So.. our “Thrilling Adventures!!” March 2015 Movie Review Festival is officially underway, and in the spirit of all Globe-Trotting Adventurers, we head waaaay waaaay to the other side of Terra Incognito. Well… Russia actually… for our first cinematic adventure gem. It’s 2007’s “Tomb Raider” wannabe “Skalolazka and the Last of the Seventh Cradle”. Neko’s been on the prowl for this one for quite a while. Russian film can be remarkably stubborn when it comes to getting any kind of English friendly DVD release, and this one is no exception. In fact… the only release outside of the Russian Region 5 unsubtitled one is… weirdly enough… a French Region 2 that came with no subtitles at all… and no Russian audio language track either! Yep. It was a straight “dubbed into French” release that was about as worthless for this wee kitten as you might get. D’ohh!!

Synopsis? Sketchy at best, but here goes: “An exciting story about incredible adventures of Alena Ovchinnikova a female rock climber, expert in ancient languages ​​who comes into possession of an ancient artifact of enormous unknown power and by the fate’s will, becomes the savior of human civilization.”

Yep. It took a bit of prowling about to locate some Russian subtitles… in Cyrillic script… that yours truly could work her obsessive Catgirl magic upon to give me some reasonably workable English translated ones to make watching this one possible. Whew!! Yep… my lovely “dorogaya” thinks I’m crazy… and maybe she’s right. ;) The only way you’ll know for certain is to “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitors and see for yourself…

So… first up some ground rules for our lil’ Festival. In selecting the films for this, I had to come up with at least some kind of parameters as to what would be properly considered a “Raiders” inspired film. Firstly, there has to be a Hero… or Heroine, adventure is an equal opportunity employer after all… Secondly they should be in pursuit of some kind of Treasure… gold, jewels, lost alien tech, magical doodads, you name it. And thirdly, there should be no shortage of exotic travel, deadly dangers, and evil villains to defeat along the way. And… maybe a little romance? Hey… Miyuki’s a big grown-up girl now… and a little romance along with all the derring-do is never a bad thing in this lady’s book. ;)

With that… it looks like “Skalolazka” will fit the bill nicely. It’s more a Russian version of “Tomb Raider” than “Indiana Jones”, but then Lara Croft is practically the video game granddaughter of Indy anyways…. so I think we’re safe. ;)

Anyways… our story gets going as a rumpled archaeologist Dr. Green (played by Ivan Agapov) is reaching the center of a sacred Incan temple somewhere in the Andes of Peru. How do we know it’s a Sacred Temple? ‘Cause there’s a big old glowy stone altar in the middle of it with one of our film’s ancient treasures sitting on it, silly. ;) He grabs up the funky magic stone right before some of those evil mercenary commando types under the leadership of the brutal Colonel Baker (played by Dmitry Nagiyev) swoop in by helicopter to grab both it and our doctor on behalf of some mysterious cartel of evil rich guys. (Sounds a big vague? Told you those subtitles were originally in Russian… and translating Russian to English is a real bitch… trust this wee Catgirl. ;) )

They bundle the good Doctor away after blowing the temple sky-high… apparently the magic stone thingee has something to do with this big solar eruption and a giant killer flare that’s supposed to head our way soon. Apparently it’s a once every 10,000 year celestial event that most people figure will result in major world calamity. Sort of like most of the planet getting microwaved and cooked but good. Awww crap. What the faceless multinational corporation wants with the stone… one of seven scattered around the globe by a bunch of ancient astronaut alien guys from “Chariots of the Gods” called the Preludes… is anybody’s guess. They might have explained it, but it got hopelessly lost in translation, I’m guessing.

Cut to our heroine Alena Ovchinnikova (played by Anastasiya Panina). She’s in Moscow where she works as a linguist and folklore expert at a museum when she’s not out doing her favorite thing, rock climbing. Or trying to spend time with her video game obsessed boyfriend and computer programmer Leha (played by Ilya Pale). Their relationship is as rocky as some of the mountain cliffs Alena loves climbing. Now, our heroine Alena is young, pretty, and vibrantly active, with lovely blonde hair and piercing blue eyes… how her boyfriend keeps ignoring her and her attempts at getting all lovey dovey for his silly videogames is totally beyond this little Catgirl. Must be a Russian guy thing… ;)

Pretty soon, the bad guys find they still don’t have all the magic stones, and Doctor Green realizes he’ll need help figuring out where in the world the final one is. Luckily he knows that Alena is a cracker jack expert on the Sun God cults of the world and one phone call to her sends Alena and Leha off to Phoenicia to locate the temple it’s located in, somewhere in modern-day Syria.

She does her rock climbing thing on a big ol’ cliff overlooking the ocean and finds both the temple, as well as accidentally smashing her way into the temple and finding the final “cradle” (That’s what they call the magic rock thingee… more weirdness from the subtitles? Don’t know…) while Leha petulantly hangs out on the beach pissed that she’s not spending time with him.

Right after she gets down, they have a big fight and then that kind of break-up that couples so mismatched like them always seem to have. He storms off, headed back to the hotel in the city to get his stuff and vamoose for home. After he’s gone, Doctor Green shows up, along with Baker and the soldier boys to thank her profusely for finding the temple for them and then shooing her off while they plan to break in and grab the final cradle. It’s so fast, she doesn’t even have time to show the good doctor the weird stone she found…

She gets stuffed in a jeep with a couple of thugs… to drive her back to the city safely… yeah, right. She’s being taken for a ride alright… When the villains figure out she must have found the cradle they phone those guys to put the hard questions to our heroine which results in one of them trying to blow her head off with a rather big pistol. Luckily for Alena, the magic stone seems to like her, and it’s got a couple of neat powers. One, a nice bulletproof force field, and the other the creepy ability to slow down and freeze time around her. That lets her escape from the two easily and also save her from being run over by a local tour bus.

On the bus, she meets precocious little arab boy Ahmed (played by Joseph Al-Amir), her very own “Short Round”, a little guttersnipe and rogue who’ll do anything for a buck. Once he finds out that the pretty blonde Russian woman is on the run, he’s eager to lend a hand… for the right price of course. ;)

It doesn’t take long for the bad guys to show up either, but with sneaky lil’ Ahmed’s help, they get away on a couple of donkeys to hide from our villains in the desert. There we find out that the magic rock kinda likes our little urchin too, and that its biggest magical power is the ability to heal the sick and injured, which it does by restoring a twisted hand that Ahmed has. After that miracle, he swears to help Alena from then on… no charge!! There’s a visit to Ahmed’s blind aunt… some sort of Mystic, who gives Alena some cryptic advice about the Earth and the Power of the Sun… Oooohh! And a soapy sponge bath at her steamroom… Guess they had to throw some nudity in there somewheres…. ;)

The bad guys catch up to them after they make their way to the nearby city of Maalyulya so Alena can try to get her passport back as well as use the internet to try to find out about the cradle. There’s a big chase scene here through the back streets and over the rooftops of the city that is probably the best stunt sequence in the entire film. We get to see Alena at her best using a mix of parkour and her rock climbing skills to evade the mercenaries and Baker as they try to close in on her. One spectacular roof collapse later and she’s “rescued” by Dr. Green only so he can try to trick her into giving him the cradle. When that fails he resorts to strangling Alena until rendered unconscious by a well thrown watermelon from Ahmed.

It’s only a matter of time before the bad guys corner her, but she hooks back up with errant boyfriend Leha who’s been frantically looking for Alena since she got in trouble. Seems he really does love her after all… ahhhh!! With some final help from Ahmed’s Uncle Cooley, a military pilot, they escape the Middle East for the Bavarian Alps to meet with Professor Carl Vaydenhof, another expert on those pesky Preludes. Yes, yes… with the crack commando guys not too far behind…. don’t worry, the movie’s almost at the climax.

It’s here that we find out that apparently the cradles are some sort of “defense system” made by the Preludes to intercept the deadly solar flares when they occur and transform their energy into a release of magical seeds that travel around the earth and heal the planet and nurture new life. But… they have to be in the hands of a pure worthy soul on a mountaintop just at the time the flare hits Earth to work. Oh… and that’s 20 minutes or so away…. How convenient. :)

So as the mercenaries pounce our heroine sneaks off to a nearby mountaintop to be there for the big event. The evil Baker and his men follow, capture Leha and try to use him to threaten Alena and get her to relinquish the cradle. Will they succeed? Yeah… like that’s gonna happen…. :)

Can’t say the very “New Age-y” ending was as compelling as the end of “Raiders”… in fact for me and Carolyn it seemed awfully silly when you get right down to it. Still, good triumphs over evil, our two lovebirds return home to Moscow to a new life together and the World survives yet another apocalypse by the skin of its teeth. Guess that makes it all good.

So… to wrap things up, I guess I’d give “Skalolazka” a so-so 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s an OK film… but the really esoteric “New Age” folklore felt goofy… and no amount of ancient aliens or the like really made it seem less so. It might have worked better in a Japanese anime than here, but hey, yours truly may be missing a lot of the subtleties thanks to my subtitles. The film looks really good. It’s a top-notch effort with excellent CGI effects and stunt work along with a good cast… particularly Anastasiya Panina as Alena who is both a very likable, spunky, and attractive heroine overall. She has good physicality and easily managed to make her climbing scenes look very real. Ahhhh… and the writers weren’t shy about letting Miss Anastasiya get a little bit dirty and scuffed up too when needed. Definitely added some believability to the character. She gets a couple extra purrs for being my newest Russian Action heroine to keep an eye out for…

As I’ve said, there’s currently no good English friendly DVD release for this one, and my biggest guess is that the whole folklore aspect of the plot was a big turn off for any Western distributors who figured most audiences would be left scratching their heads. Still, it’s a well made film, and I could definitely see a niche genre audience being interested in giving it a look should they ever change their minds. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

A Trailer you ask? Why if your Favorite Catgirl can scour the globe for the original film, do ya think she’d miss snagging a wee Trailer for all her Gentle Visitors? Perish the thought!! :)

So after our lil’ excursion to Russia and a movie that was actually pretty darn good… how about we jump in the wayback machine to return to the wild euro-trash cinema of the 1980’s for our next “Thrilling Adventures!! March Movie Review Festival” offering here at the ol’ Litterbox and a look at a film reputed to be one of the worst ever made by infamous euro-sleaze director Jess Franco, 1983’s “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro”.

Our synopsis goes like this: “A group of greedy explorers and soldiers of fortune take a safari deep into uncharted Africa to search for the daughter of a dying woman lost years before as a child in a plane crash. That child, Diana, has grown to womanhood as the White Goddess of a tribe of vicious natives guarding the secret of a horde of diamonds worth millions. Will their greed, lust, and murderous plots result in riches or death for them all in the heart of the savage jungle?”

So this time out we get promised two-fisted heroes, a treasure of diamonds, and even a spunky jungle girl to boot! Somehow though… I have the feeling it’s all gonna go spectacularly bad…. ;) But I’m a big girl now… and suitably warned, I’m ready to experience the horror that is… “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro”.

Our film gets going with a flashback in which some goofy Scotsman and his granddaughter survive this awful small plane crash somewhere in the heart of “Darkest Africa” only to be mistaken as Gods by some tribe of vicious natives… A really goofy sequence in which our natives see the plane in trouble do that really fake plane crash bit where you fly close to the ground while they dub in some stupid sputtery motor noises and then quickly cut to an explosion juuussst over the horizon. Yeah… right. Then our “natives” arrive… scampering to the crash site out of a cornfield. Yes… an honest-to-goodness cornfield, all cultivated and farm fresh… implausibly out in the middle of our impenetrable jungle. Carolyn took one look at that and started laughing so hard that I think she finally understood exactly what the fun of truly bad movies can be. The whole silly scene pretty much summed up what kind of cinema experience this one was gonna be… :)

Years pass, and a group of european explorers venture into that same area in search of our film’s title treasure… the “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro”. Which actually seems to mean a bunch of sparkly crystals that look like the quartz inside a hunk of shattered geode… as for Kilimandjaro? It’s not really ever mentioned, nor is its iconic peak ever even seen throughout the entirety of this fairly abysmal film. Safari leader and guide, Payton (played by Albino Graziani) manages to get himself and his people captured by the tribe and one by one they are killed by their absolutely psychotic priestess Noba (played by Aline Mess) for their foolish greedy attempts to steal the sacred treasures of her people. She’s one mean lil’ native wench… with a mean streak a mile wide and about the only actor in this film with a clear understanding of her role: “Be sexy, crazy, homicidal, and run around topless as often as you can.” It’s a role she seems to like a lot… ;)

Luckily for Payton, she not the only sexy topless jungle girl in this movie, as our heroine Diana (played by 80’s German sex kitten, Katja Bienert) has grown up and become the stereotypical “White Jungle Goddess”, whose main job appears to be lounging around in the trees all day half-naked eating fruit and gazing at the wonders of nature with her pet monkey. Oh… and rouse herself from her daydreams long enough occasionally to save such unfortunate and unworthy doofuses like Payton when the need arises. Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

She hears the horrible screams and clumsily swings through the trees to the rescue. Interceding on behalf of that worthless thieving creep, she uses the clout you get by being a Goddess to allow Payton to flee with his miserable life much to the downright annoyance and scorn of High Priestess Noba. Not a real fan of our nature girl Diana, it seems… you just know that’s gonna pop up later in our movie. Sexy interracial jungle girl catfight, anyone? (Sadly… as much as it seems like a gem of an exploitative plot notion for a movie like this, it never ever happens… why is anyone’s guess. Maybe in the remake… ;) )

Of course Payton tells all about his miraculous savior once he gets back to civilization, and it isn’t long before a buddy of his the sleazy guide and hunter Pereira (played by Antonio Mayans) decides to cash in on the info by promising Diana’s ailing mother Hermine (played by Franco film regular Lina Romay), on her death-bed that he and Payton can “bring her back alive” from the depths of the jungle. Problem is… her Uncle Mathieu (played by Oliver Mathot) and Diana’s slutty cousin Lita (played by Mari Carmen Nieto) have no desire to be happily reunited with the lost girl and lose out on inheriting the old lady’s fortune. So of course they immediately sign on to join the dangerous expedition… for Diana’s sake of course. Right…. ;)

Lita… yep, she’s quite the scheming lil’ bitch. She pretty much shows us her major place in our story right away with a risqué sex scene with Uncle Mathieu cementing their plan to leave Diana in the jungle if they actually find her… kill her if need be… and split the inheritance. Only one other player needs to join our expedition to make it complete, hulking Safari boss Rofo (played by Javier Maiza). He’s that stereotypical Type-A “Alpha Male” macho asshole that always comes into one of these stories to brutally drive the poor native bearers and generally bully anyone else he can until somebody kills him later in the story. There we go. Body count…. errrr…. I mean “cast”… complete. ;)

So, then, all plans in place, “Evil Uncle”, “Wicked Slut”, “Thieving Gigolo”, and “Vicious Thug” all head out on safari… Hmmm, you just know this isn’t going to go well. At least for them, anyways… ;)

Sigh… Which pretty much means I’m not fond of any of the characters as heroes or heroines. The most sympathetic is Diana the Jungle Girl… but she’s pretty much a vapid empty-headed airhead bimbo who spends practically every moment lounging around in the trees in some goofy daze. The main villain Noba has more real charisma than the entire rest of the cast, but… but… she’s the villain!! I can’t root for her, even if she is justifiably pissed off at the white people trying to invade her people’s lands and steal their stuff…. And the rest of our cast? My goodness… a more self-centered and greedy bunch of characters I could never have imagined inhabiting the same film.

