Ghost Money (1981) (Thailand)

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A poor alcoholic undertaker has a shitty second wife (Malee) who has a shittier son (Mol) and they make the lives of his children (daughter Chaulau and son Lorr) from his previous marriage a living hell. Malee threatens to leave unless the kids obey her and her sleaze-ball son has the hots for his “sister”. She has no desire to reciprocate but that doesn’t stop him from trying... forcefully. New-mom stops giving the kids money so Lorr hatches a plan along with his two friends to gather up some “ghost money”. A custom of the area has families bury their loved ones with some coins in their mouth and a little youthful grave robbing puts some cash in Lorr and his friends’ pockets. While this is going on, we’re also following the life of a dedicated young teacher and the vacationing hunk (he kind of looks like a Thai Colin Hanks) courting her. They visit a local spot with a bad reputation called Leang’s Birds Hill. The place has seen a couple deaths and has a supposedly haunted cave where the sound of birds can be heard, although the area is shockingly void of our avian friends. The young romantics experience the noise first-hand and exit the cave after quickly being unable to pinpoint the source. Nightmares begin to plague the teacher and when she shares with Lorr and his friends that she had visited the locally avoided spot, the kids realize there’s some more money they can get their candy-buying hands on. They dig up a body which is in far better condition than it has any right to be and make one hell of a score. Two things happen when one enterprising child-creep removes the gold coin from the corpse’s mouth. 1) It starts storming and 2) the strange pot Lorr dug up behind a temple begins blowing green smoke into the air. Lorr places his loot in the pot he found and Mol spies him in the act of depositing his ill-gotten goods. Of course, grave desecration will not go unanswered by the world beyond and a ghostly presence begins popping up and terrorizing the little shits with fatal results. Mol steals the antique coins and heads off to sell them which puts a hamper on Lorr’s plans to return them to the corpse after his friend is found dead. The dead child’s grieving mother gifts the coins he had to the teacher and she gets her ass possessed by the wandering spirit and has her carry out his vengeance come nightfall. More bad shit happens, the ghost makes Lorr his little minion and more people get seriously hurt as the ghost’s malevolence plays out. Fortunately for everyone, an elderly shaman has just returned to town to battle the evil spirit making a mess of everything... but not really... he dies shockingly quick (offscreen, to boot!). Thai Colin Hanks gets his hands on the shaman’s wand (No. Don’t be gross.) and most of the surviving cast set out to stop the evil. Glowing red hypno-eyes, echoing creepy voice, mangled child hands, worms, murderous animated ghost birds and some other wonderful weirdness pop up in this admittedly over-long but enjoyable enough bit of supernatural shenanigans from Thailand.