Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
Trailer available at the bottom of this page |
Bangkok Haunted (2001)Directed By Oxide Pang Chun & Pisut Praesangeam
I have a lot of respect for Asian horror films and so I had high expectations of Bangkok Haunted. Sadly, the film did not live up to those expectations and is not even close to being in the same league as Asian films like The Ring or The Grudge. Bangkok Haunted has a runtime of two hours and ten minutes and is an anthology of three stories held together by a wraparound story. The first story is about an antique drum that turns up as an unexpected addition to a consignment of goods delivered to a young lady named Jieb who discovers pretty quickly that the drum beats to a more sinister beat than most other drums because the damned thing is haunted. Jieb handles this strange turn of events pretty well and with the help of one of her old college tutors, Professor Arkhorn, she starts to delve into the drums past and so part of the story is set in the modern day world and the rest at a time before the second world war when a famous drum maker took in the daughter of a dead friend, raised her and groomed her to be a dancer.
As I said earlier Bangkok Haunted was a disappointment to me. It wasn't unbearable to watch, but there are many better films available. Having said that, some of the special effects are very good and I did feel a few cold shivers creeping down my spine on more than one occasion. I also felt pretty nauseous when one of the characters in the second story succumbed to a fatal fit of vomiting that has probably put me off pea soup for the rest of my life. The story with most gory is the third one. It contains some pretty gruesome close-ups of the cadavers on the post mortem table (Yuk). So if blood and guts and vomiting are likely to turn your stomach, you should probably give this one a miss, you won't be missing much anyway.
DVD Information:
Run Time 130 minutes Aspect Ratio: Language Thai (English
Subtitles) Watch The Trailer This
text will be replaced
|
The
second story is about a young lady named Pan who is disappointed by her
love life-or lack of it. Sick and tired of sitting home alone and
eating noodles and of being ignored by the men that she wants, Pan
decides to attract a mate by less traditional means than those she
normally favours: hanging around in bars and clubs, or rubbing her
behind up against men in the boat on the way home from work. These
methods just don't seem to be working for the girl and so, on the
recommendation of a former neighbour, she uses a mysterious liquid to
enchant the men she desires and get them into her bed. It works very
well for her and she is soon working up a sweat with anyone she wants,
but, as is usually the case, there is a price to pay when you mess with
magic. 
The
third story is probably the best of the three and is actually quite
clever. It is about a cop investigating the death of a young woman
found hanging from a girder in a new building on a construction site.
All the signs indicate that she has been murdered, but Detective Nop's
superior officer is convinced that the girl is a suicide and as far as
he is concerned the case is closed. The pathology report backs up Nop's
theory of murder and so with a little help from the friendly
pathologist he carries on his investigation regardless and finds out a
lot about the dead girl. Maybe it would have been better for him,
though, if he just left it alone, then perhaps the ghosts would have
left him alone. 
The
wraparound story is set in a bar where three young girls sit around a
table and swap the three aforementioned ghost stories. Each girl looks
a lot like the leading lady from her own story as well, so perhaps what
happens at the end is not so surprising. The unusual thing about the
wraparound story is how it has been worked in. The viewer is not even
aware of it until after the first story finishes and is suddenly shown
the three girls in the bar. Basically, it is just a very flimsy way to
hold together three stories that have little in common except their
ghosts. 