So the rest of our story plays out as you might expect. The safari finds Diana… eventually… after blundering around the jungle stupidly killing a couple tribesman to really give Noba a reason to go on the warpath. Diana’s Grandpa? He’s the hopelessly nuttier-than-a-fruitcake honorary “Great White Chief” of the tribe and suffering some kind of paranoid dementia that has him wanting to aid Noba in killing anybody he thinks might be after the treasure. No a lot of sympathy there, as he hangs out in his hut playing bagpipes and mumbling about “his precious” like a Scottish gollum.

Our ridiculously tiny expedition dies off one by one… first drunken Payton, beheaded by Noba, then Rofo with the classic poison arrow in the back, finally Uncle Mathieu and Lita as they bumbled about helplessly in the jungle. Sleazy gigolo Pereira at least fares slightly better, bedding both Lita and our hopelessly horny Diana before ditching her and trying to make a lone getaway with the diamonds and then getting shot by crazy grandpa.

End result? Pretty much right back where we started with crazy grandpa ruling the tribe and obsessing over the diamonds while Diana can return to her tree for some more lazing about and daydreaming. Yep. That’s it.

So, by the standards we set for our marathon, “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro” pretty much blows it. There’s a treasure… but it’s pretty lame. I’ve seen better looking diamonds at the dollar store than the ones on display here. There’s no exciting safari… no thrilling deathtraps or menaces to avoid. No real heroes or heroines at all, let alone an intrepid adventurer to match Indiana Jones… Our jungle girl? She’s pretty enough… although she could have avoided all the closeups that really let you see her acne. Oooohhh! And for a “natural” topless jungle girl, she has the most embarrassing bikini tan lines on her breasts…. Sigh… with it’s wooden acting… terrible cinematography… … editing that looks like it was done with a chainsaw… and lousy locations that look almost nothing like the jungle, there’s really nothing about this one that I can recommend at all. I’m not certain I’d call this Jess Franco’s worst film, but I’m certain it’s pretty darn close to it.

Yep. We have a new winner here at the Litterbox… or loser if you will… with a bottom-of-the-barrel 0 “Meows” out of 5. I’ve seen bad movies but none as just plain boring and worthless as this one. It now holds the record as my lowest rating for any review I’ve written. It’s gonna be a while before I can wash the bad taste of this one out of my brain…. ;)

The DVD? Well… Ummmm… at least it’s cheap, easily found for around 7 $ US, should by some unknown reason you want to subject yourself to it sometime. The Shriek Show/ Media Blasters Region 1, is presented in a scratchy VHS transfer from a fairly dog-earred copy of English dubbed vintage. There is the original French audio track available as well.. and some oter Italian/ Euro trash cannibal movie trailers, but even with that, this one still stinks. Pass on it… you have my warnings…. ;)

Trailer? Wow… you are gluttons for punishment… but here goes. :)

Time for our latest installment in our March “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival here at the old Litterbox, with a trip to 1954 and a look at a classic old film, “Secret of the Incas”, starring Charlton Heston and Nicole Maury. One look at it and you’d be immediately struck by its resemblance to a certain adventure film starring Harrison Ford… Coincidence? Hmmmm?? Let’s find out. ;)

Our synopsis goes like this: “An ancient Incan folklore legend states that the Inca Empire was destroyed by their Gods when a gold and jeweled sunburst was stolen from the Temple of the Sun centuries ago by Spanish Invaders, and that the ancient civilization will be reborn once the treasure is returned. Harry Steele, a down-on-his-luck adventurer, part-time tour guide and full-time rogue, is seeking the artifact, as is his nemesis Edward ‘Ed’ Morgan. Along the way, Harry finds his attempts to uncover the treasure complicated by his becoming entangled in the troubles of lovely fugitive Elena Antonescu, an Iron Curtain refugee seeking help in reaching safety in the United States. Passions flare, greed rears its ugly head promising danger and the ever-present threat of death to any seeking to recover the hidden Secret of the Incas!!”

Hmmmm? So… never remember seeing this one on TV waaaay back when? Wonder why? This wee Catgirl knows she certainly does… Luckily I scored a really nice copy of this one on DVD just in time for our Festival. So, let’s grab our adventure gear, slip on our trusty bush hat and head off to exotic Peru for some classic romance, adventure, and thrills on the trail of the “Secret of the Incas”.

Can’t tell you how many times this title popped up while I was researching “Raiders” for our Review Festival. Was it even possible such a film could exist? Yours truly watched oodles and oodles of these sorts of films as a wee girl when they filled the burgeoning programming hours on cable TV and somehow, I never… ever… remember seeing this one. It’s a fairly big budget film too, filmed on location in Peru by Paramount with some fairly big name actors and actresses of the period. Where did it disappear to? Heck if I know… but there are theories…

A good number of people think that this one was the main cinematic “inspiration” for Lucas and Spielberg’s 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Both films were Paramount Pictures productions and the story goes that supposedly the directors hatched up a plot to have “Secret of the Incas” quietly “buried” in obscurity to cover up just how much “inspiration” they might have taken from that old movie… Conspiracy theory or truth? Who knows? But as with all things like that sometimes the crazy story is more fun than the boring truth.

Anyways… this one has never been released on DVD, but in some crazy quirk of Fate, has managed to slip quietly out of copyright and into the Public Domain, so “grey market” discs do occasionally pop up and your Favorite Catgirl managed to score herself just such a treat… and what a treat it was. :)

This 1954 film starts off with a picturesque vista of the Andes as an Incan native plays a haunting melody on a flute, the camera pans across the rugged terrain as a truck makes its way along a twisting mountain road… all in glorious Technicolor!! (Yes… yes… this wee lady is super goofy and nostalgic for the way old vintage Technicolor looks… faded but still vibrant and warm like the colors of an old paperback book… a look modern movies just never seem to capture. Just love it…) The truck reaches a rail crossing just as a small motorized rail car does the same, only to be halted by a couple of lazy burros at the crossing. Then Charlton Heston pops out of the rail car to shoo them off… in that snazzy vintage leather flight jacket, dusty khaki pants tucked into his boots, and sporting that battered wide-brimmed fedora we all know from somewhere…. ;) Oh yeah… now we know where Indy took his fashion hints from…

He’s definitely a “take charge” kinda guy right from the start, shooing away the burros and sparing an approving glance for the nervous, shy, but ever so pretty lady passenger in the truck before jumping back into the rail car to continue his ride into Cuzco.

Charlton Heston is playing our story’s hero, Harry Steele (Now isn’t that just about the perfect name for an action hero!) and he’s not exactly a “good guy”, that much you figure out right from the start. Nope… Harry’s one of those expatriate Americans that always seem to pop up in exotic locales in old movies, down on their luck and hustling any angle to make a living… always waiting for that “one big score” that will make them rich and let the return to the States a winner at last. Harry’s gig? Well, he hangs out at the airport bribing a buddy on the inside to let him look over the passenger manifests of incoming flights to find likely tourists he can scam into letting him lead the around Cuzco to see the sights… for a price of course. He’ll never get rich doing that… but keeps joking with his friend that one day a private plane will fly in and he’ll just steal it away for a quick trip home…. Or is he just joking?

We find out quickly that he makes ends meet by occasionally taking jobs from another seedy American Ed Morgan (played by classic star Thomas Mitchell)… a relationship that is obviously one of convenience as you can tell immediately how much the two dislike each other. Morgan is old and worn out… an ex-soldier of fortune and now some sort of shady middleman and “fixer”. He’s got a line on a job… a woman seeking help with a problem not exactly on the up-and-up. He’s willing to trade Harry the job for a little info on a personal obsession of his. He… and Harry too it seems… is obsessed with the local story about the lost Sunburst of the last Incan King. It’s one of those treasures for which there is a lot of story and legend and very little actual historical proof for. All he cares about is that it’s supposed to be a 30 lb. disk of solid gold covered with hundreds of diamonds and emeralds worth a veritable “King’s Ransom”. He think’s a recent story about an archaeological discovery… a 3D stone map of Machu Picchu that’s conveniently missing an important chunk… might be the map to its hidden location in the ruins of the old Incan capital. Oh… and he’s pretty certain Harry’s already got that missing piece…

Yes… yes… of course he does. Not that he’s willing to tell Ed that… or entertain any idea of sharing the treasure with his rival. he does agree to see the girl… mostly to throw Ed off the trail by thinking he needs the work. Naturally, the lady in question turns out to be our pretty “lady on the run” from the truck, Elena Antonescu (played by Nicole Maury), a Romanian refugee recently escaped from behind the dreaded “Iron Curtain” and looking for refuge in America. If only she can get there before the Romanian Secret Police catch her, that is…

As pretty as she is… and wow, Nicole Maury certainly is in this one… you’d think Harry would be eager to lend her a hand, but he’s too blinded by the prospect of the treasure to want anything more than a passing flirtation with Elena. Yeah… you just know that’s gonna change as the story progresses, old classic Hollywood loves their romance stories. However… the feeling of this relationship is pretty much like those in a “Film Noir”. Our hero is more than a bit of a rogue… our heroine is more than a little tarnished around the edges with a shady past and a desperate need to escape by any… and they hint pretty heavily… any… means necessary. So the love story’s going to be complicated and rough.

Eventually she gets tracked to Cuzco by Romanian diplomat Anton Marcu (played by Leon Askin), but not before Ed Morgan tries to scare Harry by sending a sniper after him at his hotel. Just to throw a shot at him and scare him… yeah, right. Harry’s a rough tough customer, though and a little thing like being shot at doesn’t phase him a bit. He races through his hotel to find the gunman and slap him silly… ooohhh, and steal away the money he was paid for the job. Gotta think of the bottom line after all. ;)

It does convince Harry that getting out of Cuzco might be the smart thing, and luckily Marcu arrived by small private plane in search of the wayward Elena. Just the ticket Harry’s been waiting for. Convincing Elena to act as bait, and help him steal they keys with a promise to fly her safely out of Peru, his real plan is to blow town and make a quick dash to Machu Picchu to snatch the treasure first.

There’s more of that classy understated 50’s style sexual tension between Harry and Elena once they steal the plane and fly off to the mountains but it’s more sizzle than steak, and after some effort they finally arrive at the legendary city in time to discover an archaeological expedition has already unearthed the Incan King’s tomb. So close to the treasure Harry wants… and so unaware of its very existence.

The expedition is a joint one between the Peruvian authorities and Doctor Stanley Moorehead (played by Robert Young). He’s that decent boring sort of “science-y”guy that lives for his work, so different from Harry in almost every way. He’s instantly smitten with pretty Elena, and she realizes it, recognizing her chance to make a move on the good Doctor to further her chances of reaching the U.S. This creates a triangle… well at least for Harry and Elena, the good Doctor is utterly clueless and only has eyes for Elena. Eventually he clumsily asks Elena to marry him, and she is conflicted, torn by her growing attraction to Harry, yet desperate for her chance to escape and ultimately still untrusting Harry’s true motives. Given a choice, would he choose her… or the treasure?

What could make things even more complicated? How about the arrival of Ed Morgan, still following Harry and still aching to seize the treasure for himself. He manages to blackmail Harry into coming up with a convenient lie to explain his presence and after stealing Harry’s revolver, pretty much tells him he’s now the “senior partner” in Harry’s plan to find the Sunburst.

Naturally, by this time in the film, it’s time for some “local color”. We get introduced to Dr, Moorehead’s native servant girl Kori-Tica who’s played by 50’s international Peruvian singing sensation Yma Sumac. Here, she’s a bit wooden as an actress… this was her first acting role… but boy, can she sing! She does a couple of traditional Peruvian folk songs in the latter part of our film. She’s got an absolutely amazing vocal range and it isn’t hard to see why such a talented and exotic woman would become an overnight sensation around the world back in the day. It’s a neat thing, and gives our film almost that “Bollywood” feel to have those couple of musical interludes thrown in.

She’s got a minor little role as Dr. Moorhead’s assistant, but it’s she that articulates the Incan natives desire for the expedition to find the legendary Sunburst. The legend has it that if it can be found and returned to the old Temple of the Sun here, then her people will finally be forgiven by the Gods and return to their former greatness.

Finding the Sunburst is a great lil sequence… and it’s the place where the most easily identified influence on “Raiders” can be seen. Harry sneaks into the tomb at night… armed with a polished bronze mirror depicted on his rock fragment, and using a flashlight and a quartz inlay over the Incan King’s resting place, he discovers the Sunburst’s hiding place by reflected light beam. Yep… just like in “Raiders”…. Unfortunately, there are no thrilling deathtraps to dodge this time, but at the climactic moment, Morgan catches Harry unawares and takes the treasure at gunpoint. He’s ready to gun Harry down, but the two of them are discovered by Kori-Tica’s brother. After a brief scuffle, Morgan clobbers Harry and the native and makes his escape with Sunburst and the horde of Incan locals scrambling in hot pursuit.

Harry wakes up… realizes Morgan has the treasure and sets out after him. There’s a deadly game of cat and mouse up among the rocky cliffs before the climactic face-off between Harry and Morgan. His gun empty, his body unable to cope with the thin air and the rigors of the chase, it’s no problem for our Harry to take the treasure back before Morgan collapses and fall to his death from the perilous cliffs.

Treasure in hand at last, will our hero choose to evade the Incas, and fly away alone a rich man, or return to the camp and surrender the treasure to face the authorities and claim the beautiful girl? Awwwww c’mon… like you have to ask…. Let’s just say, Yma Sumac’s got one more triumphant musical number at the Temple of the Sun and leave it at that… ;)

My goodness. This one was a hoot!! It was more of a character piece and a romance than a two-fisted adventure, and for this wee lady, it could have had some more “action-y” bits thrown in to spice things up, but for the most part it hits the target very well. Charlton Heston is a really good Harry Steele, and the delightful Nicole Maury an excellent heroine. (Goodness how I just love her vintage hairstyle in this one!! I soooo wish I could give mine a ‘do like that…) The rest of the cast shine as well, especially veteran Thomas Mitchell in the role of Morgan, who does a cracker jack job as the weary and obsessed villain. The budget was pretty good for it’s time and some of it was even filmed on location in Peru as well. For the purposes of our Festival, it hits all the right points too. Daring hero… check. Exotic locales… check. Lost Treasure… check. Slimy villain… check. Lovely spunky heroine… check. It’s got it all and then some.

With that, I can give it a well-earned 4 “Meows” out of 5. Yep, they just don’t make them like this anymore. Oh wait… apparently according to “Raiders”, they do, Hehehe!! It’s a hard film to find a DVD of, but surprisingly, the entire movie… Public Domain after all… is available at Youtube for your viewing pleasure. So for a “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival special treat, here it is in its entirety. Enjoy!!

The month continues and the weather improves hereabouts, so now we’re off to Taiwan for our latest entry in our March “Thrilling Adventures!! Movie Review Festival” and a look at 2009’s “The Treasure Hunter”. It’s East meets West as we take a look a what “Raiders” might be if you spiced it up with a whole lotta Wuxia swordplay storytelling and let it go all crazy… Asian style.

