A beloved and devoted priest (Song Kang-ho) from a small town volunteers for a medical experiment which fails and turns him into a vampire. Physical and psychological changes lead to his affair with a wife of his childhood friend who is repressed and tired of her mundane life. The one-time priest falls deeper in despair and depravity. As things turns for worse, he struggles to maintain whats left of his humanity.

Oldboy director Park Chan-wook found out the hard way when a teaser poster for his vampire pic Thirst was banned because it depicts a priest in a sexual context.

Poster features the figure of a bat, which is the Korean title of the film, using the images of its leading character, a priest-turned-vampire (Song Kang-ho) being strangled by a naked woman (Kim Ok-bin).

The ban is the work of the South Korea's Media Rating Board, which has become more strict about the depiction of sexuality these days. The international poster for John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus was banned in February.

Thirst, co-financed by Universal, is due for release in South Korea on April 30; the production team still plans to use the poster as key artwork for marketing outside Korea.