Tah Tien

Tah Tien is ostensibly a retelling of an old Thai folk tale about a battle between two giants, Yuk Wud Jaeng and Yuk Wud Pho, that, as legend has it, resulted in the flattening of one side of the Chao Phraya riverbank known as Tah Tien (“flattened dock”). However, it takes a very long and, by all appearances, aimless route to get us to that battle, and, as a result, comes off as more of an unintentional cock-and-bull story than anything else. Chaba, the girl-cum-frog who emerged from the egg, comes to share a shack with an old man who is seemingly unperturbed by having a giant, upright-walking toad for a roommate. Domestic bliss ensues, exemplified by a scene in which we see the frog sitting back in a rocking chair and puffing on a gigantic cigarette. When in her humanoid form, Chaba is played completely without affect by former Miss Bangkok Suphak Likitkul. The character is apparently some kind of magical being, and is shown performing various Bewitched-style feats, such as when she makes a sumptuous feast appear with the blink of an eye. Having baffled us enough with Chaba the frog girl, Tah Tien next takes us deep within the jungle, where we’re treated to a succession of scenes in which Sombat Methanee--portraying Narane, a heroic hunter--has a series of encounters with the ferocious beasts therein. These are represented by poorly inserted stock wildlife footage, until those moments when close contact with our star requires them to become either men in animal suits or hilariously stiff looking life-sized puppets. There is also a very strange, slow motion fight between two men in floppy dinosaur suits that takes place. Finally this section brings us to an incredibly long sequence in which one of Narane’s fellow hunters spies on two girls skinny dipping, complete with a triple repeat of the same underwater shot of their naked butts as they swim by. When this scene is ended with the arrival on the scene of a man in a droopy-boobed ape suit, the impression is completed that Tah Tien has suddenly switched reels with a 1950s Nudie Cutie film.