Our synopsis goes like this: “Qiao Fei is a relic expert with a gritty past. When his mentor’s daughter is held hostage over a map with a deadly history, the rugged warrior whips into action. Chaos erupts as he swoops in to the rescue and scours the sands for legendary riches rumored to be buried deep in China’s northwest desert. Chased by the shadowy “Sandstorm Legion” and challenged at every step by countless greedy adversaries, Qiao Fei faces danger at every turn to uncover the lost city – but, perhaps some treasures were never meant to be found…”

Well now. That certainly sounds promising. The Trailer has the right look, and it seems to meet all our Festival requirements, so let’s all give it a look, shall we? This wee lady’s not adverse to a lil’ Kung Fu creeping into my story now and again for fun, and Chinese films are nothing if not over-the-top when it comes to doing the whole “adventure” thing. ;)

Well, the story gets off to a start with a little bit of back story about a Lost City and a mystical pearl swallowed up by the trackless sands of China’s western desert. There’s some vague stuff about this group of warriors pledged to eternally protect the secret of the city, led by “The Eagle of the Desert”, but truthfully it’s all related in that somewhat incomprehensible way Chinese movie can get when laying out all the mystical stuff in a story. I was kind of hoping it would all clear up as the story went along…. but sorry to say, that never really happened. Ummmm… yeah…

However… the next bit, introducing us to our film’s hero.. the titular “Treasure Hunter” is a bit better. At a seedy inn smack dab out in the middle of the desert… sort of a cross between the one in King Hu’s “Dragon Inn” and the joint from “From Dusk Till Dawn” (Minus the vampires… ;) )… a group of nasty mercenary types are trying to sell the stolen artifacts they’ve hauled here all the way across Russia. The guy they meet up with turns out to be Qiao Fei (played by Taiwanese pop idol Jay Chou), this smartass relic expert who makes it his business not to go around “tomb raiding” but instead steals back such stolen ancient treasures from the thrives so they can be returned to their rightful owners. We get a fairly nice wire-fu fight scene and eventually the release of some sort of armoured mummy on horseback that our hero has to vanquish with his trusty bullwhip and impressive wushu skills. It’s pretty nice scene, and seems to promise a rollicking story full of mystical enemies… action… and oodles of stunts and the like as our hero fights to save some ancient treasure from greedy crooks. Too bad they didn’t stick with that simple story…

Well… OK… then we meet our story’s obvious heroine and love interest Lan Ting (played by Chinese model turned actress Lin Chi-ling), a lovely book writer who specializes in romance/adventure novels. Ooohhh… OK… yeah, a lil’ “Romancing the Stone” bit thrown into the mix, eh? Neko’s good with that… ;)

Lan Ting is sorta stuck with that stereotypical moment of writer’s block that seems to always happen in this kind of plot. She’s at the pinnacle of her success after her last novel, but somewhat unhappy with the way it’s typecast her as an author. Her fans want more and her editor is pestering her to finish that follow-up book he’s anxiously been waiting for. But before that can happen, Qiao Fei drops back into her life again. Seems they were childhood sweethearts back before our movie got going but they split apart over his sudden… and never really explained decision to just up and disappear to the desert. Say what? Ummm yeah… it’s another of those oddly never adequately explored plot elements that plague this one like an ancient curse…. Just roll with it…

OK… OK… anyways. Lan Ting is also estranged from her father… whose obsession with all things archaeological caused him to lose his wife and distanced him from a daughter utterly convinced that he loved his dusty relics and artifacts more than her. Qiao Fei apparently works for him now doing that whole stolen artifact recovery thing… although how long he’s been at that is never really explained either… especially given his other big “career choice”… But we’ll get into that later. They do that whole “angry Ex-es” thing and he leaves.

Now Lan Ting’s dad recently called her out of the blue to ask her to visit him, but when she does she get’s herself kidnapped by a scuzzy thief named… and I swear I’m not making this up… “Pork Rib” (played by Eric Tsang). She wakes up in the desert at the Inn we saw earlier where Pork Rib and his partner Master Hua (played by Chen Dao-Ming) are planning to learn from her the location of a map her father supposedly had that reveals the location of the fabled “Lost City”. Why didn’t they just get it from her dad? Because another bunch of nameless bad guys already killed him for the map the very night she had tried to visit him before she arrived. Awwww… crap. :(

Naturally those same guys show up here at the Inn, led by some weird bandaged guy just as Qiao Fei makes his appearance to try to rescue her. Yeah… that means we get another neat crazy ass CGI enhanced “wire fu” battle with bullwhips, and swords… and some kind of bandage “Mummy Fu” thingee from that bad guy. wierd… but hey… not the weirdest thing in this feature. That would be the nutty sandstorm cyclone that shows up out of nowhere and magically teleports a horde of tattered black-robed horse riding warriors right out of “Conan The Barbarian” practically on top of the Inn so that they can fight everybody and destroy the Inn. Ummm… huh? WTF?

Yep. Carolyn, my sweet wifey, was completely lost by this time and I can’t really say I blame her. I mean the fight was cool… and the resulting chase through the desert as the horsemen try to catch Qiao Fei and Lan Ting on his motorcycle and Master Hua and Pork Rib in their jeep was well staged, but once the legendary”Sandstorm Legion” get vanquished they just sort of disappear never to trouble our story again. Yep. You, o’ Gentle Visitors, are starting to see the problem with this film already… Neko knows you are… ;)

There’s just too many of these crazy unconnected plot elements for this story to ever make a whole lot of sense. Sigh…. I mean, it’s all very well made… and the sequences are fun… but they just seem like they don’t belong all in the same film, and none seem in any way connected in any convincing way.

So… as if things aren’t already confusing enough… our heroes reach this shantytown out in the middle of nowhere where it seems Qiao Fei’s ex-girlfriend Dao-dao has gone all insane, and wears this crazy iron skull mask and leads that band of warriors who guard the Lost City we heard about in the intro. Wait a moment? Ex-girlfriend? Ummmm? Wasn’t that supposed to be our winsome heroine Lan Ting? Yeah… apparently the writers figured Qiao Fei’s back story wasn’t confusing enough, so they cram in the idea that after he ran away as a kid to the desert he then learned kung fu and became the famous “Eagle of the Desert”. Or at least he used to be… seems he just up and walked away from that job too for no earthly reason and drove poor Dao-dao over the deep end. Sheesh… whatever…

About now we get to the point where everybody still alive after all the kung fu battles so far gets a copy of that map so central to things and makes a beeline for the Lost City to snag the treasure. We get some nostalgic flashbacks to explain what the heck Master Hua is all about. Seems he’s the only treasure hunting guy to ever make it to the city once and somehow get out alive. Mind you all 20 of his closest friends and companions didn’t make it out… and come to find out he only survived by… yep… eating their flesh to keep himself alive, thus explaining his sudden aversion to eating meat ever since his return. Ewwww… gross.

Once inside the city, our little group has to deal with the usual traps you’d expect. Rooms full of big machines that shoot flying boomerang blades, poison air, corpse flowers that give off a soporific scent that transforms you into a flesh-eating ghoul. Yeah… that kind of stuff. Oooohhhh… and once you finally break into the tomb itself, four guardian ghosts… or wraiths… or whatever… that want to kung fu you into bloody lil’ bits. One big fight later, and we get to the big legendary pearl, only to have it trigger that big doomsday notion where the city just collapses in to kill anybody inside. Will our heroes all die? Nawwwww…. of course not. They escape to cataclysm with some gold… well… OK… a lot of gold. But then just when you figure Qiao Fei and Lan Ying will work stuff out and end all romantically happy and the like, they just don’t. Nope. Instead Qiao Fei does that “ride off into the sunset loner thing” on his motorcycle and our heroine returns home to write the story of her adventures as her next big novel. The end….

Yep. That about sums it all up. All in just over an hour and a half. So… it’s fair to say this one is a good-looking film. It had some neat ideas… probably too many neat ideas… that ultimately made for a fast paced and terribly confusing story with little satisfaction at the climax. The acting is reasonable, if somewhat by the numbers, and the chemistry between the two leads unfortunately nearly non-existent. It just didn’t do it for me. Overall, I’d have to say it only manages a barely earned 3 “Meows” out of 5. Not a bad movie, just a mostly disappointing and ultimately forgettable one.

The DVD I watched was the Funimation Region 1 release done both widescreen and letterbox with good audio, both Mandarin and English dubbed. English subtitles were provided as well and were both good and accurate. You could probably find a copy for right around 15$ US, but unless you are a serious Jay Chou fan I can’t really recommend you spend much time trying to hunt a copy down. Ah, well…. at least it was better than “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro”.. ;)

As always, we end with a Trailer, to get your adventurous spirit in the mood… ;)

Whew!! Our whirlwind globe-trotting March “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival continues with a quick layover in Australia for a look at 1986’s “Raiders” spunky Aussie wanabee “Sky Pirates” (or “Dakota Harris” as it’s known in German releases). ;)

Synopsis anybody? ;) “WW2 Australia, August 1945. Flight Lieutenant Dakota Harris is called upon to fly a classified mission in an American DC-3 transport from a secret Australian airbase to Washington DC. On board is an American General and archeologist Reverend Mitchell along with one-third of an ancient stone tablet. The plane gets caught in a mysterious electrical storm and crash-lands in a sea, filled with long-lost ships. Rescued and brought back to Australia, Dakota finds himself court-martialed due to a false testimony by his co-pilot Squadron Leader Savage. Dakota escapes and gets help from Mitchell’s beautiful and feisty daughter Melanie. Together they set out to stop the evil Savage, who is after the 3 pieces of the stone tablet and their enormous power when combined together. A power which can be used for good… or for evil.”

World War 2… ancient astronauts… lost civilizations… the eerie heads of Easter Island… the powers of alien antimatter… daring aerial action… two-fisted wise cracking hero… and a pretty female sidekick. Yep. This sounds about right. So what the heck are we waiting for? Adventure awaits!! :)

Seems to me I remember this one vaguely from back in the day. I must have been 14 or 15 when it showed up on HBO or Cinemax and it certainly sounds like a movie a certain crazy girl would have watched back then, but my memories of it were pretty slim when I bumped across the DVD for this months Festival. Not the usual for it either, but of all things the Region 2 Danish release, given that this one hasn’t made it to anything but ancient VHS here in the States. Finding it was perfect timing too, given our Festival theme this month… sometimes the Movie Faries are kind to a certain lil’ Catgirl. :)

Our story gets right to it with a quick lil’ intro voiceover explaining that ancient astronauts did indeed visit earth waaaay waaay back when and before those Space Gods left, they bequeathed the early human race with a mystical stone tablet that contained the secrets to manipulating the almost unthinkably powerful material antimatter. Yep, antimatter… you know… that stuff that makes all the spaceships go all “whoosh” on “Star Trek”. Oh yeah…. Just the sort of stuff that ought to show up right around WW2… Oh yes… I have to admit…. about then I was soooo expecting the Nazis or Japanese to pop up and try to snag this treasure… but nope. The Allies are pretty interested in it though, and our movie’s hero… rough rugged Flight Lieutenant Dakota Harris (played by John Hargreaves) of the Australian Air Force gets called in to fly a top-secret delegation of American and Australian experts on a “hush-hush” mission to recover all three pieces of that ancient stone widget so they can do whatever it is army guys want to do with such dangerous items. (Hmmmm? Blow stuff up, maybe?… ;) )

Naturally Harris, daring pilot that he is, is the only guy they’d even consider for such a dangerous and important mission. Ahhhh and just as naturally of course he also gets to find an old rival, Flight Squadron Leader Major Savage (played by Max Phipps) in charge of it all. You just know the sort of guy he is… pompous, mean-spirited, and a general all around a-hole of the first order. He absolutely hates our hero… and in return Harris just sees him as a royal pain in the butt and ultimately not worth his time even worrying about. That’ll come back and bite him in the butt…

They take off with an American General named Hackett (played by Alex Scott) and an archaeology expert Rev. Mitchell (played by Simon Chilvers) along with a mysterious box said to contain apiece of “the worlds biggest jigsaw puzzle”. Harris is curious, but he’s a simple pilot and all he really cares about is flying… well that and trying to catch the eye of the Reverend’s pretty daughter Melanie (played by Meredith Phillips) there to see her father off on his journey. Oh yes… you just know pretty Melanie is our story’s love interest, but at first there’s the usual “Girl meets Boy… Boy lusts after Girl… Girl thinks Boy is a complete childish idiot…” to work through. ;)

So it’s off to exotic Bora-Bora where a colleague of the good Reverend has the second piece of the tablet waiting. One problem… our little airplane never makes it there…

Nope. At some point, a curious airman decides to take a peek at the mysterious cargo and sets it off, causing a weird light show and electrical storm to rip the DC-3 out of time and space and causes it to crash in some freaky Sargasso sea of lost ships. Before the plane sinks, the everybody still alive manages to make it to a life raft, and Harris pisses Major Savage off by unceremoniously dumping the box containing our ancient widget overboard to make room for survivors. Yep… you just know an asshole like him will make trouble about that once they get rescued…

For a little flavor we get to visit one of the ships… the USS Indiana, supposedly one of the two ships that took part in the famous “Philadelphia Experiment”. Yep… more messing around with antimatter that apparently caused the ship to tumble into a space/time warp and end up here with phantasms of the crew endlessly reliving the final moments over and over again. Oooohhh, creepy!!

Not wanting to end up trapped here forever like the Indiana, Harris decides to take the raft to land on a nearby island, barely visible through the freakish mists… an island whose giant stone heads can only be on place on Earth… Easter Island. They never make it there though… as once they get underway, the island fades away mysteriously and the raft is inexplicably returned to the sea near Fiji, back along their original flight plan. Eventually… as luck would have it, they get picked up by a passing ship. Yay!!

Or maybe not… Once they get home, there’s a military inquiry and Major Savage uses it to place the blame squarely on Harris, telling everyone his crazy story is nothing but a pack of lies to cover up his own incompetence and cowardice. With the Reverend suspiciously nowhere around to back his story up, Savage gets his revenge and our hero gets sentenced to 10 years in military prison. Crap!! That’s not fair!

Not that he ever makes it to prison, mind you. Nope… our hero’s one of those rough tough guys more than willing to slug a couple of guards and jump out of a movie jeep to make his escape and threaten a superior officer at gunpoint to discover Savage’s plan to keep the mystical stone tablet for himself at any cost. Even if it means killing everybody who knows of its existance. Like pretty Melanie. :(

Harris saves her naturally… from a rather goofy murder attempt by savage at the museum where she works. He tries to kill our girl by rolling a fragmentation grenade into an elevator she’s riding. A freaking grenade? Yeah… one that blows the heck out of the floor in that tiny elevator sending a nameless cleaning lady plummeting to her death, but somehow leaves nary a scratch nor smudge on Melanie. Some “anti-personnel” device… That puny explosion had both me and Carolyn shaking our heads in disbelief.

From this point forward it’s off to find Melanie’s dad, the Reverend at his research lab at Ayres Rock. We get that prerequisite sleazy bar scene and a game of Russian Roullette with some nasty guy to find out he’s already been kidnapped by Savage and his partner. There’s a good old fashioned bar brawl… Melanie gets kidnapped… we get a cool truck chase reminicent of the one in “Raiders”… and then it’s time to steal a plane and fly off to Bora-Bora to see if the Reverend’s collegue can help.

All along the way, we get that clever banter as Harris and Melanie do that teasing little dance that hero and heroine always do as they flirt and get closer in one of these stories. We get some really nice stuntwork here as the plane gets attacked and set ablaze forcing Harris to do some wingwalking to put out the fire. It’s simple, but nicely done, and probably the biggest single piece of stuntwork done for the film. Very effective and proffessionally done too.

