A man named Si-mok visits a gallery to see an art exhibition. However, when he arrives he finds the walls empty and the place deserted. A passing guard informs him that the exhibition is over, but at that moment he spies a single oil painting hanging on a corner wall. He stops in his tracks: the picture is of his deceased wife.
Muttering to himself in disbelief, he takes a cab home but is then further shocked when the driver, who seems to know his name, takes him in a completely different direction. Ignoring Si-mok's cries, the driver says he will take him to the “Red Portrait”, and sure enough Si-mok soon finds himself in a studio with the man who painted the portrait he saw earlier. Si-mok's nightmare is only beginning, however, as he is soon to witness (from under the bed, where the painter shoves him) a ghostly apparition and a grisly murder. His wife's spirit, it seems, is out for blood.
Director Lee Yong-min is considered the leading director of horror films in 1960s Korean cinema. Although his early classic Flower Of Evil (Agui kkot), about a blood-sucking flower that holds the soul of a man's deceased lover, has been tragically lost, in recent years A Bloodthirsty Killer (Salin-ma, also referred to as A Devilish Homicide) has been the subject of renewed interest by Korean cinephiles. Although until a few years ago the whereabouts of the copyright holder was unknown and so the film could only be screened at the Korean Film Archive, the relevant person was eventually found and it has now even been released on DVD.
Classic Korean horror films seem to spring from certain templates, the most common being a story about a woman who is deceived, betrayed and then killed before coming back as a ghost to exact her revenge. A Bloodthirsty Killer also follows this formula, however in other respects it stands out from its contemporaries. Most noticeable is the director's distinctive style, exaggerated and slightly absurd, with characters behaving in strange and unpredictable ways, and the plot lurching quickly from one supernatural event to the next. The character of the ex-wife Aeja was played by the well-known actress Do Geum-bong, who appeared in virtually all of Lee's best known works. Among actresses of that period, she was known for her strong, forthright personality and no-nonsense attitude. Her performance here is one of the crazier roles of her career, given all the cat tails and fur, but she is supported by a talented and diverse cast.
Lee possesses a talent for producing striking visual imagery as well, despite the difficult conditions under which it (and almost all 1960s Korean films) was shot, with a rushed schedule, shoddy equipment and a lack of quality film stock. The film's technical deficiencies show through, however the level of creativity and energy in this work more than make up for it. The audience for which this film was intended was surely more impressionable than the jaded genre fans of today, and likely they were terrified by the plot's sharp and unexpected turns. Contemporary viewers will watch it in a completely different way, but it is still a source of amazement and wonder: one of the most original Korean horror films ever made.
Darcy Paquet