rigging gone terribly terribly wrong. He said she couldn’t act like she was convincingly dying…. now she’ll show them how to die for real!!

Slowly but surely she’s killed the director, most of the crew, and now she’s working on those who would try to find cheap entertainment in the images of her final suffering. Will she get her revenge? Will Shane and Som survive and repair their relationship? Well, to answer those questions, you’ll just have to watch this one, and Neko-chan thinks you’ll enjoy finding out immensely.

This one is very nicely done, if a bit simplistic at times. The multiple layers of the plot work and work well, even if I did figure them out slightly early. I’m thinking it’ll do well when it finds it’s way to an eventual release in Region 1. The Thai release is presented in wide screen format with both Dolby 5 ch. audio as well as a simple 2 ch. stereo. Unfortunately there are no subtitles on the Thai disc. However since I picked mine up, (and Fansubbed it for myself),  we have the option of the Singapore release which lists them as available. Yay!!

Neko gives “Coming Soon” a firm 4 “Meows” out of 5 for doing exactly what this lil’ Catgirl likes in a Ghost story. While not groundbreaking or otherwise noteworthy, it is extremely well made and certainly fits the bill nicely for a good evenings creepy scares and often that’s exactly what you are looking for. You know me…. Neko just loves her ghosts!!

There’s a Trailer for this one… and we’ll end our review with a quick look at it!

The synopsis for it reads as follows: “In the 1600′s. Queen Raja Heejau of Langkasuka must defend her country against numerous foes when a rogue prince conspires with a coalition of vicious pirates to incite a rebellion and plunder the kingdom. A famous Dutch Cannon maker tries to aid the kingdom by constructing the “Mother of All Cannons” to be used to defend the kingdom against it’s enemies. Unfortunately the pirates learn of the cannon and try to seize the ship delivering it.

The raid fails, and the ship, along with its crew and weapons sink into a deep ocean abyss after an titanic explosion. This fateful incident occurs on the very same day as the birth of “Panee”, born with the amazing gift that enables him to communicate with all the creatures of the sea.

In the years to come and after much training Panee’s uncanny ability would be used to help the Queen and her sisters defeat the merciless pirates that threaten their shores. Panee will call upon whales, giant rays, and dolphins to aide him in the historic sea battle for the fate of the kingdom of Langkasuka.”

Sounds good!! Neko-chan just loves the whole sweeping epic romance angle and the promise of some crazy kickboxing… and if you do too, then I just know you are gonna want to “Read On” for more about “Queens of Langkasuka”!

Every once in a while, studios in Thailand get the urge to try and do a film to elevate themselves to the level of real players in the Asian film market. This one is certainly a big budget film for Thailand… that much is evident right from the get go. It’s awash with gorgeous costumes, sets, and a great sense of the grandeur of old Siam…. mix in some nicely done digital effects and good solid acting and we’re talking some good cinema here.  I’ve read that it originally ran some 133 minutes in length, but the version released eventually to theaters and on the Thai DVD is some 114 minutes. Having seen this one… Neko can only scratch her lil’ noggin’ and wonder what the heck got cut by Sahamongkol Film .

They threw a heck of a lot of stuff in here…. We’ve got some kickboxing, evil assassins, mystic Thai Sea Magic/ Martial Art, romance, and pirates…. lots and lots of pirates. At times it was a little confusing, but ignoring all the gorgeous visuals and paying a little attention let me absorb it all pretty nicely.

The title is a bit missleading though…. There is really only one Queen to be seen throughout most of the movie…. Queen Heejau… the rest of the women are actually the “Princesses of Langkasuka”, but hey…. Neko can deal with that. Anyway… our hero for the film, Panee, is played by Ananda Everingham. He’s born with some sort of mystical synergy with the sea…. able to understand the fish and read the ocean and the weather like an open book. Seems there’s this Mystical art called Dolum that deals with stuff like that…. you get all sorts of powers that basically make you into the Thai version of Aquaman crossed with Tony Jaa….. but there’s a downside. (Isn’t there always a downside? Sigh….) Yep… just like “the Force”, it seems there’s a Good side to Dolum and an Evil side….. and naturally the  wicked Pirate King has gotten himself all filled up with evil Dolum power, the better to weld together the disparate pirate forces into a group to actually threaten the kingdom. Got it so far? Good…

Well… it would seem plausible that the answer to everybody’s problem would be if the Hermit Master of Dolum would take Panee and train him in the ways of Good Dolum so he can whup some pirate butt and save everybody… right? Problem is.. he won’t do it. Seems he’s worried Panee has the taint of darkness in his soul… How he knows that isn’t really clear, but it’s reason enough to deny young Panee’s early training. That’s ok, he’s a happy boy who likes hanging out with the slightly crazy Chinese apprentice of the Dutch cannon smith Lim Kium (played by Jakkrit Phanichphatikram) who survived his master’s death and now lives a peaceful life with the Sea Gypsies. That, and Panee’s got himself a childhood sweetheart… a pretty girl who just absolutely adores him, and who you just know isn’t going to make it to the end of the film…. these sorts of epics are just like that after all.