One by one, Harris and Melanie find the parts of the tablet, and of course that means eventually Savage will swoop in to steal away the prize… and the heroine… to make his big move to grab the final piece in the secret chambers beneath Easter Island. Yep… our big climax is coming… ;)

And yes… if you saw “Raiders” then you wont be surprised here either. The pieces come together… Evil proves unable to hold such awesome power… terrible death ensues and the secret chambers collapse burying the tablet forever… or at least until mankind is better able to deal with such terrible power. “Boy saves Girl… Girl finally fancies ruggedly handsome Boy… Kisses are exchanged… and you just know somebody’s getting lucky tonight… Hehehehe!!”

That’s pretty much it then. A fairly simple little story, done fairly well on what is apparently a miniscule budget compared to “Raiders”. It’s definitely nowhere as slick or polished a film, and the story leaves a bit to be desired, but all in all it’s an effective little “B” movie version of “Raiders” done with some style and panache that is in no way an embarrassment. John Hargreaves has the right look and carries himself well throughout as a credible “intrepid adventurer”. Meredith Phillips is good as our heroine and the chemistry isn’t bad, although again, the story is done at an awfully frantic pace to allow any real character development to sell the relationship completely. Ahhhh…. and the “period look”…. very credible. I have to confess, I’ve always liked that “vintage” movie setting for a story like this, and “Sky Pirates” manages that nicely, even with its small budget.

I like this one, even if I don’t remember much about the first time I saw it. Seeing it now was pretty much like catching it for the first time, and I honestly don’t know why it didn’t make more of an impression on me all those years ago. I give it a fairly well-earned 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a fun film that doesn’t take itself too darn seriously, makes only a couple of minor continuity and common sense flubs here and there that are easily overlooked for a great little evening’s movie watchin’ fun.

The DVD? Well… I’m told there’s a budget French release out there, as well as a German one. But I managed to find it on a Danish Region 2 one. It’s a full-screen version, suffering a bit from the cropping of the image, but suffering more from the somewhat fuzzy and dark source this one was mastered from, an old VHS release from the look of the image. Not the best way to see this film, but currently the best one available. If you are interested o’ Gentle Visitors, you ought to be able to scare up a copy for right around 20$ US or so.

Trailer? Unfortunently as hard to find as the DVD… but here’s a look at the Polish one for this anyways… Polish? Yep… ;) Enjoy!!

Time to swing by Mexico for a peek at 1985’s Jungle Adventure exploitation classic “Treasure of the Amazon” by Mexican director René Cardona Jr., the latest addition to our March “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival. Deadly jungle action, topless Amazon women, headhunters, poison darts, a sadistic ex-Nazi on a hunt for gold, a river of diamonds full of piranhas and killer crocodiles, and all the other exploitation film goodness you’d expect in a good 80’s “B” movie… ;)

Our synopsis reads: “In the depths of the lush, steamy Amazon jungle, rife with exotic and dangerous wildlife, a group of adventurers embark on a quest to discover a legendary river reportedly filled with diamonds “the size of your eyes” as well as precious jewels and gold, and in the process finds itself enveloped in incomprehensible barbarism. At the mercy of this mysterious jungle labyrinth, the treasure hunters are forced into fierce battles with vicious ruthless headhunters, ferocious alligators, piranhas, a tribe of topless female warriors, and, equally disturbing, the greed of their own colleagues, raising the question “Which is more treacherous, the greed of man or the perils of the jungle?”

Yep… a steamy impenetrable jungle… a treasure… deadly dangers… and perilous adventure. Sounds like this one fits our bill. Throw in some topless Amazon women and a nasty Nazi fugitive and I’m thinking they are really shooting to cover all the bases… Hehehe!! But seeing is believing, so let’s get to it then, shall we o’ Gentle Visitors?

Our story gets underway with one of those “This story is based on actual events” blurbs… but having seen it, I’d have to say it’s probably pretty loosely based on any real story… probably one with far less topless ladies roaming around a jungle. ;)

We see a riverboat chugging down a river, the Amazon, I’m assuming, but given the budget here, it’s probably some river in southern Mexico. Still, it looks “jungly” enough, and aboard our little riverboat we have the usual list of passengers… a few natives, some sketchy “solider of fortune” types, a jesuit priest, and Stuart Whitman doing his best “down-on-his-luck” adventurer burned out by one too many years in the big ol’ jungle for his own good. His name is “Gringo”… yep. And along with looking a bit old, and a little ragged and crazy around the edges, he’s more than a little paranoid about his stuff as one poor light-fingered native discovers when our hero chops off one of those fingers for getting a little to grabby with Gringo’s gear. Ouch!! Mind you, one scuffle later, and a missing finger is the least of that poor guys problems as he falls overboard into a school of voracious piranha. yeah… that has a way of just plain ruining your afternoon but good.

But that neat little scene sets the tone for this one fairly well. It’s another story about basically greedy people all conniving and conspiring to find the local treasures for themselves and the levels to which they are willing to sink to keep those treasures once they find them. What would those treasures be? Well… gold for one, but even more valuable is the rumors of a river tributary who’s shallows are filled with uncut diamonds. Yep, now there’s a treasure.

Our various players in this hunt for fabulous wealth? Well there’s Gringo… who found that treasure once, but lost both his companions and a little of his mind out in that hellish green wilderness thanks to the headhunting Jivaro tribe. Then there’s Klaus (played by Donald Pleasance), ex-Nazi on the run, with his topless loyal native guide Morinba (played by Sonia Infante), looking for that big score that will let him leave the jungle a rich man so he can fund the 4th Reich. Or how about Zapata (played by Pedro Armendariz Jr.) and Jairo (played by Jorge Luke) a couple of low rent goons looking to follow some gold prospecting gear to whomever ordered it with the lame idea of then taken that gold for themselves, some great guys, eh? Well, that about Oil company scouts Clark (played by Bradford Dillman) and his partner Dick (played by Clark Jarrett) who manage to find a few tantalizing diamonds along with some headless human remains while surveying. They figure where there are a few gems, there must be more… all the while conveniently ignoring the whole “headless human remains” clue… Naturally they’ll hook up with a weirdly out-of-place beauty named Barbara (played by former “Miss World” Ann Sidney) and go bumbling about in the jungle woefully unprepared. At least the final man with his eyes on the prize, Tacho (played by Emilio ‘El Indio’ Fernández) has the common sense to stay put in the trading post playing local “godfather” to the tribes and government representative to any of the white guys passing through all the while waiting for the others to find something and bring it out so he can strong-arm them and take most of it for “taxes”… yeah, right.

One by one these guys all venture forth into the jungle, and their paths cross now and again as they contend with the usual hazards of safari travels… quicksand, venomous snakes, crocodiles, leeches, flesh-eating land crabs, and vicious headhunting Jivaro tribesmen with their poison blowguns. Most of these guys all die… in some fairly gruesome ways… before this one is over, but like most treasure hunts, somebody’s gotta win, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly that our boy Gringo’s not as completely nutty as he first seems, has all the right woodland skills to stay alive, and a healthy dose of paranoia to keep his fellow hunters from sticking him in the back with something sharp and pointy. He’s definitely the front-runner to come out of the whole thing alive… and maybe… just maybe… manage to get a hold of the treasure too.

As an “anti-hero”, I suppose Gringo would be OK… but he’s hardly somebody I found myself rooting for, and even when he ends up saving our beauty queen Barbara, it’s more because he’s sorta horny from being all alone out here in the jungle and figures he can buy her affections with a split of the loot. The one character I did warm to, Morimba, wastes her excellent survival skills, translation and local knowledge, and sneaky jungle girl skills with a knife protecting slimy villain Klaus the Nazi, who only treats her like a loyal dog. Heck… after all her help, he even machineguns her down without a second thought just so her corpse will distract a bunch of piranha during a river crossing. Darn shame. I was soooo hoping she’d get fed up with his dumb Aryan ass and go all Xena, Warrior Amazon on his butt to get the money she needed to buy her daughters away from icky Tacho. Sigh…

The action is well filmed all-in-all, and our story makes better sense than I expected, but isn’t anything novel or new. There were some cool unexpected bits… like the finger chopping scene in the beginning, and Pedro’s nasty death in cave, tied up and eaten alive by a horde of crabs… that were nice. The headhunters really only get to behead a couple of guys, and we never get to see them do this “shrinking” thing with anybody’s noggin, so the gore really isn’t approaching the levels of say, an Italian Cannibal film, but the violence is pervasive throughout with almost none of our cast displaying much mercy or belief in the inherent sanctity of human life. In fact, the whole movie has more the feeling of one of those “made for TV” thrillers than an actual feature film… just my feeling, but carolyn kinda got that vibe too remarking that “this one was pretty tame”. (I really must have shown her some nasty films already since we’ve been together, if she’s got that opinion…. ;) )

Overall I’d say we had fun with this one, but it’s still basically a pretty forgettable film. definitely nowhere the caliber of “Raiders” in any way or shape. It’s a movie I’d have enjoyed watching on TV back in the day, but I don’t think I’d have rushed right out to see it at the theater. That would put it at a tepid 3 “Meows” out of 5. Another film not bad enough to be truly bad, but not “bad enough to be good” either. If jungle movies are your thing, and you haven’t yet seen it, hey… it’s easy to find on DVD for around 10$ US and you could do worse. Just make certain you watch it on the cheap…. ;)

What’s that? Our Trailer? But of course! I’d never leave without one. ;)

So… have any of my Gentle Visitors ever wondered what “Raiders” would be like if you mixed it up with a little vintage Eurosex naughtiness ala “Barbarella”? No? Well, what kind of globe-trotting Catgirl adventuress would I be if I didn’t dig deep in the DVD vault for something a little spicy… a little racy… a wee bit risqué to really show you just how much “Raiders” has influenced films from all around the world. This time out, the 1984 French film “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak” based on… of all things… an odd little bondage/fetish cartoon series. Yep, I kid you not. ;)

Our synopsis goes like this: “Sweet naive virginal Gwendoline leaves her convent school and arrives in China in a box on a quest to find the fate of her lost father who was last seen searching for a rare butterfly in the legendary “Land of the Yik Yak”. Saved from white slavers and a fate worse than death by her loyal maidservant and a devil-may-care adventurer, soon she is knee-deep in trouble. Along the way she and her companions must face pirates, scoundrels, vicious native tribesmen, poisonous desert windstorms, and a lost race of Amazon warriors guarding a volcanic mountain full of diamonds.”

Hmmmm? Yes… I know… Sounds a bit naughty… (Just the sort of film to tease my sweet Carolyn… and convince her I really am a nutty lil’ dweeb for sure. ;) ) but it also sounds really campy and way fun too. So for a bit of jungle adventure fun the way only the French could manage it, let’s all kick back and enjoy the fun together shall we? ;)

At first glance… this might seem an odd choice of film for our March Movie Review Festival, no doubt about it. A French soft porn sex farce based on a vintage bondage fetish comic series from Canada? Hey… why not? I admit it… I’m a fairly open-minded lady who’s not adverse to a little risqué action in my films. Certainly this one looked all light and fluffy and a whole lot nicer than some of the slasher films out there. Mind you… when Carolyn saw the DVD cover on Movie Nite she did raise an eyebrow and give me her best disbelieving smirk of amusement. But she’s a good sport… (and probably figured if it was toooo darn bad, we could probably find some way to amuse ourselves instead… ;) ) so with our popcorn and wine coolers ready we popped it in our player and cuddled in to watch.

However… surprisingly this one actually gets off to a promising start. We begin on a crowded dock somewhere in the exotic Far East, bustling and busy as ships unload their cargoes and various locals, both honest and not so honest, await to receive them. It’s sooooo obviously a set built completely in a huge warehouse sound stage, but while that’s easily apparent, it actually give the whole thing that look of an old vintage adventure film and… at least for me brought back some nice memories of oodles similar scenes from all the old B&W Republic serials I watched as a girl. Without too much more than a few panning shots of the frantic action going on, we close in on a trio of scurvy scoundrels sneaking through the offloaded crates looking for valuable stuff to get their sticky fingers on. What do they find? Why a honking big old crate, fresh off a ship from Paris. Ooo-la-la!! Jackpot! With visions of valuable imported wine, delicate french silk, and all the other riches of Europe in their heads they crack it open only to find… not the choice loot they expected but instead… a girl. Not just any girl, but our heroine, the deliciously pretty Gwendoline (played by a young Tawny Kitaen in her first big screen role) who’s ridiculously shipped herself to this exotic locale in a box just like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Sure it’s goofy… but it sets that delightfully silly tone that let me know at least this one was gonna be a fun little romp that didn’t take itself too darn seriously.

So… what do three villanous scoundrels do with a lovely doe-eyed French girl? Why promptly knock her unconscious and haul her off to sell her to a brothel, naturally. Luckily for poor Gwendoline, her spunky and devoted maid servant Beth (played by the exotically named Zabou Breitman) is soon in hot pursuit of the bad guys only to end up getting grabbed as well. Yep… it’s just that kind of story you see, “Pretty damsels in distress constantly getting kidnapped and tied up”… I mean, it was inspired by a bondage cartoon after all, silly… ;)

There’s the standard bit where our scoundrels bargain for the girls with the slimy brothel keeper, and then… right as we get to the first bodice ripping nudity threatening that proverbial “Fate worse than Death”, the window crashes in and a big honking grappling hook snags the boss by the throat as our film’s obvious hero makes his entrance in proper style. He’s Willard (played by Brent Huff)… some sort of devil-may-care sailor type here to squeeze some money out of the brothel keeper for some unsavory job he did in the past. He’s not really interested in saving Gwendoline and Beth… just in getting his money… but his arrival and subsequent thrashing of the brothel keeper’s minions does give them the chance to make their escape. Strange given Gwendoline’s almost instinctive desire for him at first glance. Guess our boy Willard never saw that Whitesnake video… ;)

There’s that whole initial bit where Willard tries his darndest to get rid of these annoying ladies and the silly quest to find the butterfly once they learn of her father’s death. Really odd given that our boy Willard seems to consider himself quite the lady’s man and here he’s got a really attractive naive lil’ virgin just about squirming with desire to jump his bones. Like he’s in absolutely no way interested in her at all… Yeah, right.

Anyhoo… it isn’t long before our girl manages to trick and persuade our hero to join her quest after ruining some opium deal he had going on with some fairly scurvy pirates. Once she gains the upper hand, it’s into those ever so stylish khaki explorer clothes and off for the steamy reaches of the interior. Where exactly? Why now there’s a question…. supposedly the city we started in was somewhere in China, but just up river there’s this steaming jungle full of vicious blowgun wielding natives called the Kiops. Those guys seem to look a lot like South American tribesmen crossed with Indonesian headhunters. Beyond their lands you then abruptly transition into a trackless desert lies haunted by a deadly poisonous sandstorm surrounding the volcanic mountains of the lands of the Yik Yak. Anybody know where that might be? I sure don’t… talk about “Terra Incognito”. This part of the movie resembles the standard jungle adventure pretty darn well, including a capture by the natives and that neat bit where they carry you to their village tied to poles like venison. Classic….

