Narok sao Ta-ru-tao
Director: ?
Starring: 'Nicky' Theerakol, Dawan Singhwee, Cherry
Intira
Running Time: 110 minutes
Year: 2003
The good news is that Thailand
has “Women in Prison” exploitation films! The bad news is that Thailand has
“Women in Prison” exploitation films. If this is as good as they can do it,
please leave that genre to the experts! This is an amazingly bad film in
every way – bad to such a degree that I could only watch it in pity for the
people involved. I could imagine these actors being signed up – excited about
starring in a film - and then they go to the location for the first day's
work. The initial questions that probably popped into their heads were “Where
are we? Where are the sets? Where is the prison?” Prison? We don’t need no
stinking prison. This may be the first WIP film without a prison. Avant-garde
concept? A statement that life itself is a prison? No, I don’t think so –
there just wasn’t any money and they hoped no one would notice.
The correction facility
is having a problem with the female inmates escaping on a constant basis.
It is not too surprising since the prison has no fence. Oops – we never thought
we would need one of those. It also has no jailhouse and makes do with a
small makeshift stockade of wooden poles tied together by rope in which all
the prisoners are herded into. The administrators and guards don’t have it
much better as their “offices” consist of straw and plywood stapled together.
A strong wind and the prison would blow away. A light misting rain and the
prison would float away. So it is no wonder that the inmates attempt to escape
the bad food, poor décor, peeing behind the bushes, the brutish guards
and having their faces in this movie.
As the film begins three
females have broken out – ok not exactly broken out – they strolled away
and are on the run – ok not exactly on the run as they decided to stop for
a nap - and the guards nearly catch up with them. They leap over a cliff
into the water below and the guards follow suit – oddly the blonde head guard’s
hair color changes to black as he jumps. Move quickly to another scene in
which the female guard, Irada, is leading three new prisoners to their new
home and two of them push her and try to run away – great escape plan as
she calmly shoots them both in the back. It turns out she has something going
with the blonde guard – a little daily ritual in which she accuses him of
messing around with the inmates – he then calls her “bitch” and slaps her
across the face and follows this up with a deep dive kiss. Then at night
she comes back to his place for a little whoopee.
My kind of woman - a stone
faced killer in the day and a warm waiting hussy at night. In fact, as many
romances break out here as do prisoners - between the whiskey swizzling doctor
and one of the inmates, between a couple of the inmates, between an inmate
and Irada, between an inmate and the blonde guard, between the blond guard
and Irada - in fact this might be a cheaper option for those looking for romance
than a Club Med vacation. The film does include some basic WIP elements –
whipping, lesbianism, torture, rape and bad dialogue – but done with the
style and energy of an afternoon soap opera. In the end, all the sets are
blown up and I thought – geez what a shame – there goes $50 in material up
in smoke.
My rating for this film:
1.0