Meanwhile…. (yep, our movie jumps back and forth quite a bit from the Palace to Panee…Neko’s advice is to  just roll with it…) the Queen is receiving the ambassadors of all the nearby Kingdoms, some of which are potential allies, and others just there hovering like vultures waiting to swoop in on her and Langkasuka when she shows the least bit of weakness. In the midst of this, the pirates sneak in disguised as diplomats and try this cool ninja/ kickboxing/ assassination attempt that gets foiled by the youngest of the Palace guards, Jarang (played by Chupong “Diaw” Chungprung from “Dynamite Warrior”) in what has to be one of the coolest fight scenes in the movie. There’s swordplay, wire work and enough sneaky ninja weapons to please any action junkie. Jarang stops the pirates, but gets a face full of poisoned needles meant for Queen Heejau before killing the deadly female assassin/ lover of the Pirate King Black Raven (played by Winai Kraibutr from “Nang Nak”) and forcing them to escape. He ends up wearing this “Phantom of the Opera” style mask for the rest of the movie and fills the roll of secondary hero nicely. I kind of thought he and Princess Biru (played by Jacqueline Apithananon) would end up together, (and maybe that was a subplot that got left on the cutting room floor) but it doesn’t happen… he’s just to noble a guy too risk such a thing.

Haven’t got enough people to keep track of yet? Well there’s always the token “Princess who wants to be a Tomboy” character in the form of Anju (played by Anna Ris), youngest of the Princesses who studies the bow and the sword and wants to be a warrior instead of a Princess. She’s upset that the Queen has betrothed her without her knowledge to Prince Pahung (played by Jesdaporn Pholdee), to link their kingdoms and ensure his army and support are with them in the coming struggle. When the chance to go with Jarang and Lim Kium’s sister  in search of  him and gain his expertise comes up she’s all over it…..

But…. the pirates get there first. Seems a dastardly spy at the Royal Court is giving them every move the Queen makes, and they raid the Sea Gypsies, killing everybody but Lim Kium and Panee who were off fighting the pirates at sea. Panee’s sweetheart gets raped and killed… and he sort of loses it. Big time. Boy, are those pirates in for a serious ass kicking now….. but only after he and Princess Anju get saved from the Pirates by Master White Ray and taken away to his island retreat for some well needed R&R.

Here we go into the prerequisite Training montage…. and of course Princess Anju falls for Panee (He’s just sooo brooding and dreamy and everything a Princess could want in a Hero…)…. and we get all the back story about the Art of Dolum, along with an introduction to a mysterious evil prisoner on the island (Yep… Still more characters..)…. and then there’s Anju’s fiancé Prince Pahung to consider…. But Neko isn’t gonna spoil all that for you. Nope, you are gonna want to find out some secrets for yourself.

Let’s just say that all this stuff builds to the “Big Climatic Battle” of Good vs. Evil… with a giant pirate war fleet, treacherous rebel spies, lots more swordfighting and kickboxing goodness, the return of the honkin’ big ol’ Dutch cannon, a squadron of hand gliders, and our hero Aquaman, (errr… ahh I mean Panee), and his army of sea creatures. Yep… it’s a big ending alright….

All in all this one more than lives up to most of the hype that preceded it. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess liked it a lot and my sweet Carolyn even enjoyed watching this one…. (although she needed me to fill in some of the blanks for her at times)…. My only quibble was with the somewhat choppy editing that made for a somewhat confusing jumble at times. I’ve been told that this one was originally conceived as a two part film, and while I’m rarely a fan of such splits… here, that just might have been the way to go. There was just too much story to shoehorn it all into a 2 hour package comfortably. It might have worked better in the original running time of 133 minutes as well…. hopefully we’ll get the chance to see that version sometime. (HINT!! HINT!!) Still, as epics go, this one fits the bill nicely and shows what the Thai Film industry can do when it really wants to think big.

So, in conclusion, Neko-chan gives “Queens of Langkasuka” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being just the sort of well crafted fantasy costume epic I like…. with good acting, excellent action sequences, nicely integrated special effects, and everything needed to make for a fine movie watching experience. More films of this caliber certainly couldn’t hurt the Thai Film Industry’s reputation at all. (But english subtitles on the DVD would have been nice…. I just gotta nag about those….) However… the Fansubs that are now available out there on the Web are excellent… so don’t let this one slip by, you’ll be sorry.

There’s a nifty Trailer….(isn’t there always…) and here it is!!