All along the way, we get those never too subtle French soft porn moments you might remember from “Barbarella”. You know… lame excuses for Gwen and Beth to get naked at the drop of a hat… lots of sex talk, including this weird bit where Willard and Gwen are tied up and he still manages to have “phone sex” with her to calm her down… all without a phone. :)

But… once we get into that final 45 minutes of the story or so, all subtlety goes right out the window. After climbing down into a chasm that Gwendoline says she saw in a dream we are introduced to the Yik Yak themselves, fierce warrior amazon women ruling over one of those super scientific “lost empires” from out of “Flash Gordon”. You know the ones… where everything is all stark white and impeccably clean, all art deco and the like, where our warrior girls all wear these skimpy black leather bikini armor bondage outfits. There’s oodles of bound women slaves everywhere… tied to the walls… trapped in cages… hanging upside down over pools… sliding rather suggestively in and out of crazy metal chimneys and the like. Trippy… really trippy.

Naturally the evil queen (played by Bernadette Lafont)  of these deadly ladies was expecting them, and after trapping them all, decides that Willard will be the victory prize in an amazon mating combat ritual. Gwendoline? Well, she’s too spunky.. to independently minded to make a good subject so she’s just gonna have to die. Along with loyal Beth of course. But just as you might expect, our girl manages to pluck up her courage and escape… find herself one of those leather bikinis… save Beth… and then fight to the death in disguise to save our hero. Easy, eh?

That will tick off the queen of course, but by the time we reach the story’s climax at the erotic amazon mating ritual… both figuratively and literally… D’Arcy, the captive French engineer from her father’s expedition (played by Jean Rougerie) who’s been enslaved by the queen to run her diamond mining operation in the volcano will rig the volcano to blow and bury the lost city forever. Will Gwen, Beth and Willard make it out alive? Will Willard admit his passions for Gwen? Will they ever find that darn butterfly they’ve been searching for throughout the entire movie? Yes, yes, yes… naturally they do. It’s that sort of movie… ;)

So what’s the verdict? Well…. this one turned out to be a lot more tame than I actually expected, with more simple nudity than any really overt sexuality. The “fetishy” bondage stuff might have been pretty risqué by 80’s standards, but wasn’t even as explicit as some of the stuff you get on late night pay cable here in the states. For me, the earlier part of the film played better than the latter half. As a simple “Perils of Pauline” imitation, it wasn’t half bad, although the chemistry between Miss Kitaen and Brent Huff was fairly tepid at best. My favorite character has to be Zabou’s Beth… a brave spunky character with a delightful scene in which she simply bitches out the Kiop tribesmen and slaps their leader silly, so stunning them that our trio almost manages an escape. Hilarious…

We did have quite a bit of fun watching this… laughing quite a bit at some parts, groaning at others, and for the most part giggling a whole lot more than the filmmakers probably intended. It earns a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5, having just enough campy silly notions combined with a sly wink and naughty plot that seems to have only improved now that our film is sliding into vintage age.

We saw this on the extended unrated European Director’s cut from Severin Films, All region, letterbox and in the original French audio with perfect English subtitles. It also has an English dubbed audio track, but for me it’s hard to say which one was the intended one…as some actors appear to be dubbed better in English than in French while other are the opposite. Either way, it’s a steal for right around 12-16$ US and easily found on the various Amazons around the world should you too want a crazy retro sexy evening’s movie fun. certainly a more tasteful erotic epic than some of the other “Raiders” inspired erotica I bumped across while researching this month’s festival…. trust me. ;)

A Trailer? Oui!! Mais bien sûr! ;)

Time to whisk ourselves off to India for a special “shared review” with our good friend Stephen of “Gweilo Ramblings” to put a proper finish to our March “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival. Our final film? The 2006 Hindi action/adventure “Naksha”. What? Not a Korean film? Nope… thought I’d throw Stephen a little curve this time out and lure him away from our usual movie selections to something a little more different and unusual… and nothing says “different and unusual” like Bollywood…  ;)

Thanks Miyu. You know I am always looking forward to our collaborative blogging, and watching some proper Bollywood fun is always on my to-do list, even if I never seem to get around to it.

The synopsis goes like this: “After the death of an archaeologist, Kapil Malhotra. 20 years later his frivolous playboy son, Vicky attempts to take up his father’s quest to find the legendary Armour of Karna taken by the God Indra in the epic story Mahabharata. However Vicky does not seem to have any clue to meet this challenge, so to proceed he is forced to delve deep into the jungles of India with the help of an ancient map, and his elder half-brother, Veer. Together they will have to join hands to defeat an evil rival Baali who wants to uncover the armour only to selfishly use it to become an unstoppable immortal conqueror that no one could destroy.”

Okie Dokie… sounds like we’re in the right movie for some “Raiders” style action, and Bollywood certainly knows how to do things with their own style, so if nothing else I expect things to get trippy… and hear some catchy music along the way, Hehehe!!. So… without any further fuss, let’s get to it, shall we?

Bollywood films are definitely an acquired taste. They are usually waaaaay long compared to Western efforts…. they enjoy odd continuity shifts and multiple side plots…. and they are all musicals… every blessed one of them. My sweetie Carolyn has actually started to kind of like them, believe it or not… It’s probably the way they love their stories bright and peppy and full of color and music. She’s a real sucker for musicals… and yes… the romantic elements that always seem to creep into a Hindi film too. However, I wasn’t so sure about Stephen. Part of me was secretly tickled when he agreed to give this one a try. Just like when I spring something sweet, spicy, and totally exotic on my friends come dinnertime. Here’s to hoping you enjoy the experience, Stephen… ;)

Part of the reason I have avoided Bollywood in the past is that there are two things which usually turn me off cinematically. Length is a big issue, anything pushing 2 hours is going to seriously have to work hard to maintain my interest. The other thing is… I hate musicals. There are a handful of exceptions. But probably you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Or Homer Simpson’s hand… But, I am willing to give anything a try once or twice :)

Our story gets underway with one of those somber voice overs all ominous and such about the secrets of the Gods and how man constantly strives to learn that which they really shouldn’t and the like. Then we get a look at Dr. Malhotra, archaeologist and scholar who’s on the verge of his life’s greatest quest… the uncovering of the ancient artifacts that prove the truth of the Hindi mythological epic “The Mahabharata”. Only one problem… he’s not the only guy anxious to make that discovery. Nope… he’s discovered just at that crucial moment in his efforts by Baali Bhaiyya (played by Jackie Shroff), once a learned, respected archeologist himself but now only a man determined to find the secret hidden in Dr. Malhotra’s recently uncovered map at any cost… even cold blooded murder. But… before that can happen, Dr. Malhotra seemingly thwarts Baali’s evil ambitions by burning that map and throwing himself to his untimely death from the cliffs near his bungalow in rural Kishanganj leaving behind a divorced wife and eldest son, Veer; as well as his present wife and younger son named Vicky niether with any clue as to the truth behind it all.

Jump forward 20 years, and Vicky (played by Vivek Oberoi) has grown up into a frivolous playboy with no more ambition than to party and waste away his life on wine women and song… (Especially song… Cue the first of many peppy Hindi Item Dance numbers!!)

Now… mind you, they did manage to make the plot excuse that our hero was at this tacky bachelor party for a buddy of his and the whole sequence pretty much cements the overall character of Vicky firmly as a fairly worthless “party guy” and amateur womanizer. Yep. You could say he really rubbed a certain lil’ Catgirl the wrong way… and not just me. We also get a quick intro to pretty Riya (played by Sameera Reddy) who’s a friend of the bride-to-be supposedly crashing the party to spy on her friend’s fiancé… She’s not impressed with our hero… and pretty much tells him what sort of butthead he really is before leaving with the pissed off bride in a torrent of stupid catcalls and misogynistic crap. Grrrrr!! I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again… Neko just hates the way women get treated in most Hindi film… It’s about the only bone I usually pick with them. It’s not that its sooooo annoying in and of itself… It’s that it’s so darn pervasive…. and so mainstream… as if it’s just an ordinary and perfectly normal thing. Like freaking breathing… And the few times a female character is written as strong or self minded, she usually gets marginalized or ignored in favor of the male lead. Unfortunately for us… that’s pretty much the case here.

Breathe… Miyuki… breathe. It’s just a movie. Sigh…

Now funnily enough, it wasn’t the content of this sequence that upset me, it was the utter pointlessness of it. It set up the character of Vicky, after which it really did little with that idea. And the way the females are treated in this film… well I am not going to disagree. I’ll just agree with your rant, otherwise we will never get to the film!

Anyways… Vicky get’s involved in this adventure once his father’s lawyer shows up with some papers to sign before the sale of that old bungalow in Kishanganj. It brings back some nasty memories of his dad’s death for his mom… still obviously torn up about that old mysterious event… so he decides to go up to the bungalow himself to see to things so she won’t have to. Once there, he naturally finds a secret passage and his father’s old stuff about the legend… and… another copy of the vital map. Inspired by all that, Vicky decides to make it his quest to unlock the secret his father was searching for and immediately goes looking for clues. That’s a big honking mistake….

It puts him on the radar for our evil villain Baali… still evil (and now dressed like a real villain instead of a “Miami Vice” wannabee… ;) ) and still looking for that treasure all these years later. His henchgoons locate Vicky… and surprisingly… Vicky turns out to have some absolutely mad ass kickboxing skills. Who woulda guessed? Certainly not the bad guys… they get their butts kicked pretty darn good until in a moment of pure Hindi story slapstick, Vicky gets knocked out cold by an ill-timed swinging door.

He really did have some kick ass skills didn’t he? That came from nowhere! But this was the point I maybe started warming to the movie. I mean.. who doesn’t like to see people knocked out by a swinging door?

After they haul him away… for the natural torture and question session to come… Vicky’s mom decides that only one person can help. Her husband’s eldest son by his first wife, Veer. He’s a “Forest Ranger”, it seems… and luckily Vicky’s mom and Dr. Malhotra’s first wife are on surprisingly great terms. No seriously…. and so with one simple request, it’s Veer to the rescue.

Thankfully Veer (played by Sunny Deol) is familiar with the remote rural area around Kishanganj and apparently a Hindi “Forest Ranger” is kind of a cross between “Crocodile Dundee” and “Rambo”. Darn handy that… especially since Vicky is hanging upside down in a ramshackle bungalow and mere moments away from a bullet to the noggin’ before Veer bursts in through the roof and starts going all apeshit on those villains. Not before they get the map of course…

One quick chase later and it’s off a cliff and into the river for the boys… just the place to run back into our heroine Riya… who it seems is some kind of anchorwoman for a TV show called “Travel India” and is in need of rescue as she’s perilously floating down the rapids in a rubber raft after a photo shoot gone wrong. That’s handy, and awfully convenient considering our boy’s need a raft right about then. Yes…. yes… it’s a fairly stupid and unrealistic way to shoehorn our girl back into the story, but since she’s merely here for eye candy and the occasional dance number, that’s not really too much of an issue, I suppose. It’s a waste of a fairly pretty lady to be nothing more than that in our story, but Hindi audiences do love their romantic side-plots…. even if they aren’t well conceived or even needed. Just roll with it… Sigh…

Stupid and unrealistic. That pretty much covers it. I seriously don’t have words to describe how dreadful this bit of character re-indroduction was.

Why isn’t it needed? Well, for the most part, “Naksha” isn’t a romance film. It’s a “buddy comedy” and “bromance” firmly interested in showing that the familial bonds of brothers… even two half-brothers… is stronger than anything, especially when it comes to revenging dear old dead dad and completing his life work. Somehow… in a very weak and unconvincing fashion… our Vicky will find time to pull off the romantic sparks while completing his quest and bonding with his bro.

But first… there will be some more action…. and singing… and dancing!! With midgets!!

Ummmm? Midgets? Yes!! Because for reasons escaping all possible reality it seems our story would have us believe the northern jungles of India are home to a wild tribe of Hindi pygmies. Fierce primitive crazy lil’ pygmies. Ok…. Hey don’t blame me… they’re on the secret map! Apparently these guys are old friends of Vicky and Veer’s dad and so after a minor misunderstanding, its major party time at the village of the Liliputs.

The whole midget thing upset me way more than it did you. I wasn’t even comfortable using the word “midget”! And I am really not Mr Political Correctness!! More than that, the whole sequence just gave us nothing. Other than the “Crazy Punjabi” dance number that was probably the highlight of the movie for me. Yeah, you read that right.. I actually enjoyed the musical number. Move on please ;)

But…. not too far behind are our villains… catching up fast thanks to Sonia (played by Mridula Chandrashekar) dark-haired sexy hot pants wearing wicked vixen and supposed jungle tracking expert. Yet another potentially really interesting female character relegated to having no real lines… no back story… and seemingly a side job as hot gypsy dance temptress. Sigh…. at least I have to agree with Carolyn that she was pretty darn sexy in her one musical number… but adventurous lil’ me still would have like to also see her get all crazy and “kung fooy” or something at least once in our movie before completely dissapearing from the plot. :(

I’m with Carolyn too. She was rather Hawt!! But I am also with you. She is introduced as some super tracking expert. And yet does little than stand around looking desirable in a “touch me and i’ll break your fingers” sort of way.

She leads Baali and his mercs right to the secret Liliput village so there can be a big ol’ massacre shoot-em up. They eventually think our trio are dead after plummeting off a cliff, just like dear old dad. Nope… just playing dead so they can race Baali to the sacred Mountain temple where the mystical armour of Karna is hidden for our big climax. Well… all except Riya, who seems to have sprained her ankle or something during our big shoot-em up. Really? Sheesh!! C’mon now…. :(

I have no words. Really. Maybe it was her last day filming or something?

So… what exactly is this funky magic armour good for? Well… legend tells us wearing it makes you invulnerable and immortal as long as “the sun shines upon it or the moon’s light bathes it”. Got it? Ok then. ;)

Don’t forget the Armour comes with Earings too. It’s a WMD that accessorizes!

At the hidden temple, things finally start getting all “Indiana Jones”, as we get the usual temple death traps designed to kill all those foolish mortals seeking the power of the armour for themselves. Bottomless abysses… flying blades… evil demon spirits that carry you off screaming to Hindi Hell… you get the picture. They even “borrow” that classic bit from “Last Crusade” where you have that invisible bridge you only find by trusting in faith. All leading up to the big treasure vault.

I rather liked this bit. It was fairly derivative and unimaginative, but for the first time I got some kind of vibe that the film was ramping up to something. Though maybe I just started setting my expectations lower and lower :)

Naturally our villain beats them to the prize… and naturally there’s a smack down slugfest that looks pretty hopeless for the boys until the Hindi Gods pull a last-minute “deus ex machina” to solve things by springing an unexpected total solar eclipse on everybody. No sunlight… no moon light… no magic invulnerability for Baali. Time to kick his butt and bury him under the collapsing temple along with the armour forever. Sounds like a wrap… well almost. There’s the fairly lame wrap to our romance side-plot between Vicky and Riya… but honestly it seemed really unnecessary and “tacked on” and superfluous. OK… now roll those credits. Ummmm? What? One more musical number first? Sigh… Ok… let’s do this thing. ;)

So. How do I call this one? Hmmmm? As adventure films go, its a miss, really. The action sequences and fight scenes are good… really good, actually as it seems Hindi cinema is embracing martial arts stuff with a serious vengeance. But a few cool fight scenes scattered amongst a paper-thin plot do not an adventure make. Marginalizing our heroine role in the story so severely didn’t win any points with me either. The message of “brotherhood’ and solidarity was nice, but got endlessly hammered home in a fairly heavy-handed manner diluting it’s strength. Our villain? Initially goofy looking… in his Don Johnson “Miami Vice” styling white suit, he improved a bit once he got all crazy obsessed and went brooding and long-haired in his ever so stylish duster and boots. Him I bought. Maybe a bit broad and melodramatic, but hey… as the bad guy you get some slack for that. The scenery? Gosh… now that was breathtaking at times. India has some impressive outdoor beauty. No doubt about that.

