The supernatural and post-war Thai cinema

This article explores several productions from the lower-class and provincial ‘16mm era’ film form of post-war Thailand, a series of mass-produced live-dubbed films that drew heavily upon the supernatural animist belief systems that organized Thai rural village life. It will illustrate that such ghostly discourses interject liberally into the films’ diegesis and are associated particularly strongly with female characters at a time when gender roles are being renegotiated. Through textual analysis combined with historical data, the article explores the ways in which films such as Mae Nak Phra Khanong (1959) by Gomarchun, Nguu Phii (1966) by Saetthaaphakdee, Phii Saht Sen Haa (1969) by Pan Kam and Nang Prai Taa Nii (1967) by Nakarin therefore function as a means to negotiate the dramatic changes and wider context of social upheaval experienced by Thai viewers during this era, much of which was specifically connected to the post-war influx of American culture into Thailand.