With the help of her mother, Na-ju kills her husband Han-su's (Park
No-shik) baby boy - but the kid's deceased mother Wol-ha (Kang Mi-ae)
appears as a ghost, brings the boy back to life, and calls Han-su back
from a business trip to protect his boy ... But what's the story behind
all of this? Flashback, circa 10 years: Han-su, then Wol-ha's boyfriend,
and Wol-ha's brother Chun-sik are arrested on political charges, and
Wol-ha becomes an entertainer to make ends meet and try to save up
enough money for the bribes necessary for the release of either man.
Eventually, she is able to buy one of them free, and Chun-sik tells Han-su
to accept freedom - but only if he marries Wol-ha. This, Han-su does
gladly, and after his release, it doesn't take Han-su long to get rich, so
rich in fact that he is able to emloy a cook in his household - Na-ju. Wol-ha
is a good wife, and she bears Han-su a child, but then she falls ill, and
despite the doctor's best efforts, she won't get better. The doc soon
figures out that someone is deliberately poisoning her, and he confronts
Na-ju with that, who eventually confesses. But rather than report her, the
doctor only wants to have his share of the wealth Na-ju is expecting from
all of this. Despite Na-ju's best efforts though, Wol-ha just won't die
because her spirit is too strong, so she even seduces Wol-ha's husband and
makes sure she finds out about it, but to no avail. She drives a rift
between the friendship of Han-su and Wol-ha's brother Chun-sik, who has
just escaped from jail, but again, to no avail. Finally though, she has
Han-su catch a man in Wol-ha's quarters, and when Han-su (rather
hypocritically) accuses her of cheating on him (which she didn't, it was a
set-up) and they have a fall-out, Wol-ha kills herself. Back in the now,
Na-ju, who after the death of Wol-ha has become Han-su's second wife, her
mother and the treacherous doctor make up plan after plan to kill Han-su
and son so Na-ju can inherit everything, but plan after plan backfires,
and ultimately, Wol-ha's spirit appears to all three of them, scares them
shitless and sees to it that they are all met with violent deaths ... Horror-melodrama
that's a bit too cheesy and too blunt to be really good, and too
old-fashioned (even for the time it was made in) and crude in its horror
aspects to qualify as a genre classic - but somehow, these shortcomings of
the film are also its virtues to a degree: The film's cheesiness and
bluntness is exhilarating to a point, its old-fashioned and crude shocks
pieces of nostalgia and likeable reminders of a time long gone. That all
said, The Public Cemetery under the Moon is still anything but a
masterpiece, but an enjoyable piece of horror from a time long gone by.
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