Infernal Brains Podcast – 07 – Insee Daeng
That’s right, it’s another episode of Infernal Brains, the podcast that doesn’t have a catchphrase yet.
In this episode, Tars and Todd discuss the 2010 Thai film Insee Daeng (Red Eagle) and thus get drawn into a discussion of all the prior Insee Daeng films, Thai pulp cinema, what was wrong with Insee Daeng 2010, and what wasn’t so wrong it could have been cool. We also stumble over the pronunciations of more Thai names than you can shake a brain at, but that’s the price we pay. Find out just how awesome Mitr Chaibancha is, learn about old Thai film showings, and the joys of watching unsubtitled films where people talk for most of the running length.
As usual, we got a boatload of choices for you: downloadable mp3, embedded flash with slideshow, embedded audio player, and iTunes feed link so you can just download right to your iPod and listen to people mispronounce Thai names while being bored at work.
Download the mp3 (right click, save as)
Watch in slideshow form:
Subscribe to the Infernal Brains on YouTube!
Click the graphic for Podcast Feed:
Movies discussed include:
Awasan Insee Daeng
Jao Insee
Insee Thong – Tars Version – Teleport-City version
Insee Payong – Tars Version – FourDK version
Insee Daeng (2010)
Prior Infernal Brains:
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 1
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 2
Polly Shang Kuan
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 1
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 2
Dara Singh
Inkscape graphics via OpenClipArt

Categories: Movie Reviews, Podcasts Tags: Infernal Brains, Mitr Chaibancha, Petchara Chaowarat, Podcast, Thailand, Wisit Sasanatieng
Insee Thong (Review)
Insee Thong
aka Golden Eagle
1970
Directed by Mitr Chaibancha
Insee Thong is a legendary film in the annals of Thai cinema, and would be legendary even if lead actor Mitr Chaibancha hadn’t died filming the last scene of the film. As we’ve seen in our reviews of Awasan Insee Daeng and Jao Insee, the Insee Daeng/Red Eagle films have been increasing in pace, scope, and vision. The villains Insee Daeng faces become more Bond villainesque, and the secret conspiracies are grander, more dangerous, and better armed. In Insee Thong, a gang of communists are using Insee Daeng’s persona and a mad scientist hypnotist to assassinate journalists, while their group prepares to overthrow the government of Thailand. To combat them, Insee Daeng becomes a new hero, Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), and sets out to bring down the gang, clear his name, take out the impostor, and once again save the day.
Insee Thong (and most other Thai films of this era) was shot on 16mm color reversal stock with no synchronised sound, meaning the sound was added live as the films played by film dubbers employed by the regional theater house. Dubbers would follow the script for the most part, but were known to add regional references and topical humor. Some of the film dubbers became famous in their own (similar to how playback singers in Indian film become famous in their own right), Sin Sibunruang aka Tit Khiaw being the first famous dubber. Local dubbing continued until somewhat recently in some regional theaters. You can see Thai film dubbers at work in movies such as Monrak Transistor and Bangkok Loco.
Older Thai films have a distinctive look due to their 16mm reversal film stock origins. The reversal film stock keeps some colors longer than most other types of film, and when the films look washed out they still have vivid colors. There isn’t really another group of film that looks like it. The 16mm film means there was never an original negative, so there is nothing in archives except old scratched up 16mm prints, if anything at all. Most prints where projected until the stock was dead, and any surviving prints were scratched to hell and back. Luckily, Insee Thong is a particularly popular film so a lot of copies were made, causing the surviving prints to not be as scratched up as usual.
The limited amount of original prints the producers made were distributed around the country, both to cinemas and to traveling exhibitors who would project the film onto sheets from the back of a truck in rural areas. Some of these stories remind me of the old US drive-in circuit and stories from David Friedman, as well as some of the tales of how low budget horror is done in India.
From ThaiWorldview, here are the three kinds of open-air cinema:
- Nang kai ya (หนังขายยา) – promotional shows by traveling herbal-medicine salesmen at temple gatherings. Informally called “movies to sell drugs”.
- Nang lom pha (หนังล้อมผ้า) – shown in conjunction with a big feast. Dinner and a movie!
- Nang klang plaeng (หนังกลางแปลง) – special event open-air shows, usually free due to a sponsor and timed with events such as funerals.
