This Asian obscurity goes under a plethora of aliases including ANGELS WITH GOLDEN GUNS, TERROR IN A WOMEN'S PRISON, ANGER and my favorite VIRGIN APOCALYPSE. What we got here is one of those movies that seem to be 2 different movies spliced together(One of which I believe is a movie simply titled MARKING). One story we follow is a women-in-prison deal where various ladies are forced into a prostitution ring. The other plotline follows an Asian Charles Bronson-type cop who's trying to find the head of a criminal organization. There are some great scenes of him disco dancing and being hit one by a gay crime boss. In addition to all the girls with guns rebellion going on you get some male genital torture, Goblin's music from SUSPIRIA used to score a sex scene, a baby pig getting snuffed out for real(beware vegans!) and what appears to be 2 mummies fighting(mummy-fu?) to wrap it all up.
Exhausting amount of insane stunt work and wall-to-wall fight scenes pretty accurately describe most of this Thai martial arts fest. The story is pretty basic and involves a bunch of fighters who end up in some staged event, being gambled on by some rich folks, where they have to fight for their life. There's ninjas, a masked axe-wielding maniac right out of a slasher movie, fights on motorbikes, cars, trucks and all kinds of Muay Thai madness going on. Not the most complex plot and while it moves along swiftly it can be a bit tiresome at a one hour and 46 minute runtime.
There's obviously some really amazing stunt work in this performed by great stunt people. Unfortunately that is all undercut by the copious amounts of shitty CGI involved. One scene in particular, involving fighting in a room that's on fire, is so obviously computerized that it is impossible to overlook.
If you're a fan of rap group The Wu-Tang Clan though, RZA is the featured bad guy, so I guess that's something.
The first film had a lot more to do with actually protecting elephants and I have to say I enjoyed that one more.
So elephants are really big in Thailand. This Thai fight flick(Muay Thai in this case) is all about revenge for this dude's(Tony Jaa's) elephants being stolen by some evil gangsters(including that big guy from MUAY THAI GIANT). It's all very basic but the combat/action scenes are all very spectacularly done so if that's your bag, or you just really like seeing elephants on film, give it a watch.
The American, badly-dubbed, release is missing about 30 minutes and has a hip-hop soundtrack. I went with the original cut even though it's almost 2 hours long.
Star Tony Jaa's first big film here in America was ONG BAK so maybe I shoulda started with that one. I imagine it's pretty similar though.
So the basic premise of this movie seems to be lifted from a POPEYE cartoon except our giant(power-lifter/pro wrestler Nathan Jones) has to eat some spicy Thai food called somtum(which is also the original title) before he can kick ass. They make us wait almost until the very end of the movie though before that pays off and at 1 hour and 43 minutes that's quite a wait. Most of the movie focuses on the giant's 2 young girl partners who I'm assuming are actual martial artists since they do most of the actual fighting. So if you're into girl-powered muay thai this might be your thing. Maybe they shoulda called this 2 GALS AND A GIANT or something to be more accurate.
Since the first SPIRITED KILLER movie was released in 1994 I'm gonna say this isn't actually any sort of a sequel to that film despite it being billed as SPIRITED KILLER 3 on my DVD. Whatever it is though, it is pretty terrible. The main problem is that the whole thing is a very monotonous series of fight scenes strung together with the most simplistic plot and only interrupted occasionally to inject some horribly unfunny slapstick bits. This unfortunately is also the case with SPIRITED KILLER 2, which I'm also not sure actually has any connection to this one. Towards the end we do get an ogress who rips out and chomps down on some intestines in a very zombie-like fashion so that's something. Also there's a character called The Ass Devil which might have been the only thing I chuckled at while watching this. Best to avoid this made-up series of martial-arts films.
So I guess the award for the most generic title ever for a gangster movie goes to Thailand for this one. That's a shame because this is a pretty interesting movie that's supposed to be based on actual mob activity in the country back in the 50s and 60s. They even get some testimonials from what I'm assuming are actual people from that era that gives the film a partly documentary feel. Like most modern Asian films it runs a bit long at almost 2 hours but mostly moves along pretty well with all the gun-fu, knife-fu and other fighting styles on display. Also might be one of the few Thai movies where you can see guys with pompadour hairdos.