I guess, given it’s flaws and its occasional flashes of neat stuff, I’d lean towards 3 “Meows” out of 5. The sad thing is, it could have… with a little work, done better. Instead it chose to take the safe route and rely on being merely competent rather than innovative. Not the worst film we’ve looked at for the festival, but certainly not the best either.

The DVD? The usual well made Hindi effort, All Region and letterbox, with a decent “Making Of” featurette, some Trailers and the usual excellent English subtitles I always seem to find on Hindi discs. Want a copy? That’ll be easy, and at that crazy mad low price that Hindi DVD’s always seem to be, right around 10-12$ US or so. Even cheaper if you, like a certain crazy Catgirl import them right from India itself.

In the UK, this one cost me less than £2. So it is hard to be too harsh on it. My subtitles were not as good as yours, but I have had much worse times. I tapped my foot a few times, I enjoyed it in parts. I’ll take your 3 “Meows” and probably go for 2 “Rambles” myself.

Sounds like we are pretty close on our opinions this time out. Wanna read more of Stephen’s musings on this one? Then by all means trot on over to his blog, “Gweilo Ramblings”  for the “flip side” of this special double-decker review… ;)

Yep… I even managed to snag a Trailer for this one… not the best quality, but certainly good enough to maybe get you all excited for your own Hindi flavored Movie Nite… :)

April is here (and quickly slipping away from me, it seems…) and it’s time to check back with the Zombie Apocalypse… just to see if it’s creeping up on us or not, mind you… with a look at the recent Region 2 UK release of the Spanish Zombie Apocalypse thriller “[REC] 4: Apocalypse”.

The synopsis reads “Barcelona TV reporter, Angela Vidal, wakes up in a high-security quarantine facility aboard a ship at sea, sole survivor and witness to the horrific events inside the apartment building of the first film. She seems to have only spotty memories of what happened at the end of her ordeal there. But does she secretly remember what happened to her? Is she carrying the virus? Distrust spreads through the freighter while new, even more deadly forms of evil spread even faster among the researchers and crew. Soon that Evil is loose again, but will she survive this new assault or become one of its twisted victims?”

I’ve enjoyed this franchise so far, so it’s nice to get another offering to sate this zombie fan’s need for a little gory fun in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse now that “The Walking Dead” is on its hiatus till fall. Sure… sure.. there’s “IZombie”, but that’s just toooo much of a comedy. Neko wants scary gross zombie fun… ;)

So… will I get it with this one? All signs look promising… so if you wanna know if it’s a gore fest that ought to show up in your DVD player anytime soon, just “Read On” and let a certain crazy movie obsessed Catgirl tell you all about it. ;)

So… the nicest thing about “[REC] 4: Apocalypse” is the return of spunky TV reporter Ángela Vidal (played once again by Manuela Velasco) who previously survived the original film only to end up possessed by the evil demonic parasite that had inhabited Tristana Medeiros at the end of the second movie. Ouch!!

By the start of our 4th film, we find her bloody and terrified… supposedly the only survivor of the outbreak where she gets saved by the final bunch of SWAT guys from the “Grupo Especial de Operaciones” sent in to rig the apartment building for demolition to end the horror and kill the infected before the outbreak can spread. They save her… fighting their way past the crazed remnants of those still inside while the bombs tick down…. and guess what? I’m sooooo proud of my adorable wife!! Carolyn actually remembered those earlier films and blurted out… “Wait a minute!! She’s that TV reporter lady with the evil worm in her guts!!” <3 Awwwwww!! <3 She really was paying attention when we watched them!! I just knew someday I’d make her a fan of my rather goofy movie choices!!

They fade to black…. and then Ángela wakes up in a medical observation room, just like Mila Jovovich at the end of “Resident Evil”. But unlike deserted the Raccoon City Hospital, she’s not alone…. Turns out she’s on a ship at sea. A freighter hastily converted into a quarantine facility where some brainy doctors can try to get a handle on just what the hell happened back in Barcelona before it happens again. I kept thinking… “Any minute now. These poor boobs are gonna turn their backs and Ángela’s gonna go all freaky cannibal on them…. just you wait….” But nope. The doctors do this blood test and seems she’s all clear. Say what? Wait a minute… where the heck did the evil thingee get to then?

Don’t worry… we’ll get back to it later. For now Ángela finds that her two rescuers, Guzmán (played by Paco Manzanedo) and Lucas (played by Críspulo Cabezas)  are on board as well. Seems nobody is going anywhere until they can figure out exactly what they are dealing with… if they are ever allowed to leave at all. That would be the job of the medical team, under Doctor Ricarte (played by Héctor Colomé). He’s convinced they can engineer a vaccine to stop the virus given half a chance… Problem is, he’s a scientist. There’s no room in his brain to even consider the possibility of some kind of parasite spreading a viral “demonic possession”. That’s gonna cost him…

From this point forward, “[REC] 4″ uses its claustrophobic setting to do what most stories like this do. Our heroine and her companions are trapped, limiting everybody’s movements and giving them no chance to escape once that contagion escapes the lab and begins to spread among the crew. Sure it’s an old idea for a horror plot… but that’s because it always works.

One crazy infected lab monkey running amok later and that just what our cast has to deal with too. Like I say… nothing new… nothing novel… but certainly effective enough to do the job. This time out our girl Ángela has lots more to do too. No longer that “girly” victim we remember from the first two films, she seems to have dug deep and tapped into her own inner strength to become much tougher this time out. She’s determined to survive, even once the medical team recovers the footage from her camera showing that horrible worm thing sliding down her gullet to take up housekeeping in her tummy. Naturally they figure the best chance to make that vaccine is to cut her open and get some DNA from the plague source itself. Problem is… Ángela’s pretty sure the worm has already moved on looking for a better host… and her spotty memories won’t tell her where to. Is she right? Or is she still possessed… and one heck of a demonically evil convincing actress? Time for some “cat and mouse” games as the mercs manning the ship chase her and our two SWAT guys around the boat dodging the rising population of possessed zombies. Oodles of the red stuff flows freely and I can definitely tell you, in the process, I did indeed get my zombie gore fix from this one…. :twisted:

Plenty of people get chomped on… Zombies get shot… get stabbed and hacked… even get chewed to bits by an outboard motor in some gooey hand-to-hand fighting… before the big climax as our heroine and our heroes decide to abandon ship before the obligatory “self destruct” option blows the boat to Kingdom Come. Like I said. Nothing new here. But it’s done with good style and suitable panache as to make for satisfying Zombie Apocalypse storytelling.

So? Our worm/ demon/ thingee? Yeah… well once you figure out that our heroine Ángela really is clean and “worm free”, it’s not too hard to figure out that there really are only two other choices for it to host in… and since it had to happen quickly before they left the apartment when she and that potential victim were alone, you really will easily figure out who it now inhabits. Neko’s not gonna spoil things for you… but trust me, you won’t really be surprised by the eventual “big reveal”….

So how do I rate this one? Hmmmm? Well… as simple as the story really is, its nowhere as original or good as the earlier films in the series. Fair to say that right up front. It’s a reasonably good sequel… but just a basic “zombie story” this time out. Good acting… good setting and cinematography… about the only disappointment was the failure to really expand on the story behind it all. We learn nothing new about the demon… or it’s first host Tristana Medeiros or even what the ultimate goal of the Evil really is. I would have so liked learning some more of that kind of stuff. Still… our ending leaves room for yet another sequel, so who knows?

I guess then I’d rate this one as 3 “Meows”… Good simple zombie action… but sorta “zombie light” overall with a storyline that hits all the expected points but which could easily have been improved by a little more addition of the kind of stuff fans of the earlier films would have liked to see. Sounds about right. Worth a look definitely if… like this crazy Catgirl… zombies are your thing. ;)

The DVD? Well for me, that was the Region 2 UK DVD this time out. Presented widescreen, letterboxed and with excellent separate English subtitles. I picked it up for right around 12$ US, a fine choice should you want, but since then have learned a Region 1 release is soon on the horizon should you prefer something more domestic to feed your DVD player. There are also German, French, as well as Spanish editions out there… all of which lack those crucial subtitles, unfortunately.

As always, I’ve gone ahead and snagged us a “zombie-rific” Trailer to get everybody in the mood for all the “living impaired” fun and games!! Enjoy! ;)

So May has come and with it the bountifully warm days this wee lady has longed for since January. Also with it, of course, has also come my annual bout of “Spring Fever” to make me all wired and hyper and scattered most of the time too. Sorry Gentle Visitors… but that always makes it so hard for me to sit still and concentrate for long either, hence my absence here at the ol’ Litterbox of late. Not that I haven’t been watchin’ movies, of course, but having the focus to buckle down and write about them the last few weeks? That’s been the problem… ;)

However… my recent lack of “attention span” has led me to pay a wee bit more attention to TV than usual and it occurred to me that although I’ve shared my interests and tastes in film and movies, I’ve never really shared any of my favorite TV shows with all of you… What? Really? How have I somehow neglected to do that over the years?

Well that’s an easy thing to rectify… and all without putting a certain twitchy Catgirl on Ritalin…  ;)

My most recent TV fav? Well… that would be the surprisingly fun Lifetime TV series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles”… as if this wacky lady would ever pass up a chance to watch a delightful period piece series with an adorable sociopathic axe murderess as our main heroine. Oodles of fun… just let this goofy Catgirl tell you all about it.

Those of you regulars here at the Litterbox probably have a pretty good idea by now of the trashy exploitative movie goodies I like. My tastes in TV are pretty much the same as for films. Yep. While my dear wifey prefers her sitcoms and romantic dramas, this lady always finds herself drawn to “The Walking Dead” or “Orphan Black” or “Doctor Who”. So was it really any surprise that I’d find myself engrossed in a fictionalized account of the weekly adventures of Victorian America’s most notorious female murderer, Lizzie Borden? Not really… :)

This particular one kind of snuck up on me and I didn’t even know it existed until one particular Sunday evening when Carolyn and I were snuggled up on the couch trying to find some mutually agreeable TV fare to watch. As usual… I wanted something a bit… shall we say… edgy, while Carolyn was hoping for sometime somewhat tamer. Like maybe a nice romantic comedy. Hey… like something you might find of the woman’s TV network Lifetime. Mind you.. I was trying to be a good lil’ kitten when I said “Sure… let’s see what’s on Lifetime. It’s your turn to pick something anyway.”. Hahaha… my poor sweetie… she’ll never make that mistake again…

What we found instead was the premier episode of this new series. What luck… for me, anyways. ;) Based on last year’s Lifetime movie “Lizzie Borden Took an Ax”, the series starts some 4 months after the sensational trial that acquitted Lizzie of the brutal ax murders of her parents. We hadn’t seen that movie… sometime I plan to rectify soon if I can… but you really don’t need to see it to enjoy this new series. I mean… you know the story already… at least if you grew up an American that is. Here the grisly tale of Lizzie Borden is as famous as Jack the Ripper is in his own native England. And just as bloody and sensational.

We all grew up with the infamous children’s rhyme… By modern standards, the infamous ax murders of Lizzie’s parents was pretty tame, but in 1892 they achieved a level of gore rarely seen in Victorian times… especially a crime supposedly committed by a woman against her own parents. The passage of time only served to lend itself to even more speculation as to the truth behind the notorious unsolved crime until by our time the crime itself is hard to distinguish from the rumors and legends that sprang up in it’s wake. And, as always, a good luridly bloody legend never seems to die…

As the series starts, the story gets right to things as well… Lizzie (played by the devilishly pretty Christina Ricci) and her older sister Emma (played by Clea DuVall) are free following the scandalous trial that acquitted young Lizzie of her parents grisly murders. It isn’t hard to see the dynamic of the relationship between the sisters…. and even though she is the younger sibling, Lizzie is the one firmly in charge, swearing that despite the open hostility of the good citizens of their hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts, they will make a life for themselves and prosper together despite the notorious scandal of their parents murders. Easier said than done. After the acquittal, Lizzie and Emma try to secure their inheritance, but their attempts are complicated by claims against their late father by his creditors, now hungry to seize those assets. The bulk of those claims are made by William Almy (played by John Heard), who immediately lays claim to all of their property, threatening the sisters with financial ruin. Yeah…. like our Lizzie’s gonna let that happen…. ;)

Right from the start you have to understand that the series definitely decides that Lizzie is indeed the killer. More importantly… she one of the most delightfully and fiendishly clever sociopaths you might ever want to meet. Christina Ricci is, in this wee Catgirl’s opinion, absolutely perfect for the role, with her talent for blending Lizzie’s facade of eerily disturbing sweetness and vulnerability to mask the cold blooded serial killer hiding inside just below her surface. Creepy… yet somehow so darn adorable. ;)

Another thing… if actual historical accuracy is important to you, this one might be harder for you to enjoy than it is for me. Why? Well… we’re 5 episodes in and quite a few key historical facts have already been suitably trampled into bloody bits in the name of narrative license. But hey…. that’s OK by me. I’d rather enjoy the story as one that’s free to chart it’s own path rather than knowing ahead of time how it’s gonna end. This makes the series more a “re-imagining” of events than a boring docudrama retread of them.

Nope. This story is a bloody “Grand Guignol” style of Victorian penny dreadful brought to life each week. Seriously. Each episode so far has featured at least one… and often two… grisly killings by our Lizzie. Despite the cunning and clever way she covers her tracks, had the real Miss Borden ever been quite so homicidal I doubt she would have avoided the gallows to reach the ripe old age of 66 as she actually did.

Mr. Almay becomes her first new victim… first paralyzed by a wickedly big hatpin to the base of his skull and then beaten into a pulp with a pair of leather gloves… stuffed with horseshoes. Ouch!! Luckily… she’s able to solve another of the sister’s recent problems… the sudden return of black sheep half brother William (played by Andrew Howard) … by pinning this murder on him and then staging his suicide by drunken hanging. Two birds with one stone… how handy!

So then, does this mean that nobody stands in our tiny little killers path as she murders her way to her dream of wealth and social redemption? Ah ha… in any story like this, there’s always somebody to do that, silly. Lizzie’s main nemesis takes the form of famous cowboy Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo (played by Cole Hauser), based on the actual notorious historical figure of renown…. although again, in real history, the two never ever met. He’s here looking into the murders of the Bordens at the bequest of a mysterious client and soon becomes convinced Lizzie may be the most dangerous and cunning psychopath he’s ever encountered. He’s probably correct. Our little Lizzie certainly is one rabid little hellion when you get in her way…

The relationship between them is deliciously macabre… as they dance around each other, each trying to find a way to deal with the other. Siringo is a blunt man, used to dealing with killers by simply shooting them dead… but Lizzie’s far more subtle than he and probably smarter as Siringo soon learns once they actually start their duel of wills. The two play well off of each other, but I’ve a real feeling one of them won’t survive the first season if things continue as they have so far. Remember… the series is named after her, so my bet is on Lizzie to come out on top. Poor cowboy… I’ve really got a feeling things are going to end very, very, badly for him. Lizzie is soooo gonna mess him up.