The studio system in Thailand at the time consisted of pumping out hundreds of films a year, as there was no TV to take up the entertainment slack. Movie stars such as Mitr and Petchara Chaowarat would film dozens of films simultaneously, sometimes moving non-stop from set to set working all day and getting no sleep. These were called klang plang films, and the half-dozen big stars like Mitr couldn’t even change their hairstyles, because it would affect multiple films. Some companies would combine parts of worn out prints with the same stars into new films, and give a new script to the dubbers. And sometimes the dubbers and theaters would do it on their own!
Mitr Chaibancha appeared in 1/3 to 1/2 of the movies made each year between 1958-1970. Exact numbers are not known due to scattered record keeping from the frantic pace of filming. Mitr and Petchara Chaowarat were the leading couple during the 1960s. Their luk thung musical Monrak luk thung played in cinemas for six months. Nang rim maung (หนังริมเมือง) is a term referring to films that make more money in the suburban areas than the urban cities. Many modern Thais look down on these old films, derisively calling them nam nao (น้ำเน่า) – stinky water. This term even applies to the cheap action films from the 1970s and 1980s. The films from this era did inspire director Wisit Sasanatieng to make Tears of the Black Tiger, and we all know he then went on to direct the disappointing reboot of Insee Daeng (more on that in the Insee Daeng 2010 review!)
Mitr Chaibancha’s death on Oct 8, 1970, lead to the incompletion of at least 20 films (I’ve seen estimations of almost 40!), most of which were junked or quickly finished with doubles for Mitr. As those films were using the 16mm reversal film stock, the death of Mitr lead to a transformation of the Thai film industry, so when production companies regrouped and began to promote new talent, they had switched to 35mm film with synch sound.
Successors to Mitr Chaibancha include Sombat Metanee and then Sorapong Chatree. Petchara Chaowarat was followed by Aranya Namwong as the next big box office draw. Other names of note are Pitsamai Wilaisak, Yodchai Meksuwan, Jarunee Suksawat (who stars in Insee Payong), and the last superstar couple, Santisuk Promsiri and Jintara Sukapat. By the 1990s, most Thai stars had moved to tv drama soap operas called lakorn toratat (ละครโทรทัศน์). But those decades are stories best told in reviews of films from those periods. There has been some resurgence in Thai film this past decade, largely led by Panna Rittikrai/Tony Jaa/Jeeja Yanin martial arts movies, but also spillover from the Asian horror boom, a few big budget action spectacles, and some intellectual/art house films.
![]() |
He’s dead, Jim
|
So let’s get to Insee Thong! Insee Thong is awesome, and I don’t say that lightly. It is a good introduction to Thai action films, and holds up pretty well 40 years later with its quick pace and near-constant action. There is plenty of weird cool stuff going on, and you won’t be disappointed. Insee Daeng must deal with an impostor working for the communist Red Bamboo gang (it is never addressed if it is the same Red Bamboo gang as the ones in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, but I’ll just declare it so and that makes the Red Bamboo the unluckiest communist gang ever.
By now age is starting to show on Mitr Chaibancha, he looks a bit out of shape, less trim than his previous outings. But he’s still physically fit enough to run around and shoot people and seduce women. For more information on Mitr Chaibancha, you can check out the best biography in English I’ve seen at the Bangkok Post. We’ve also included a gallery of photos at the bottom of this review.
![]() |
Women have more spots than leopards!
|
This release has subtitles? I’m so confused…now I’ll know what’s going on!
|
Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Adul Dulyarat, Mitr Chaibancha, Petchara Chaowarat, super heroes, Thailand
Jao Insee (Review)
Jao Insee
aka The Eagle
1968
Directed by Chalong Pakddivijit
In the beginning of the Awasan Insee Daeng review, we went over the origins of the pulp heroes and the violence romance stories. Now we’ll specifically look at the character of Insee Daeng. From what I can put together from bad translations of Thai websites, there were 9 original Red Eagle tales, and author Sek Dusit quit writing them after the death of Mitr Chaibancha in 1970. That wasn’t the end of the film series, nor the end of the stories, as pulp comics and stories would continue to be published for decades. Here is a collection of covers from various Thai pulp comics.
Insee Daeng would make occasional returns to the silver screen after Mitr Chaibancha’s death, but it would be an irregular occurrence. Information on some of the movies are so scarce I don’t know if they are supposed to be part of the canon or their own reboots. Insee Payong features the daughter of the original Insee Daeng, Rome Rittichai, returning to Thailand, while the 2010 film Insee Daeng is a clean reboot.