A chopsokey flick that features some really stupid looking break-dancing-style kung fu. I guess it's supposed to be a mix of muay-thai and drunken-monkey-style but it comes off kinda wonky. The wacky dubbing of the characters using this style sure doesn't help take things very seriously either. There's a gang of fighters on bouncy stilts with sharpened blades on them that was definitely something I'd never seen before and I will say the fighting is unique if not very realistic. There's a very thin and weird plot about battling a ring of kidnappers that target women that they then harvest their tears to make perfume? At least I think was the plot since I admittedly dozed off a couple of times during the middle half off this from the repetitious nature of everything. Unfortunately it takes almost 2 hours to wrap things up which felt very padded out but if you're a fan of very long fight scenes, or strong female fighters. since there's a few on display(in addition to star Jija Yanin there's end-baddie body-builder Roongtawan Jindasing), I guess check it out.
This is star Yanin's follow-up film to CHOCOLATE, the story of a "special needs" gal who is also a master of the martial arts. I have not seen that one yet but it looks like it may be worth a watch.
In Germany this was re-titled as FIGHTING BEAST 2 making it a sequel to a completely unrelated Thai movie.
From the land of Thai food comes this warsploitation action flick. Unfortunately it's filled with lots of dull dialogue for a whole lot of the movie before finally(the last half hour!) getting to some explodey scenes. It also has a sorta men-in-prison thing going on for a lot of the run-time which I guess is cheaper to shoot. The wacky dubbing does result in some humorous bits but that's about all I can recommend from this one. AKA RAIDERS OF THE GOLDEN TEMPLE(I guess they were trying to capitalize on that LOST ARK fame at the time)
The same director(Sumat Saichur) and star(Sorapong Chatree) would sorta remake this with the similarly titled RAIDERS OF THE DOOMED KINGDOM which is supposedly better but I'm not in too much of a rush to see it.
Not 1 black chick that I saw in this movie but that didn't stop the VHS release from going with this cover:
The DVD that I have of this says it's called SPIRITED KILLER but the actual onscreen title is WAKE IT UP, KILL IT 4 (or at least that's the best translation I can figure out since it's all in Thai. It could also be WAKE IT UP TO KILL for all I know) which means this is the 4th part of a series of Thai movies that I'm gonna guess deal with zombies or ghosts of some sort that have to be killed. Not that any of that matters because the plot is pretty simple and has to do with an evil wizard/priest/magician? who kills some folks and then is chopped up with machetes by some angry villagers and then returns along with a very TERMINATOR-like ally to wreak his vengeance. I think this "monster" is also some sorta zombie but maybe his origin is explained in the earlier films. There's one terrible musical interlude that reminds me of every Bollywood flick that is the low-point and the high-point is whenever two ridiculous badly-dubbed stoner types have any dialogue. The whole thing basically plays out like a slasher movie mixed with a kung-fu film and ultimately it's all pretty unremarkable.
The only reason this received a DVD release here in the U.S. at all is because Tony Jaa is in it(but only briefly) and he has been touted as the new Bruce Lee for a while now though I'm not sure he has the personality or presence of Mr. Lee in his prime.
The 3 films that precede this are:
1987 - WAKE IT UP, KILL IT
1989 - WAKE IT UP, KILL IT 2
1990 - WAKE IT UP, KILL IT 3 aka THE NAKED HAUNTED GHOST
There are two more supposed sequels in this series(though I have no idea if these are the actual original titles or even actual sequels of any kind):
1997 - SPIRITED KILLER 2: AWAKENED ZOMBIE BATTLES(doing further research it looks like this actually was released in 1991 which would make it obviously not a real sequel but possibly a prequel?)
1998 - SPIRITED KILLER 3: GHOST WARS(looks like this is from 1991 also and originally titled SONG KRAM PHEE)
"You just mean you want me to go to bed with you. Not... much... else!"
