Bangkok Haunted (DVD)

Bangkok HauntedLabel: Palisades TartanDescription: PRODUCT DESCRIPTION In a small Bangkok bar three women tell stories about their encounters with the paranormal. The first explains about the strange dreams she experienced after purchasing an antique drum. The second speaks of the time she came into possession of a perfume with an uncanny ability to attract the perfect partner. The third tells of a policewoman's investigation into an apparent suicide in which nothing is as it seems. AMAZON REVIEW An old-fashioned omnibus spooker Bangkok Haunted is framed by scenes in which three young apparently modern Thai women sit in a deserted cafe on a rainy night and tell each other their own ghost stories. Legend of the Drum is closest in style to traditional Far Eastern horror with an antique dealer troubled by a drum that seems to invoke the spirit of a girl who disappeared 80 years ago after befriending and then rejecting a hooded disfigured outcast. Black Magic Woman is a more lurid tale in video nasty style about a girl who uses an extract of corpses as an aphrodisiac perfume with unpleasant consequences for her lovers--who have spells of vomiting demon possession or become psychotic ghosts. Oxide Pang director of The Eye takes over from Pisuth Praesaengaim for the final episode Revenge about a cop investigating the death-by-hanging of a young woman with whom he was involved and learning nasty things in the process. Though each 45-minute story is a tad overextended the film is full of genuinely creepy moments ranging from delicate ghost scares to splatter gruel. --Kim Newman