Ghost of Guts Eater – review

Director: S. Naowaratch

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

Originally called Krasue Sao, this is apparently the earliest Thai film to feature a Krasue and contains a whole load of ideas that, unfortunately, play less like a horror film and more like a soap opera. The effect around the krasues themselves (there are multiple in here) are pretty well done for the time (though they do little), where other effects are more high school play (the ‘winged’ demon husband who wear big round shield like things on his arms with painted on feathers springs to mind). There is also a tragic element (which veers into melodrama, of course).

grandmother in krasuue form

So it starts with a fireball blazing past and a woman screams. It is a krasue and the creature gets into a hen house. The owner of the hens wakes, finds dead birds and then sees the krasue and screams also. This wakes the household and they are out and hunting the vampire. They get a good shot in, hitting it before it flies away. In a house, young woman Bua Klee (Pisamai Wilaisak) goes in to see her grandmother (Sulaleewan Suwanthat) who has a cut in her face. A man came in the window and attacked her she claims before bequeathing a ring to her with the promise she never take it off and then, we soon discover, asks her to hide her death and secretly cremate her body.

the ring

Boon Muang (Sombat Metanee), who is in love with Bua Klee, and his mate Phi Chood (Choomporn Theppitak) arrive at her house but no one is around. They find her with her grandmother’s body and help her cremate it as per instruction. Later, alone, Bua Klee is approached by Chatr (Man Teeraphol) who gets rather rapey until Muand and Chood rescue her. Bua Klee and Muand marry but one night as they sleep the grandmother starts speaking to her (we see her face in the ring) and saying she is hungry. Soon Bua Klee has transformed into a krasue.

Chood shot

She enters into the bedroom of a couple whose child has just been born and is heading for the pot with the placenta when the woman wakes, subsequently waking her husband who throws a spear at the krasue but misses. Meanwhile Muang wakes and finds his wife without a head. Freaking he runs out of the bedroom but when he goes back in with Chood she has reconstituted and he assumes he dreamt the incident. He then gets into a bar fight when the new father identifies Bua Klee as the vampire and rather impressively takes on several guys, including Chatr, the fight ending when Chatr shoots Chood (who is only winged).

Tat Ekathat as the doctor

The story roles on like a soap opera. The village brings in an occultist, Doctor Prasit (Tat Ekathat), to deal with the vampire and he browbeats Muang into taking a mystic switch and whipping the demon out of his pregnant wife. She (who does not remember her vampiric activity) is shocked to be beaten by her husband (his attack stopped by the ever-faithful Chood) but forgives him because she loves him (yeah, all in all the domestic violence portrayed here wasn’t handled well). He then punches Prasit who, to get his revenge, summons a demon to get her but then loses control of it and is killed by the demon (who might have been a good deity in disguise).

mother and son abandoned

The couple (and Chood) move from the area but Bua Klee ends up in an animal carcass dispute with another krasue and ends up biting at the older krasue’s guts. They decide to avenge themselves when the baby is born leading to more shenanigans and eventually Muang, on a business trip, is targeted by another woman Madua (Metta Roongrat) who bewitches him into abandoning his family (until the spell is broken, with tragic consequences).

a krasue fight

Not much in the way of atmosphere but plenty of soap opera melodrama as mentioned, one interesting lore piece was the idea that Bua Klee is not a vampire in and of herself but possessed by her grandmother’s ghost (hence the English title). It is a sin that needs atoning for that leaves her open to being possessed (and stopped from taking a giant’s treasure, found by throwing her skirt onto mystically appearing fire). What that sin was is never actually communicated in film. Imaginative, but a bit of a slog at times, 3.5 out of 10 seems fair for a rather rare film that does ghost around from a Swedish VHS with embedded Swedish subs.

The imdb page is here.