Hello world, Ben here. This column used to be called "Thai Piracy." Possibly it is still called Thai Piracy, but Dispatches from Siam just sounded better today. Ed Day is a gold star winning movie junkie and old friend of The Movie Advocate. When he moved to Thailand, we gave him an open invitation to drop us a line from time to time and bless us with half-crazed rumblings about moviegoing on the other side of the world. Today, we have Ed's ode to the criminally entertaining Piranha 3D and a brief but fascinating lesson in Thai superhero cinema history. Enjoy...
I just completed my long-awaited double feature of Piranha 3D and The Expendables. The former blew me away, being probably the best grindhouse movie since, perhaps, Grindhouse . . . or maybe Snakes on a Plane. Anyway, the first sequence made it all worth while, as well as the lady that gets cut in half (if you've seen it, you know which one I'm talking about: one of the ladies not cut in half directly by fish teeth. If you haven't seen it, the fact that there are so many people cut in half, even excluding the ones not directly by fish teeth, should make you want to see it without even being considered a spoiler. While I'm on the spoiler subject--there are carnivorous fish in this flick.)
Anyway, I'm not writing to tell you about this--I'm here to see if you've ever encountered Red Eagle, the Thai superhero in movies from 1959-1970. Apparently, the guy's last movie's last shot found him leaping to catch hold of a rope ladder. He didn't quite make it (oh shit, another spoiler) . . . in real life! He plunged to his death on camera, and they kept it in the theatrical release, though it is apparently cut out on the recent DVD release. Later, there was a Thai television show and movies related. It sounds interesting, as his mask-less identity is a fun-loving worthless drunk. Here's the trailer for Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), which may well be worth seeing, but I'm honestly in no hurry.
This new found interest of mine was sparked by this preview in front of The Expendables:
I'm so in and excited to be excited for another movie that is definitely going to be released here! Alas, poor Scott Pilgrim.
ED