Isaacs Picture Conclusions

THIRST (2009) THREE TOP HATS

Well – if I make it back from vacation – I am going to be really behind so I am going to have to run some old posts that no one has ever looked at… I apologize in advance for the absence of any quality or value but I’ve set the bar pretty low for quality and value anyway so there’s that…

From “Old Boy” director Park Chan Wook, comes “Thirst”, an ultra violent, super bloody, pretty disgusting horror / semi comedy about a modern day vampire in Korea.  When I use the word horror I mean that this thing is filled with blood and murder and pustules and more blood all over the place and hands inside bodies and murder and armpit licking and necks breaking and toe licking and fingernails breaking and constant, revolting, slurping sounds of blood drinking and face smashing and everything else that comes with a good vampire story that doesn’t involve a bunch of moronic teenagers. When I use the words semi-comedy I mean that this is also filled with fart sniffing, hospital-I.V. blood drinking and, well, when I watched this yesterday there were some other amusing parts that escape me now. Anyway, this is a hard R-rated movie about the old school types of vampires that kill you and drink your blood, not mopey, pale teenagers or gothic Christopher Lee.

The lead is a Catholic priest, demoralized by having to keep giving last rites, taking confessions and giving the sacrament. He pleads with his Father-Priest to send him to this “leper colony” where he can do some real good, trying to save people. There, he is given the “Emmanuel Virus”, while not leprosy, it forms colonies of disgusting, pussy polyps all over your body, then into your eyes, lungs and organs until you hemorrhage all of your blood and die. When he gets there he is given a small dose to try and develop a vaccine but the virus takes over, his skin is covered in gross blisters, he vomits a ton of blood into his flute and dies. I guess I should note – before he dies the doctors there give him a transfusion and then he dies. But wait – it happens that they somehow gave him vampire blood and he is back among us – that’s right, that was funny, he dies and then comes back to life finishing the penance he was muttering before he died.  So, he heads back into the city, bandaged from head to toe and eventually heads to the hospital for another last rite. He recites the words, gets some blood on his hands and then secretly licks it (this was also kind of funny and unexpected).

Next up he is administering to a boy with esophagus cancer, and it happens to be a family he kind of grew up with when he was an orphan at the local church. The family consists of the mother, the son and another adopted girl, all grown up and now the son’s very attractive wife. To make a long story short, the priest is overcome by the new vampire urges within him and he and the wife fall into love sex (in two pretty erotic scenes), they murder the husband / son and everything unravels in very violent and bloody ways, until the end, which really dragged on for ever. It wasn’t a shitty ending, but it sure took a LOOOOOOONG time.

All in all this was pretty good – very violent, sexy and bloody. But it was really long and a couple of things irritated me: the jumping around on the roofs scene, the irritating husband / son, the way the wife acted when she turned into a vampire, the polyps were very gross and then the end was so long (and boring). So: not bad, but you have to be ready to invest your time in this stomach turner.

51 comments

  4. Wednesday's Child

    That man on the poster is in every dang Korean movie I have ever seen. It totally makes sense now that I know he is a vampire, he can just work more than regular actors with that super vampire strength.

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  9. garylee828

    I agree; decent movie, but it drags. Ryan from Rhino’s Horror recommended this one to me and he loves it, as many others do. I wasn’t as enthusiastic about it, but I can see how some others may like it a great deal since it is pretty-well executed for the most part.

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  12. jjames36

    Sounds like the sort of thing I might hate. Or I might like.

    Which do you think it is?

    (Oh and just once you should recycle something we’ve all seen, just to see how many of us catch it.)

    (Wait. Don’t do that. I probably wouldn’t catch it.)

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  18. Victor De Leon

    Always procrastinate getting around to this one. Should just watch it already. Wook’s stuff is always freaky. Nice review, bro.

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