Sek Dusit has revealed that Insee Daeng was inspired by Rock Hudson in Captain Lightfoot, and Insee Daeng became one of the most popular pulp heroes. It is no surprise that Mitr Chaibancha would be chosen to portray Insee Daeng on screen, as he was the most popular actor in Thailand at the time, appearing in 1/3-1/2 of the films produced each year. More discussion on the Thai film industry at the time and Mitr Chaibancha and Petchara Chaowarat will be in the opening to the Insee Thong review. I gotta leave some sort of hook to get you to come back (and it also fits in better there, as you will see!)
Sek Dusit Insee Daeng stories:
The Red Eagle
Dragon’s Claws
Black Rose
Savage Battle
Death Roars
Dragon’s Flight (later renamed White Dragon)
Red Eagle Filmography:
Jao Nak Leng aka The Gangster (1959) – Deals with the origins of Red Eagle and his first big case against gangsters.
Thap Samingkhla (1962) – Red Eagle fights against The Snake Gang with the help of the police and a female detective from Hong Kong.
Awasan Red Eagle aka The End of The Red Eagle (1963) – Insee Daeng retires after a defeating more bad guys. Or will he….?
Pisat Dam aka Black Demon (1966) – Red Eagle fights against a spooky villain Black Demon
Jao Insee aka The Eagle (1968) – You are currently reading the review of this. Don’t you pay attention?
Insee Thong aka Golden Eagle (1970) – The final film of the main series, Red Eagle becomes Golden Eagle to take down an impostor Red Eagle who is murdering journalists and is part of a secret communist gang.
After the death of Mitr Chaibancha, Insee Daeng films would occasionally be made…
Bin Diao aka Solo Flight (1977) – The main character wears a black mask, but I don’t know if he is supposed to be the same character or not.
Phrai Mahagan (1980) – The title means “Ghost” something, and it looks like the main character is supposed to be the original Red Eagle
Insee Payong aka Proud Eagle (1988) – Features Thai action queen Jarunee Suksawat as the long-overseas daughter of the original Red Eagle returned to Thailand to take up his legacy and killing lots of bad dudes.
Insee Daeng aka Red Eagle (2010) – The reboot of the series updating it into a modern superhero.
There was also a Red Eagle TV series in the 90s that’s now impossible to find out much about thanks to the flood of 2010 Red Eagle links. And for you die hard fans, there is a softcore version of Insee Daeng called Nang Paya Insree Daeng (นางพญาอินทรีแดง) that features a female Insee Daeng. I am unable to find out what year this was made, but it is almost certainly not official.
Posters for all of these films are included at the bottom of this review.
Jao Insee features Red Eagle getting drawn into the middle of a big conspiracy of murder and mayhem, causing him to go undercover once again, not as Insee Daeng, but as a safecracker in need of a razor blade as he joins the evil gang lead by a guy in a white mask. Who is killing important people with knives with skulls on the end? No, not the Dolph Lundgren Punisher! Featuring Rome’s partner Oy suiting up as a masked crimefighter herself and machine-gunning down dudes.
The print on this still looks terrible, but only small sections are missing huge chunks of the film. It clocks in at close to two hours, so it probably mostly complete. It still features the semi-modern dubbing, due the Thai films at the time being shot on 16mm film with no synch sound, thus sound was provided by the theaters by actors giving lines as the film played. Like most of these films, there are just way too many damn characters, so here are the most important ones:
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Mitr Chaibancha, Petchara Chaowarat, Sek Dusit, super heroes, Thailand, Women who kick butt
Awasan Insee Daeng (Review)
Awasan Insee Daeng
aka The End of Red Eagle
1963
Directed by ???
Insee Daeng (Red Eagle) is the most famous super hero out of Thailand. Starting out as a pulp novel character, Insee Daeng was immortalized in film by popular actor Mitr Chaibancha, who became a legend before dying tragically while shooting the final scene of the sixth Insee Daeng film, Insee Thong. TarsTarkas.NET will review the surviving Insee Daeng films and the rebooted film, because that’s how we roll here.
Awasan Insee Daeng is the third Insee Daeng film, but it is the earliest surviving Insee Daeng film. Unsurprisingly, the vcd release is just titled Insee Daeng, which is the title of the original entry in the series, but that film is believed lost. We will deal more of the history of the Insee Daeng film series in our review of Jao Insee, and information about the stars Mitr Chaibancha and Petchara Chaowarat and early Thai film industry in the review of Insee Thong. For now, we’ll instead have a history of post-World War 2 Thailand, gun culture, and the pulp stories movement that gave birth to Insee Daeng and his contemporaries.
