1 2 3 Monster Express (1-2-3 ด่วนมหาภัย, 1977)

First of all, I'm not sure when this movie was released - most sources say 1977, but some claims 1970 or 1971, and one say 1975. Sorapong Chatree looks very young here, so it could be the early seventies. Anyway, 1 2 3 Monster Express was the biggest blockbuster that year in Thailand and I can understand why. First of all, the story is very, very, very simple...

We have the usual suspects in a seventies thriller: the pregnant woman, the teenagers, a young military (Sorapong of course), one more typical leading man (Krung Srivilai, who I've mentioned here before), an eldery man and so on. All of them are traveling with a long distance bus, but someone really want to stop that bus. First a couple of robbers are following them and tries to stop the bus, but one man on the bus has a weapon and stops them - and they we realize that he's a gangster too - and that he has a couple more collegues on the bus! The passengers stops them too after some fighting and shooting, but are ambushed again by more baddies and is brought to a prison camp! From there they escape AGAIN with the bus, after a lot of action of course... and they more bad guys takes up the chase... and I even have to mention that there's a bomb on the bus?

I think everyone understands, this is non-stop action from start to finish (actually, the first ten minutes is quite slow but has a big fight and the last ten minutes is a bit slow, but has a pregnant woman giving birth on the bus) in the classic cheap but spectacular way we all learned to love from the Thai's. The fights are of course only fistfights and stuff like that, but it's violent and with a lot of energy. Bloody squibs, explosions and a few good stunts here and there makes this a damn fun movie - and even without subtitles it's easy to understand the twists and turns.

Visually it looks better than I thought it would. The claustrophobic setting on the bus is used with talent (and my god, it must have been warm on that bus when they shot the movie - no studio here, just a moving bus in the hot sun all the time) and the movie looks very fine. It also has two stylish slow-motion shots during the last half, but it could have been more if I could choose. What helps the movie even more is the stolen soundtrack, probably from similar American thrillers and disaster movies. It fits the mood and style, and it's nice to hear something else than cues from the Bond-movies, Pink Floyd or The Pink Panther-theme for once!

The Thai VCD looks quite good, even during the night shots, but is (of course) cropped on the sides. But it's one of the better looking VCD's of such an old Thai-movie I've seen. Recommended.

Tiger from River Kwai (ข้ามาจากแม่น้ำแคว, 1975)

I smell a co-production here. Tiger from River Kwai is a western movie (probably) shot in Spain with an Italian crew starring a Thai movie star and a Hong Kong nobody as heroes plus an American actor doing his usual bad guy routine. And that's cool! Krung Srivilai is the Thai actor and Kam Won Lon, who I never heard of in my entire life, plays the other hero in this light-weight western-adventure directed by Franco Lattanzi. The Spaghetti Western Database mentions a Hong Kong producer, Fu Sheng, and it wouldn't surprise me if there was Thai money involved also. Why would they use a Thai actor and shoot scenes in Thailand? Like I wrote above, I can smell an international co-production miles away and here we have one.

Krung is playing a nice Thai guy who goes to America to deliver the ashes of a dead friend to his family. Well, not only that, but also an elephant statue filled with gemstones! Somehow a gang of bandits have heard this and they decided to rob the "Thailander", but they make a mistake and tries to rob a Chinese restaurant owner instead, Kam Won Lon, and this makes him involved in protecting his new Asian friend. But the bandits won't give up, and the leader (Gordon Mitchell) does everything in his way to get the stones... including innocent families and fucking around with the wrong sheriff... Luigi Montefiori!

Tiger from River Kwai is a quite entertaining western, but neither original or creative. Putting martial arts in westerns is nothing new and the odd thing for me is just putting a Thai and a Chinese together against Gordon Mitchell. THAT's original, but never makes any sense. It's even hard to understand why they would hook up and fight together. But Krung is a good actor, and one of the finest action actors from Thailand. He had a bit rougher look than Sorapong and Sombat and also played more unsympathetic characters (at least before Sombat decided to go more dark later in his career). Here he's very good in a western environment and his fistfight against Gordon Mitchell is hardly unique, but very good entertainment. What makes him more bizarre is the strange English dub they given him - some very odd accent, it's not Thai, that's for sure. But that Chinese dude has it even worse. He's dubbed by someone who sounds like a valium-drugged child-molester! Yeah, it's a very slimy and weak voice.

Also watch out for Luigi Montefiori, but his character is more of a cameo than anything else - but he's a nice addition to the cast if nothing.

Tiger from River Kwai is an interesting East meets West, but lacks the personality and spectacle it needed to be something special. Why not use more traditional Thai stuff? Why just let Krung kick around like some normal drunk? Why choose such a pale Hong Kong actor as... I already forgot his name? It's never boring, or badly made, it just needed that extra boost of... something. If I was the producer I would have taken Gordon Mitchell and his gang to Thailand, followed by Montefiori - and letting them be confused over a much more exotic and interesting country than the US. That would have resulted in some pretty interesting action sequences.

But hey, that's just my imagination! To see this movie you either have to own the VHS or download an VHS-rip, but rumour says that MYA Communications will release it on DVD, which would be awesome. I would be first in line to buy it!

Tarm Kah 20,000 Miles (ตามฆ่า 20,000 ไมล์, 1977)

A few years after the big blaxploitation wave the Thai's thought it was time to do their own funky, "black", flick. The result became Tarm Kah 20,000 Miles, starring (not surprising) Sorapong Chatree and Krung Srivilai as two groovy cops (well, at least one of them is an FBI agent I think) with funky clothes and in one case (Sorapong's) a fine, juicy, awesome afro-wig! As usual with me I've been watching a movie on VCD and there was no subtitles. I have no idea really what the movie was about, but here's what I could decipher:

Krung travels to the United States where he hooks up with FBI agent Sorapong. Theyr'e having a ball, beating bad guys and also investigating a brutal murder. But someone don't want them to look to close and Sorapong's family is killed! Furious of revenge he and Krung takes on the baddies and kills as many as possible, but the syndicate behind it all is still after them. Back in Thailand they dig even deeper and find that a crime organization is doing something fishy! More death and mayhem etc etc.

So I have no idea why everything is happening. Drugs? Gold? Military secrets? No idea, sorry, but the crime syndicate really want to stop our heroes and tries everything to make them burn in hell. But come on, it's Sorapong - and Sorapong always wins!

Even if you don't understand the story, Tarm Kah 20,000 Miles is a damn fine action film. It looks like parts of it was shot in the US (but the quality on the VCD was so bad so it could have been shot in Norway and I wouldn't notice it!), including a good car chase in good ol' American style. There's also a shoot-out at a seedy bar and it's both bloody and spectacular I think it is not less than four times as someone jumps through a window to surprise the bad guys during the whole movie! The action is the selling point of this... thaisploitation and it also delivers in a competent low-budget way. It's a violent movie and it has it's fair share of squibs and blood, which is a nice surprise. Just the way a real gritty 70's crime movie should be.

Sorapong has always been one of my favourite actors and he's one of the few that one day can shoot a nonsense-movie and the other day do some heavy, impressive acting in a drama. Here he wanders around in a silly wig, but somehow keeps up appearances and never looses his cool style. Krung, a very fine actor, has an equally big part - but no wig.

The VCD from Lepso is another thing: just avoid it. I think there's better release out there somewhere. This looks like a third generation VHS dupe ripped from television (which it is, fragments of TV-commercials can be seen here and there) and I'm also 100 % sure it's shortened to fit some TV-slot. But this didn't stop it from being very entertaining and it's well worth watching for those that like this kind of Thai action.