Each Tuesday in June, FANGORIA will be presenting Terror Tuesdays over on Pluto TV, a triple feature of films personally selected by one of the Fango fam. Each week, one of us will curate three titles with a theme, and the party starts on Tuesday night at 8pm ET/5pm PT on the Pluto TV Terror channel – ALL FOR FREE!
Gorehounds, rejoice! This week, we are bringing you three bloody and brutal imports from the great continent of Asia, highlighting South Korea, Japan and Thailand as three of horror’s most influential cinematic landscapes. Grab your puke bag, some kind of comforting plushie and strap in for a gorgeously gory triple feature.
From Park Chan-wook’s gut-wrenching Oldboy (and the other entries into his deliciously violent Vengeance trilogy) to Lee Chang-dong’s simmering psychological thriller Burning, revenge is a staple theme running throughout South Korean cinema – and the grislier the better. Kim Jee-woon’s 2010 thriller I Saw the Devil is a viscera-drenched cat and mouse tale that follows a young police officer, Soo-hyun (Squid Game‘s Lee Byung-hyun) seeking revenge for the murder of his girlfriend, who lost her life at the hands of serial killer Kyung-chul (the legendary Choi Min-sik in one of his most vile roles.) As the pair descend into an eye-wateringly graphic cycle of violence, we’re forced to reckon with the nature of revenge, and if it’s ever worth it. Not for the faint of heart, I Saw The Devil is a heavy start to our triple feature – and things are only going to get bloodier!
Next up, we’re headed over to Japan for Kinji Fukasaku’s iconic dystopian bloodbath Battle Royale. Nothing on this earth is scarier than a badly behaved high-schooler (trust me, I was a teacher for almost a decade), let alone an island full of them. Based on the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami, this controversial action-thriller sees a group of juvenile deliquent students forced to fight to the death, leaving only one standing as a triumphant symbol of the Japanese government’s fascistic ‘BR Act’. Each pupil gets a map, supplies and a random weapon, leading to some truly imaginative and iconic death scenes (my personal favorite being the poison-spaghetti shootout). Starring legendary comedian Takeshi Kitano and launching the careers of many of its young cast (including Kill Bill‘s Chiaki Kuriyama and J-horror scream queen Kou Shibasaki), Battle Royale is a groundbreaking and subgenre-defining piece of Japanese cinema that can be seen in everything from Tarantino films to Fortnite – as well as a certain Jennifer Lawrence-starring mega franchise…
We’re ending our bloody tour of Asia in Thailand, with Piraphan Laoyont and Thodsapol Siriwiwat’s Sick Nurses – a sleazy, cheesy, gory and gross supernatural slasher that’s deserving of more of a cult status than it has. In a seemingly patient-less Bangkok hospital, Dr Tar (Wichan Jarujinda) and his staff of seven nubile nurses (Chol Wachananont, Chidjan Rujiphun, Kanya Rattanapetch, Dollaros Dachapratumwan, Ase Wang, Ampairat Techapoowapat and Ampaiwan Techapoowapat) are engaging in black market body sales that are DEFINITELY not HIPAA-approved. When one of the nurses, jilted and jealous, threatens to report for medical malpractice, all manner of bonkers brutality breaks loose in glorious Argento-inspired technicolor. Purses for heads, hairy shampoo and some good ol’ fashioned baby-eating are just some of the treatments on offer from these sick nurses.
Tune in tonight at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific on the Pluto TV Terror channel. And join us next week for another installment of FANGORIA’s Terror Tuesday.