Thailand’s love of pulp heroes who take the law into their own hand has its roots in World War 2. During the war, Siam (as Thailand was known then) was invaded and quickly made a deal with Imperial Japan. But there was a covert resistance movement, known as Seri Thai or the Free Thai Movement. Before World War 2, the amount of guns in Thailand was minuscule, and most guns were breech-loading one-shotters. Seri Thai was armed by the Allies, while Japan used Siam as a staging area and guns flowed through it. By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of guns were spread all over Siam, and soon rural bandit gangs began to form and terrorized the populace. The lack of police ability to control the bandit gangs lead to much dissatisfaction and unrest. Eventually this resulted in a Thai tradition, overthrow of the government, installing the Sarit regime in 1958. The Sarit made it a priority to take out the bandit gangs, though many persisted for years, and resurfaced as mafia in less than a decade.
The gangs controlling the countryside mixed with urban populace hungry for books was a perfect storm for the rise of pulp heroes who confronted the bandit gangs or were bandit leaders themselves that acted in a Robin Hood fashion. The stories were serialized in daily magazines, some of which became so popular people would line up awaiting the next issue, sometimes right outside the printing press. The four major authors associated with the pulp hero stories were Poh. Intharapalit, Phanomthian, Sek Dusit, and Soh. Navaraj. There is scare information on some of these crime/violence romance novelists and most of this information is from a single source that pulls from other sources in Thai. The common themes of the stories are main characters who are rich and educated, usually with secret identities, who fight against gangs, corruption, communist plots, and grand conspiracies while outsmarting the villains and simultaneously staying ahead of the police at every turn.
Poh. Intharapalit first gained fame with the 1932 drama Nakrian Nai Roi, but it was his “Three Buddies” stories that started during World War 2 that established his writing popularity. By 1947, he was editing the daily serial fiction magazine Piyamit, as well as writing the serial story Sua Bai (Tiger Bai)/The Bandit Called Bai). Sua Bai began the romance violence genre, with its story of a noble bandit who fights against a corrupt government. The unofficial story in the publishing world is that Intharapalit was “requested” to end the story by the police to to avoid their looking bad for failing to catch a fictional character. He then began a new series, Sua Dam (“Tiger” Dam/The Bandit called Dam), who would in a later series meet Sua Bai and team up. His four other famous characters are Dao Chon (Bandit Chief), Luk Dao Chon (Son of the Bandit Chief), Nakak Dam (Black Mask), and Yiao Thale (Sea Hawk).
Phanomthian started writing as a high school student, and later went to university in India. Upon returning to Thailand in 1955, he began publishing his stories in the magazine Ploenjit. Hao Dong (Wild Cobra) stands out because it has a female costumed heroine in the lead, sporting an all-black costume except for the giant cobra pictured on her shirt. Later creation Lep Khrud (Garuda’s Nail) featured a secret agent Cheep Chuchai vs. secret Chinese communists lead by Chang Suliang.
Soh. Navaraj was the youngest of the violence romance writers. His most famous creation was Yiao Ratree (Night Hawk), a hero with black outfit and a black mask in the shape of a hawk that fought crime by night but during the day was pretend madman and rich scion Man Damkoengdej. Besides aping Red Eagle’s costume, Night Hawk was also involved in fighting secret communist societies.
Sek Dusit began writing in his early 20s, gaining fame with a hero named Khom Phayakharaj in stories See King (Four Kings) and Khrud Dam (Black Garuda). Khom fought against criminal organizations threatening Bangkok, and the stories . In 1954, the 25 year old Sek Dusit would start stories of his most famous creation, Insee Daeng (Red Eagle). Millionaire son Rome Ritthikrai went undercover as hero Insee Daeng and fought against criminal gangs and communist plots, often injecting the cold war paranoia into his classic bandit tales. He is still alive, but now just writes astrology columns.
Here is a collection of covers of Insee Daeng and other hero books and comics.
As the Thai film industry was getting big in the late 1950s, it made sense that some of these hugely popular stories would end up on the silver screen. And while I can’t say for certain every pulp hero that made it to the cinema, I can give many examples of both direct book-to-movie heroes, and heroes that possibly started in pulp or were inspired by the pulp heroes.