Either this movie has one the most drastically abrupt cliffhanger endings or the version I watched of it was missing a few minutes of it's ending but either way I think I get the drift. It's starts out pretty action-packed with this dude fighting off a gang of fellows with bad intentions. Then a mostly naked lady gets used as a human shied and blood splatters as she's stabbed right in the back and an old lady is drowned in a bathtub! From there it settles into a fairly standard kung fu revenge plot where our hero tries to exact vengeance on his ex-partner. What makes this stand out is the absurd dubbing in a few scenes which give it all an unintentional comedic element. Also the inclusion of music from Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA give it a totally out of place creepy vibe. Also this title seems a little bizarre to me. I guess their making a reference to the bird since I guess that could be the fighting style the main character uses but it mostly makes me think of that black guy from AMOS N' ANDY. An OK waste of time for 3am insomniac viewings. AKA THE FINAL DUEL
This is listed a few places as having been directed by Godfrey Ho but I'm thinking they just slapped his name on it since it doesn't seem like it was made in Hong Kong at all and it's also credited as being directed by someone named Wisan Suntisucha so I'm guessing that's correct cuz it sounds way more Thai to me.
A Thai-rip-off of classic 70's TV show CHARLIE'S ANGELS or maybe more accurately a lobotomized version of the 2000 CHARLIE'S ANGELS movie. Either way this is a pretty stupid example of a kung fu/action flick. On the up side you get hot Asian ladies jumping around which leads to lots of jiggling also a stand out scene has one of our heroines singing and dancing around in her underwear which was awesome. There's also unexpected violence with people getting shot in the head and bloody stabbings in between the ridiculous, slapsticky, retardo-comedy. On the down side nothing that happens makes much sense, the fighting is all pretty silly with that high-flying wire-work crap that was so big in the 90's and one of the bad guys is a super-annoying transvestite character that makes me want to punch my TV. Check it out if you like nonsensical comic-booky action with hot babes in various outfits including bathing suits and towels just don't expect much in the way of any sort of a coherent movie. Sadly since this is a martial arts movie made in Thailand we get no actual nudity. There's a sequel announced at the end where the ladies go searching for Osama Bin Laden. Not sure if that one was ever made.
APOCALYPSE NOW meets CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST? That sounds awesome! You don't really get that but you sorta kinda do in a cheap-ass Thai movie kind of way. What you mostly get is a junky Vietnam war movie with a few bloody kills and decapitations here and there for the first hour and then towards the end our heroes get captured and tortured and the cannibal part of the title kicks in. You see this Vietnam seems to take place in some kind of alternate reality where the war was fought by a handful of Thai mercenaries who take on the whole Vietnamese army also the Viet Cong are cannibals. The movie is just chock full of weirdness. For example our band of heroes keep getting pissed on, then one of our heroes inexplicable starts munching on maggots(I guess he was super hungry), then the torture starts and a guy has a spike rammed through his head and his brains eaten(his "brains" strangely look a lot like creamed corn) then a guy has his eyes ripped out and arm hacked off and eaten(his eyes also look like creamed corn) also one guy is named Bunion. Blood shoots out like a sprinkler went off, you get kung-fu and gun-fu and some music from DAWN OF THE DEAD is played over and over again. By the end our main hero is completely batshit insane with his Nam-flashbacks and after viewing this I can relate. Check it out if you're into RAMBO or golden showers or creamed corn. AKA= JUNGLE KILLERS: THE JAGUAR PROJECT(which sounds neat) and THE MERCENARY(which sounds fucking dull).
I guess THE JAGUAR PROJECT is a re-edited version of this film cuz there weren't any white people with stupid mullets anywhere in the version that I saw:
A couple get drunk and hit a girl with their car. They believe they have killed her but, oh no, she comes back and haunts them. The movie at this point just turns into a Thai version of one of those silly Japanese ghost tales that were so popular a few years ago. Of course you also get the cliched, long-haired, spooky-looking girl up to no good and a bunch of dumb jump scares. The film tries really hard to build suspense but I found the whole thing pretty tired. If stuff like THE RING or JU-ON work for you then this might be something to watch. It's all way too serious and dull for my taste. Personally I prefer more of the off-the-wall, wacky Asian stuff. Come on Thailand, get more nutty!
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