My sweet Carolyn finds my weekly amusement at Lizzie’s homicidal antics surprising… “Miyuki!! Why are you rooting for her? She’s evil!!” Oh yes…. my goodness, she is. But somehow that’s OK. For some inexplicable reason, you just sort of want Lizzie to win. Part of the reason is that most of her victims are actually deserving of their fates. Greedy Mr. Almay…. grasping and contemptuous of the two sisters and the ruin he plans for their lives. Worthless thieving half-brother William… who even resorts to the foulest blackmail to seize a chunk of the family fortune. Spencer Cavanaugh (played by Frank Chiesurin) drug addicted playwright and conman who thinks he can scam money from Lizzie with impunity. Mr. Flowers (played by Jonathan Banks) … local mob boss and pimp who dismisses Lizzie as any kind of threat and thinks her ripe for blackmail himself. Nasty neighbor lady Mrs. Kenney (played by Martha Irving) who beats her adorable little dog for no good reason… Yep. People like that you want to see get theirs…. in as messy a way possible. Our girl Lizzie? Only happy to take them out and simplify her life.

Now… not all is good of course when a sociopath decides to simplify things in her life. Some innocents will suffer too along the way. Like poor maimed streetwalker Adele (played by Kimberly-Sue Murray), befriended by Lizzie on a whim only to later be buried alive and then cruelly killed to throw off suspicion from Lizzie regarding the death of brutal Mr. Flowers. Or another “friend”, stage actress Nance O’Keefe (played by Jessy Schram) who figures out that Lizzie killed her brother Spencer and tries stupidly to handle our lil’ psycho all on her own. Turns out being Lizzie’s enemy leads to a nasty quick end… but being her friend doesn’t exactly guarantee your health and well being either.

If the whole story sounds like an almost continuous murder spree of nearly apocalyptic levels, you’d be pretty darn close. For me at least, that’s half the fun… trying to figure out just how many people are likely to meet their fate before the hour slips by. Realistic? Nawwww… but certainly fun. In fact, that’s my general feeling about this one. It’s silly… it’s overblown… generally unbelievable and improbable… but boy is it a hoot. Christina Ricci makes it all look so much ridiculously fun. All done with an sense of style and panache that keeps me tuning in for more of it’s guilty pleasures week after week. That’s all this lil’ lady need for some mindless TV fun…  If you can, give it a peek, and maybe it’ll tickle you as well.

You’d like a Trailer? Hey… no problem!! ;)

Well. May is fast fading away, but if I can rouse my lazy butt, I do believe there’s still time for one or two reviews. ;) So then… how about some Zombie Apocalypse action from the Land Down Under with the 2014 “Zombies meet Mad Max” mash-up, “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead”? I’ve a rapidly growing “To Watch” pile teetering precariously on the stand next to our TV just aching to get viewed, but somehow I just knew this one would find it’s way right to the top when it finally arrived from the UK. Your favorite crazy Catlady loves her zombies after all…

Our synopsis? Easy peesie!! :“When a freak cometary shower strikes the Earth releasing toxic contamination that turns everyone around him—including his wife and daughter—into marauding cannibal zombies, everyman mechanic Barry arms himself to the teeth, soups up his car, and hits the road in order to rescue his sister from the hideous experiments of a deranged, disco-dancing mad doctor and his cadre of military goons.”

Flesh eating undead… evil insane villains with an unknown agenda… crazy road raging heroes on a mission of vengeance… and all that “Vrooom!! Vrooom!!” post-apocalyptic car action we all know and love. Sounds pretty darn good to me. (But then my tastes in movies do lean towards the utterly “craptastic” end of the spectrum… ;) ) What are you waiting for, o’ Gentle Visitors? let’s get right to it then!!

I’ve been aware of this particular one for a while now and I figured I’d bump across the Aussie Region 4 DVD first, but as unlikely as it sounds, the UK Region 2 was my first crack at it. Yay for Amazon.UK!! :) So, a quick import across the pond and I’m good. It’s due out in a few more places in the next few months… including here in the US… by jiminy I couldn’t wait for that. No way, no how.

Being an Australian film, I knew my sweet Carolyn would be glad to find out I wasn’t going to inflict yet another weirdly subtitled horror goodie on her. That always makes “movie nite” soooo much nicer for the both of us. ;)

So what’s the poop on this one then? Ok… Ok… the Zombie Apocalypse rolls around, this time brought on by all these cometary fragments showering down on poor ol’ earth and bringing with them some sort of nasty contamination that kills and reanimates all the people who breathe it in as those super fast crazy ass zombies we all love to hate. Well… it “zombifies” almost everybody that is. Wouldn’t really have much of a movie if it killed off everybody now would we? If you are lucky and happen to have A-negative blood type you are immune to whatever it is messing stuff up. As luck would have it, our film’s hero Barry (played by Jay Gallagher) is just such a person. Bad thing is… his wife Annie (played by Catherine Terracini) and little daughter Meganne (played by Meganne West) aren’t so blessed. When the outbreak starts and they try to make their getaway both of them soon turn and he’s forced to nailgun his loved ones to death. Ewwww… that’s the sort of nasty event almost designed to send a man over the edge, almost guaranteeing he’ll follow them to the Great Beyond out of sheer remorse. He almost does it too… except for one thing.

His sister Brooke (played by Bianca Bradey). She’s alive too… and also immune to the zombie contamination. Problem is… she’s been kidnapped by some sketchy paramilitary goons to be the subject of some fairly insane medical experiments at the hands of some wacky mad scientist guy (played by Berryn Schwerdt). With his sister in dire peril, our Barry postpones his date with the nailgun and teams up with some other survivors… first another lone survivor like himself, Chalker (played by Yure Covich) and later on with Aborigine Benny (played by Leon Burchill), and fellow mechanic Frank (played by Keith Agius). They decide to track down the army guys and free Brooke… but there’s a problem. The weird contamination that has created all the zombies has messed up fuel sources. Nothing will run on gasoline, kerosene, or diesel of any kind. In fact… none of those compounds will even burn anymore for some goofy reason. But… in true exploitation fashion, our heroes discover that zombies are super flammable… and breathe a gas that burns like the dickens. It isn’t long before our industrious trio knocks together a good and proper Mad Max style armored truck that runs on… you guessed it… zombie power. here’s where things get fun… and super goofy… as they roar around the outback in search of the soldiers and their mobile electric laboratory truck.

Ummm… Ok… but then what the heck does mad Scientist Guy want with Brooke? Is he working on some sort of cure? Trying to come up with an antidote? Heck if we figured it out. In true Mengele style, his secret “experiments” seem to mostly consist of listening to bad disco music and injecting Brooke’s brain with honking big syringes full of freshly harvested zombie brain goo. Yep… it’s pretty icky. But… as a trade off for all the bondage and terrible medical care, at least eventually Brooke sorta “mutates” and becomes “half zombie”… pretty darn immune to being shot or stabbed…. and able to use some sort of crazy telepathy to summon and control other zombies. Ooooohhh!! You just know that’ll be handy….

Yes… yes… it’s a given that eventually Barry and the boys will show up towards the end of the movie to save our girl Brooke… There will be some fighting… most everybody will die… lots of zombies will run amok… our crazy Doctor will get his… and then feisty brother and spunky almost-zombie sister will reunite to save the day. No surprises there. Heck, they even set things up for the eventual “sequel’ that you know will show up in a year or so. It’s just that kind of “by-the-numbers” sort of movie.

That would tend to make you think I didn’t dig this one all that much. Nothing could be further than the truth. As simple lil’ unpretentious films go, this one ain’t half bad. It certainly was a better film by far than “Zombie Fight Club”…. But… in much the same way, it suffers from some of the same flaws as that film too. What we basically have here is a number of really neat zombie ideas all strung together to make a whole story. Unfortunately… while a lot of those ideas are real gems… the overall film feels like it’s just that. A bunch of unrelated ideas that only happen to share the same script. That and the usual lack of any real attempt to explain almost any of those plot elements. That was the most annoying thing for this wee Catgirl. I mean…. what exactly was the comet all about? Did it kill all the animals in the world too? Or just people? And how come the Mad Science guy was all ready for it with his mobile lab and goon squad? Was there an announcement in “Popular Mad Science” magazine? Even Carolyn noticed that one…. and she wanted to know why… if the crazy Doc knew it was going to happen beforehand… where were the regular army guys? You know… the “no-so-nutty” and evil ones? Wouldn’t they have been roaming around the countryside in their own snazzy electric jeeps doing whatever army guys do when the shit hits the fan? Apparently not. Oooohhh…. and why does Aborigine Benny… who’s supposed to be immune… turn into just another crazy cannibal zombie when bitten? I though the zombie thing was an airborne contaminant you had to breathe not a virus or disease. Why at least, doesn’t he become a “smart” zombie… like Brooke? Heck if I know….

Still… even with these gaping holes in common sense, there a real energy and wacky vibe here to that mostly works. It’s an Apocalypse I could believe Crocodile Dundee would somehow inhabit. It’s screwy… it’s gory…. it’s hallucinatory and strange… but it’s certainly fun.

Even with these flaws… I still had some fun watching it all. I’d even probably give that “sequel” a look if it eventually materializes with the further adventures of Barry and Brooke. I just hope next time out they try a wee bit harder to make it all more sensible. Or at least lay down the rules of their version of whole “zombie apocalypse” and then stick to them. A little consistency goes a long way towards making even the silliest notions work.

So I suppose then I have to honestly give “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” a respectable middle of the road 3 Meows out of 5. It’s a first film for Australian writer/producer brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner so I’m inclined to cut them some slack. They obviously like zombie films …. that’s easy to see. There’s even some real raw talent to in the way they steered this odd little crowdfunded film into being as good as it is too, and I’m thinking with a little experience, these guys might just have some interesting ideas for next time out. Time will tell.

Should you want a look, this one is pretty easy to find as well… and along with the Region 2 UK release, it’s becoming available in pretty much another half dozen countries and Regions in the next few months or so. So… Gentle Visitors, if zombies are your thing, it’s definitely worth a quick look see. ;)

Trailer? Yep… with all the over-the-top crazy Zombie action you might want… enjoy!! ;)

Time for another Review… a really waaaaay overdue one… and this time out, yours truly has herself another goofy “Hopping Vampire” tale from good ol’ HK, the 2014 Horror/ Comedy “Sifu Vs. Vampire” by prolific HK genre producer/ director Wong Jing. Expecting some more of the riveting Jiangshi horror we saw in “Rigor Mortis”? Ha!!! I said “Wong Jing”… so leave all expectations of serious Asian horror right by the door as you enter… Wong Jing don’t play that way… ;)

Our synopsis goes like this here: “Small time gangster Nicky and his friend Boo get the assignment of a life time, to threaten Charlie Jiang, a feng shui master into exhuming the corpse of the great grandfather of TV station tycoon Kelvin Chow. A new burial is said to bring Kelvin great fortune and prosperity but things take a turn for the worse when his great grandfather’s corpse turns into a deadly Vampire King and is let loose inside the TV station while a show about zombies is being filmed. Soon our heroes are up to their necks in both trouble and the hopping dead!”

Yep. From our trailer, looks like we’re going to get all the retro Jiangshi antics we HK movie fans know and love. Hopping Vampires… Taoist Vampire Hunters… a lovely romantic ghost girl… and two hapless boobs to scream and run around like idiots. Yep. They seem to have all the usual bases covered. So what the heck are you waiting for? Neko’s ready to spill the beans if you’re ready to “Read On”, o’ Gentle Visitor. Let’s get hopping!! :o

Ahhhh… good ol’ Wong Jing. If you’ve watched as many Hong Kong films as this wee lady then it’s a given you are already familiar with him,HK film’s answer to Roger Corman. Like Corman, Wong Jing has an undeniable talent for cranking out oodles and oodles of the goofiest, most exploitative films you’ve ever seen. Some good ones… and of course a whole lot of bad ones… but darn it if they aren’t mostly pretty darn good little moneymakers when it’s all said and done. For the most part they are pretty darn entertaining too… as long as Asian flavored “cinema junk food” is your cup of tea, that is. They certainly are mine… ;)

With all that in mind, I approached this particular film with the comfortable notion that I wasn’t going to get any real attempt to stretch my expectations to anything approaching “Oscar” worthy film making. Yep… I just wanted a quiet evenings movie watchin’ fun on the couch with my sweet wife… some giggles… perhaps a little rolling of the eyes, at least on Carolyn’s part… and maybe a whole lot of the goofy HK hopping vampire action I remember with fondness from the old 80’s and 90’s HK vampire films I watched back in college.

Yep. Can’t say my expectations were too far off either. What we get is a silly “buddy comedy” featuring two wannabee Triad gangsters, Big Nicky (played by Ronald Cheng) and the “Beavis” to his “Butthead”, his hapless Afro coiffed sidekick Boo (played by Philip Ng with, to me at least, an uncanny resemblance to Indonesian horror star Rizky Mocil). Oh yeah… it’s gonna be one of those sorts of movies… ;)

Anyways… the boys are about the absolutely worst gangsters in all of HK. Somehow though, they are actual working members of Triad Boss Brother Snake’s (played by Tony Ho) mob. Part of me figures they aren’t tooooo darn high up on the scale of minions, but hey… who says all Triads are created equal? As our story begins, we get one of those neat lil’ “Wong Jing” scenes… as the boys become tasked with saving their boss from certain death at the hands of his wife, who’s managed to get herself possessed by demons while engaged in a bit of “sexy fun time” with her hubby. He’s desperate to get her exorcised… as well as keep her from eating his… errrr… ahhhh… “tender bits”. Nobody else in the gang has any ideas about what to do and only Nicky and Boo are dumb enough to want to get involved in the hopes of raising their reps with the Boss. Waaay over their heads, the boys manage to do something lucky and call in Taoist feng shui master Charlie Jiang (Yep…. say the name reeeaally slow… then the pun will slap you in the face…) to do do job of clearing her up. Thankfully for the goofy duo, Master Jiang (played by veteran actor Yuen Biao) and his tough disciple Lingxin (played by “Coweb” star Jiang Luxia) are the real deal and in a downright wacky sequence that would have been right at home in any of the old “Mr. Vampire” movies they drive away the evil demons and saves the Boss. That makes our boys look like heroes… well… OK... maybe not exactly heroes, but at least not like the incompetent slacker boobs they really are. That put them in the position of being the Boss’s new “go to” guys when anything weird pops up. Like when rich TV executive Ah Keung (played by Kelvin Kwan) wants to arrange the unearthing and relocation of his grandfather’s burial site. Yeah…. seems his family’s fortunes are all the result of his dead ol’ granddad sucking up all the “luck and fortune” from the graves of those buried near him to benefit his bloodline, and now that it’s all exhausted, his personal fortunes depend on moving grandpa’s corpse to fresher digs where he can get back to stealing all that good karma from a whole new group of fellow corpses. Uhhh… OK. Ummm… Yeah… I guess that sounds like a plan. (Actually… it was right about this point in the movie where my sweetie gave me the first of those eye rolls and a “You’ve got to be kidding…” look. I guess the folklore is a bit goofy sounding if you aren’t Chinese… ;) )

Grandpa is a Jiangshi of course. I mean… apparently he was a real a-hole of a gangster when he was alive, and being dead only let him become even more greedy and evil. Naturally dealing with him now represents a whole mess of nasty risk… so of course the boys want the help of Master Jiang. Problem is… he’s already been involved with this once before years ago when he was his father’s apprentice and that attempt went horribly wrong resulting in his father’s tragic demise so naturally he wants nothing to do with it. However…. he is interested in our hapless duo thanks to a lonely ghost girl (played by Michelle Hu) who’s become smitten with Big Nicky. Nicky is clueless of course… he only knows that the mysterious beauty is inexplicably interested in him… but Master Jiang knows that a forbidden romance between ghost and human will only lead to misery. But hey… when has the threat of Divine Retribution ever stood in the way of True Love? ;)

Yeah…. yeah… so anyways, there’s a lil’ “Chinese Ghost Story” thrown in to our story right about here to lighten things up… but hey, since our movie is supposed to be all about vampire fighting and without Jiang to move Grandpa to his new digs, Ah Keung has to resort to hiring evil Taoist master Leopard Man (played by Ricky Yi) to do his dirty work. As it happens, he’s also the villain that has our pretty ghost’s funeral urn and her ashes, thus tying all our subplots together conveniently. You just know he’s gonna screw things up, set grandpa loose and pretty soon there will be a veritable plague of the undead to deal with. Now we’re talking….

