DVD Covers for Algernon

Holy shitballs, Ricky, the Post-a-palooza continues! After last night’s wallet-eating drinkathon (see pics in Chris’ previous post), I took my hangover for a walk around Chinatown this afternoon. No trip to Chinatown is complete without bootleg DVD browsing, of course. And I say “browsing” because it’s more fun to read the mangled “Engrish” on a copy of V for Vendetta than it is to actually watch a $5 handicam-shot version of the film. I did however buy a few not-videotaped-in-a-theatre-by-a-guy-breathing-over-the-soundtrack Asian titles that probably won’t show up in North America, among them a Thai film called The Unborn.

Now, there are various places online that spotlight laughably bad mangled English on bootleg DVD packaging, but this back cover text is interesting because it isn’t uniformly bad. Most of these “translations” seem to be comprised of some mix of running an Asian version of the text through Babelfish and throwing a game of Boggle at a keyboard, but this one starts out quite coherent and gradually descends into fractured nonsense – as if written over the course of several weeks by Charlie (“Charley”) in Flowers for Algernon.

It goes like this:

Based on a true story that became the talk of the town in Thailand in 2000, the Unborn is written and directed by Bundit Thongdee. Hie precious works include Hoe Down Show Down, the second highest grossing box office hit for 2002, and “The Father’s Heritage” which was well-received by critics and audiences alike.

A few spelling errors and inconsistencies aside, it’s not too bad, and can be clearly understood. Then things start to fall apart in the second paragraph/sentence.

The story begins when Por (Indira Charoenpura of Nag Nak). Who is about to give birth, wakes up in a hospital after being brutally beaten by a drug dealer.

Whoops, what the hell is that period doing in there? And why does that sentence need to be its own paragraph? Moving on.

Frightened and confused, Por finds herself confronting strage and disturbing occurences. She hears theweir of a child, and has to ceal with the appearance of a my sterious woman (Prangthong Changdam of Tigress of the King River) who she has never mer herore.

Charley’s clearly off his meds, adding random spaces, wildly misspelling some words, and then making other ones up altogether. Is there nothing sadder than the theweir of a child? Is there?!? One last sentence to go.

Trapped between reality and illusion, Por faces the most terrifying experience of her life?

This is the final Hail Mary, where the author gives it all he’s got before giving in to utter confusion, indicated by the questions mark at the end. Trapped between reality and confusion indeed! Those DVDs aren’t $4 apiece for nuthin’.