I was in Thai horror comedy heaven while watching wacky zombedy SARS Wars, so I immediately had to check imdb to see what else director Taweewat Wantha had done. The Sperm. THE SPERM??? You can guess what I consumed immediately after SARS Wars. But after finishing The Sperm, I was craving more, so to complete my Wantha watching, I checked out his latest, Long Weekend.
SARS WARS (2004)
Asian horror is rarely boring. When it’s not delivering a new wave of supernatural terror, it’s giving us in-your-face what-the-fuckery…such as the zany zombedy SARS Wars. After watching the trailer, I immediately purchased the DVD, confident it was a must-have.
When a bizarro band of baddies abducts a schoolgirl and holds her for ransom in an apartment building, a handsome young warrior with a sword is enlisted to save her.
The timing isn’t the greatest for a rescue mission, because the building is overrun by zombies then put under quarantine!
The over-the-top comic tone begins with the animated intro and a sequence mapping out how the infection travels to Thailand via bug.
The slapstick Asian martial arts elements are introduced next with the plot setup of the kidnapped schoolgirl. There’s a baddie fighting in a bear costume, men being tossed through the air, tickle torture, sexual innuendo, and the introduction of our hero, who can strip a room full of men with just one swipe of his sword, although the full frontal results are censored.
Then come the zombies. These are some awesomely vicious flesh eaters, and they have the chomps to prove it.
Despite being a comedy, SARS Wars definitely delivers on the horror and gore.
With the freaky zombies having a rather demonic appearance and even a baby zombie running around the apartment setting, I was having some Demons 2 flashbacks.
Plus, like something out of the Resident Evil video game, a drag queen’s pet snake mutates into a giant fricking monster on the loose, just waiting for its moment to shine during the final “boss battle.”
As our hero, the schoolgirl, a scientist, and a Jedi-like warrior team up to try to escape, nonstop action and comedy abound, with loads of zombie slashing, two hilarious sex scenes, and the characters breaking the fourth wall to poke fun at the absurdity of the goings-on in the movie.
Finally, there’s also a comic, queer, gender-bending twist! But if you don’t have a non-PC sense of humor, be warned, because the word “transsexual” is dropped numerous times as part of the joke. At least…it is in the subtitled English translation. There are more extreme gay situations in the deleted scenes on the DVD, which I assume were removed so the twist would come as more of a surprise.
THE SPERM (2007)
It’s a hypersexual satire of the sci-fi/monster movie genre! In The Sperm, we meet a young, wannabe rock star so obsessed with a famous model that he regularly has sexual dreams about her…and they sometimes turn a little gay….
Meanwhile, there’s this sort of a rogue scientist whose experiments often have strange result, such as making bananas grow hair or shrinking his daughter’s dog.
When the wannabe rock star is slipped Viagra during a drunken night with the guys in his band, he tries to rid himself of the erection by masturbating. Let’s just say the urban legend about baby alligators in the sewers is nothing compared to what happens next. Women across the city begin giving birth to masturbating babies that have the wannabe rock star’s face. At least, they’re supposed to look like him, but they are actually creepy looking, sort of like…well…remember the dancing baby from Ally McBeal?
These “babies” become obsessed with the same model as their daddy, and soon an army of them infiltrates a music competition she is hosting, like something out of Village of the Damned.
It would be the perfect moment for this slapstick film to finally deliver some good horror elements, but that’s not the intention of this farce.
Because the next thing you know, there’s a Godzilla-sized offspring terrorizing the city after kidnapping the model! Again, it was an opportunity for something disturbing—had the offspring looked liked one of the babies.
Instead, it’s just a giant version of the wannabe rock star, who must save his model with the help of his band (headed by a drag queen), the scientist, and a whole lot of sperm….
LONG WEEKEND (2013)
With Long Weekend, Wantha pushes comedy aside for a full-on horror film. This one is loaded with jump scares, ghostly apparitions, and spooky atmosphere complete with thunder and lightning.
It revolves around teens that don’t heed a warning to stay away from a creepy shrine on an isolated island.
A scare prank on the geek in the group goes horribly wrong, and he begins acting weirder than usual.
Pretty soon, the kids are being chased relentlessly by corpse-like ghosts that use every trick in the paranormal horror movie book.
What I’m saying is, while Wantha clearly knows how to make a film that is purely horror without the humor, Long Weekend is basically a combination of Asian horror from a decade ago mixed with the potency of an American PG-13 horror that would only terrify tweens.
To give it a modern edge, a lesbian couple is tossed into the mix and even makes out, but this is mostly just a slice of cliché scares if you’re feeling nostalgic for throwback feel to your younger days.
Now that’s an interesting lineup. lol