"Actor: Pramote Seangsorn"

• Bangkok Haunted | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £5.11   |  Saving you £11.14 (289.35%)   |  RRP £14.99

  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