In addition to the Insee Daeng series (a more complete summary of that film series will be covered in the Jao Insee review), Thai pulp bandit heroes movies include:
1958’s Hao Dong, starring Amara At-Savanon (2nd Runner-up Miss Thailand 1953 who starred in scores of films before retiring) as the bandit heroin with a cobra logo on her shirt. I do not know if this film still exists. More info in Thai.

Amara At-Savanon as Hao Dong
1958’s Mong Daeng (Red Bandit), which I can only find old ads for, featuring another female hero. There is a modern tv drama series by the same title complete with a masked female heroine with a whip. I am almost positive it is the same franchise, but not 100% positive.
1959’s See Kings based on Sek Dusit’s story, also costarring Amara At-Savanon. It was remade in 1982. More info in Thai.
1963’s Kewpit aka Poison Fang, starring Mitr Chaibancha and Amara At-Savanon. Kewpit is a black masked hero similar to Red Eagle, judging solely from the lone movie poster I could find. Thaifilmdb info.
1981’s Yord Ying Poo Ying Yai starring Sombat Metanee. This one I can tell you does still exist on an out of print vcd.
And there is this movie that I haven’t IDed yet, but the picture was labeled Yiew Ratree:
And don’t worry, if you missed reading any of this, it will probably be ganked verbatim without attribution by a certain site profiling superheroes who live.
Awasan Insee Daeng is a typical Thai film of the time, filled with that Thai comic relief stuff in much of their films that I don’t understand. There are comic relief effeminate characters filled throughout, even one of the police detectives. These comic relief characters both allow for humor in the film and also serve a function in making the male hero even more hyper-masculine than you ever thought possible. But that doesn’t mean the effeminate guys are wimps, a whiny detective goes toe to toe with Insee Daeng and although he loses, he manages to bruise Insee’s face enough he has to lay low until he heals.
Read more…
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Mitr Chaibancha, Petchara Chaowarat, Sek Dusit, super heroes, Thailand, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Legend Of The White Snake (Review)
Legend Of The White Snake
196?
Directed by ???
When I first got this, I thought by the name Legend Of The White Snake that it was a Thai take on the Madam White Snake story. Boy, was that wrong! Instead, it is just your run of the mill movie where an evil snake witch invades some baby girl’s body and evil stuff happens years later when everyone is grown up. And there are a few random dances and scares, but this is hardly a fun movie, it is more of a movie you have on in the background while doing other stuff and then you pay attention when the few weird things happen. Or you just look at the clips here, read the synopsis, and never have to worry about tracking down this film ever. Because you won’t, unless you are a Thai snake girl film completeist, in which case I can’t help you unless I charge an hourly rate.
There is absolutely zero information about this film online except for a single place to order the VCD from. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. So if TarsTarkas.NET did not bite the bullet and review this stupid thing, there would be no record that it ever existed. And who would want that? We must record even the boring examples of ridiculous films, because, the world becomes a less magical place if they aren’t here. It is just like when rare animals disappear. It doesn’t affect you personally if the white rhinos go bye-bye, but it is a bad thing to know that something once was there and now it is not. And even if no one knew about this movie before, now you do and you are better for it, despite the film’s little entertainment value.
The score is stolen from various sources including Halloween. There is a secondary track the director must have loved because it plays like 30 times, but I don’t recognize where it is from despite it sounding familiar.
We don’t got names so we got guesses. Okay, I figured out the names of a few of them as they got their named mentioned in subtitles. The rest are complete guesses, and for no one do I know who played them. I was told that the following actors are in the film: Mechai Panchar, Picharak, and Chokiwa Luck. I have no clue who any of them are, and Google finds nothing (though Picharak is a planet in the Rebel Squadrons Wiki.)
UPDATE – After chatting about this film with Todd from 4DK (what, you don’t talk about weird Thai films with your friends?) we’ve determined that this film was actually made in the 1960s instead of the 1980s, as the guy playing Kroo Prakit is probably Mitr Chaibancha, who died in 1970 because man was not meant to hang from helicopters. Thus, Mechai Panchar = Mitr Chaibancha. Picharak = Petchara Chaowarat, who plays Van Far. Chokiwa Luck is still unknown, but he’s probably the guy who came up with Thailand’s many, many translation schemes that make doing research in English agonizingly frustrating! If I ever get off my lazy butt Mitr Chaibancha will be back when I watch the Red Eagle movies I have of his.
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: awful monster costumes, giant tongue dudes, Mitr Chaibancha, Petchara Chaowarat, Thailand, witchcraft