The climax of the film takes place at the TV studio as the recently “vampirized” Ah Keung and his Granddad prey upon everybody there creating a veritable horde of hopping undead for our heroes to battle in proper CGI fashion. It’s an OK battle… with less of the hard fighting action I expected of a film featuring Jiang Luxia. Seems somewhat of a disappointment to have such a talented martial artist on hand and not utilize her more… oh well… Naturally all ends well and evil Grandpa gets destroyed and Big Nicky and his ghostly crush get to marry with the usual off color Wong Jing style humor for their wedding night. :)

So then… what’s the verdict? That’s a real question. By most standards this one is a typical low budget hopping vampire romp, but all the fancy CGI in the world didn’t really lend it any of the charm of those older films I remember so fondly. As a “Wong Jing” film it’s second rate at best… having a few shining moments of his trademark humor, but again…. nowhere near the equal of some of his classic earlier efforts. 6 of one… half a dozen of the other…. I suppose that’s really where this one sits then. Squarely in the middle, with a mere 3 “Meows” out of 5. Neither good enough to rise to the top nor terrible enough to sink into obscurity. Sometimes that’s how it goes. But at least it was a reasonable evening’s HK hopping vampire fun “old school” style… even if my sweet Carolyn still doesn’t think the goofy image of hopping corpse is actually scary. ;)

Leave you without a Trailer? Never… ;)

Time for another nostalgic trip back to a certain wacky Catgirl’s innocent childhood and a “Lil’ Kitten Classics” review of one of those films of my youth. Our subject this time? Why the 1983 Space Opera 3D epic, “Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone”. 3D? But… but… “Miyuki,” you ask, “Ummm… Don’t you reeeaaally dislike the eye wrenching torture of 3D movies?”. Yes, Gentle Visitors. Yes, I do… But as a wee girl, this particular one showed up at my local cinema in the early 80’s as one of that decades glut of such 3D films during the effect’s attempt at a revival back then. It was the legacy of those 80’s films that pretty much convinced me just how much I despised this particular film special effects gimmick.

Our synopsis? Ok.. ok.. just hold your horses, we’re getting to it. :) “In 2136, an intergalactic bounty hunter named Wolff answers a distress signal that leads him to the plague-ridden planet of Terra Eleven, where he teams up with a spunky orphan girl named Niki to rescue three shipwrecked women from the evil clutches of the sinister mutant cyborg dictator Overdog and his twisted minions.”

Yep. Nothing amazing or novel about this one. It pretty much celebrates the two-fisted pulp scifi serials of an era bygone combined with the post-apocalyptic feel of an Italian “Road Warrior” rip-off. Still, back then it really did make a certain lil’ kitten one happy, happy lil’ girl one hot Saturday afternoon.  However, you do have to realize I was all of 10 years old  the summer this one came along…. ;)

So… wanna hear about it all? Then hitch up your blaster, boot up your trusty android companion, and buckle up for the jump to hyperdrive and by all means… “Read On”!!

Yep it had been a while since I saw this one. But… as with all those crazy films from my misspent youth naturally as soon a a DVD for it became available, your truly had to grab a copy for her collection. That was a few years ago… but digging through my boxes of DVD’s the other day this one popped up and gave me a chuckle. So… that night, with a naughty lil’ smile, I casually remarked to my sweet wife, “Oh, Carolyn… I thought we might watch an old Molly Ringwald movie tonight. It’s been ages since I’ve seen one. Sound good?” ;)

Hehehe… I just know she was thinking “Breakfast Club” or “Pretty in Pink” or maybe “16 Candles”. Silly, silly Carolyn… she knows me better than that. Cue the theme song!! ;)

For the 1980’s, this was a pretty low budget B movie effort, but by goodness, looking at it you’d never know that. It was a film released by major studio Columbia Pictures, and actually had some pretty darn good actors and actresses scattered throughout its 90 odd minute run-time. That wonderful theme song was the work of Academy Award-winning composer Elmer Bernstein… the guy who also did the score for “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Ten Commandments”, and “The Great Escape” among others. Definitely an A List kinda guy. “Spacehunter” most definitely isn’t in the same league as those films, but it sort of shows the odd way that studios made their main income back then from relying on simple B movie films to bring in the majority of their profits at the theater rather than the way currently only big budget “blockbusters” seem to be seen as profitable and worth getting made today. And in this lady’s opinion… that’s a shame.

There was quite a bit of hype for this one back in the day, as it was the first of another wave of 3D films that staged a comeback right around then. Yeah… yeah.. I know… it had been tried originally back in the 50’s with those terrible red and blue paper glasses. Yep. The ones that combined those tinted images into a stereoscopic illusion that also made watching them an exercise in squinting at a blurry darkened film that occasionally surprised you with an effective three dimensional image. When you could actually see it that is. This time out it was gonna be different. That’s what the TV ads promised anyway. You still had to wear the dorky ill fitting paper eyeglasses, but this time the two images were combined from polarized elements that eliminated the freaky tinting you got from the older 1950’s Anaglyph 3D method. Problem was that the tradeoff for the lack of sickening color tinting was that the image was much darker and far less vivid. Luckily, “Spacehunter” was for the most part, a really brightly shot film… thank goodness. Back then my little eyes were much stronger… and I didn’t need glasses most times, so it actually sorta worked. Although I remember it did give me one heck of a headache by the time it was through. Anyways…

We start off our story with a big ol’ starliner traveling through the swirling gaseous rings of a double star system, the Crynos Nebula. Before you know it, freaky space lightning… “condensing nebular gasses”… make the big ol’ scoop engines blow up. Then there’s that whole “Titanic in Space” moment as sirens sound and everybody runs for the “space lifeboats” before the huge explosion wipes everything out. (Psssst!! Lil’ Miyuki was tickled by the idea that you could tell it was the future ’cause everything in the movie was called “Space something”…”space ships”, “space lifeboats”, “Space Garbage men”. ;) )

Well… most everybody on that big old ship dies. Except for the one lone mini shuttle that gets free before the huge boom. They zip along to the nearest “E-Type” planet for a crash landing. Yep. You guessed it… “E-Type” means Earth like. See? Just like a certain lil’ kitten, keep reading and you’ll be a futuristic space traveler in no time too… ;)

Naturally the three survivors on board happen to be some kind of hot bikini/ fashion models or something and now they need rescuing. Bad. Why? Because the only E-Type world near their cruise liner was the quarantined off limits plague colony planet Terra XI. Ummm… OK… now that’s a whole lot of suck. This is where even lil’ ol’ me knew our movie was gonna be kinda simple. We never even get names for these ladies. The DVD credits list them as Meagan, Reena, and Nova (played by Deborah Pratt, Aleisa Shirley, and Cali Timmins respectively) but other than running around in their tight little gold lamé spacesuits and screaming a lot, we don’t get much from them in the way of character or backstory. Not that they need it. They’re mostly here to be the “damsels-in-distress” for our film’s hero Wolff.

Right after they crawl outta their shuttle, some freaky mutants snatch them up and then we fade out and switch to our stalwart hero on board his space-cruiser busy harvesting “space junk” when the distress call comes in over the com. There’s a reward for the girls. 3ooo Mega credits. That’s a whole freakin’ lotta “space money”… even lil’ Miyuki knew that. So before we can say “Boo!!”, our hero Wolff (played by Peter Strauss) and his sexy robot girl friday, Chalmers (played by Andrea Marcovicci) fire up the engines and whoosh off to the forbidden world.

It’s a short movie… so that trip takes maybe a minute before our hero swoops in and lands somewhere in the dusty desert wasteland that seems to make up the majority of the planet. Yep… just like those goofy planets on “Star Trek”… They hop into a cool moonbuggy kinda jeep thingee with a raygun turret and roar off in search of the girls after burying the spaceship for safekeeping. Cool huh? I certainly thought so at the time. Watching it again… I still have to admit that the “Scrambler”… as they called it… was a pretty sweet ride. Even today, grown up me doesn’t have a driver’s license, but if I did, I know I’d want to drive something cool like it. Hmmm? Wonder how many miles it gets to the gallon?

Again they spend about a minute before running into the guys holding our trio of beauties (Hey… it’s short movie… they got no time to waste making with the long traveling montages…) and they seem to hang out on some goofy steampunk pirate-ship train combo thingee. Yep. I kid you not. Anyways, before they can do anything some of those motorbike riding mutant post apocalypse heavy metal warrior dudes show up and start shooting the crap outta stuff. They want the girls too. (I mean… doesn’t everyone?)

Wolff jumps in and tries to get to the girls first. but the wasteland raiders are pretty darn mean guys and faster than anything they’ve killed most of the fighters on the pirate ship train and snatched the girls off using rocket propelled hand-gliders. Shades of “Flash Gordon”!!

We lose Chalmers here… as her robot butt gets zapped silly by a stray laser blast… apparently they couldn’t actually afford an actress of Andrea Marcovicci’s status for too darn long… and our hero is pretty much on his own after some fairly weird dialog discussions with the pirate train guys. They all talk like crazy “space hillbillies” you see. Some kind of local slang that lets us tell them apart from all the “Earthers” like our hero. Kinda dumb, but again, lil’ Miyuki thought it was cool…. ;)

Ok… Ok… so… well these guys are no real help, so Wolff goes looking for the survivors of the Medical Relief Team that got dispatched from Earth back when the plague started. They are all pretty much dead… except for those that “went native”. Or their children… Like the plucky little scavenger waif Niki (played by a 14 year old Molly Ringwald) who Wolff meets after she tries to steal his cool jeep.

She’s mouthy… she’s smelly… she’s larcenous… and adorable in her own ragamuffin way. Naturally she weasels her way into joining Wolff as the token “native guide and scout” that all these stories have. She tell s him the girls have been grabbed by Overdog (played with over-the-top gusto by a heavily made-up Michael Ironside), the leader of the Zoners, a bunch of mutant freaks that rule the shithole that Terra XI has become. He pretty much terrorizes the Scavs… the human colonists who are now the wretched nomadic descendants of the original Earth Colony here. They have a big ol’ fortress. I mean… don’t the evil guys always have a big ol’ fortress? Ahhh… and she can lead him safely right there. Yeah. Sure she can… ;)

First there are the quick encounters with some more crazy mutant monsters… a nest of albino fat cannibals… a freaky dragon serpent monster… some vicious amazon “piranha women”… and an old rival of Wolff’s, Terran Sector Chief Washington (played by Ernie Hudson).

Eventually… and far faster than you might expect, we get to the Zoner Fortress of Doom where our heroes can survive the deadly “Maze of Death” (Think Thunderdome crossed with the obstacle course from “American Ninja Warrior” as designed by the serial killer guy from “Saw” and you’d be pretty close) and then battle the cybernetic monster that is Overdog to save the girls and make it out alive as the Fortress goes all “KA-BLOOOIE!!”.

Along the way, our gruff loner Wolff comes to care for spunky lil’ Niki, who also sorta starts looking at him as a father figure… Awwww… You just know they are gonna bond and eventually become a team. It’s just that kinda movie.

Yep. We’re not talking some really amazing story scripting here. It’s a really just a bare bones B-Western kind of plot transplanted to Outer Space. You’d never see this kind of simple B Movie released by a major studio these days, that’s for sure. “Guardians of the Galaxy” is kinda like it’s great great grand child in a lot of ways but with a waaaaay bigger budget and aspirations of being something more than simple Space Opera. Here the plot is thin… the characters cardboard and two dimensional stereotypes from oodles of old pulp comics and stories. But still. They are kinda fun. In that dumb way old “Flash Gordon” serials were. You’ve gotta have some childhood whimsy to enjoy this, but as a grown-up lady, I still enjoyed seeing it again after all those years. So did Carolyn, who spent the film laughing a whole lot and picking on me something terrible for even having a copy of this in my collection. I just wish it had still been in 3D… then she’d have understood. ;)

All in all. I’d have to give “Spacehunter” a fondly remembered 3 “Meows” out of 5. For a dorky film that plays like a Saturday morning space cartoon, it definitely took that tiny budget and tried to make it go big. The effects are good… the scenery and sets well filmed… and it’s loaded with actors and actresses that definitely make you feel they are having a good time with some fairly atrocious lines. Heck. That’s all this lady needs for some Summer movie fun. If it were to pop up some night on late nite TV, I’d say go for it. Mostly for the laughs… you won’t be disappointed.

I know… I know… By now you are all on the edge of your seats and wondering “Mistress Neko!! Please, please, pleeeaaase say there’s a Trailer for this one!!” Well.. you betcha there is. ;)

Seeing as I’m finally back on track from a looooonnng dry spell, how about we get back to things with a movie that’s been a looooonnng time in making it’s way to my DVD player? Sound good? Well then I guess that means it’s finally time for another trip to the Gothic wilderlands of old Russia and a look at the super late to actually get released, long, long, looonnng delayed, always just out of reach, never thought I’d actually ever see it, Russian remake of the 1967 classic fantasy film, “Viy 3D”.

Our synopsis? OK… OK… it goes sorta along these lines: “Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods somewhere in the hinterlands of the Ukraine. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world.”

Can’t tell you how long this one has teased me from afar. How about since waaaay the heck back around 2005 or so? Yep. This particular film has been kicking around in some fashion or another for well near a decade before finally seeing a release in it’s home country of Russia, let alone any sort of DVD that yours truly could lay her hands on. I had figured that would eventually turn out to be China, Thailand, or maybe Malaysia…. but nope. Just when I’d about forgotten to keep checking around for it, it turns up at my local Walmart under the somewhat goofy and WTF? title, “Forbidden Empire”. Oh well… no passing up a gift of the Movie Fairies… But was it worth the wait to see? One way to know, right? ;)

Our story starts out promisingly enough with what I’m assuming was one of the original scenes filmed for this one waaaay back in 2005. In it, we see a couple of peasant girls and their friends by a suitably spooky lake doing some sort of pagan fertility festival thing where they float some candles to celebrate something. Just what, I’m a little vague on, but luckily that doesn’t really matter because pretty soon all heck breaks loose as a hulking horned unseen “thing” causes one of the maidens to plunge into the lake and begin to drown. One of her friends shows up looking for her and gets scared absolutely shitless by her friend grasping at her from the waters of that creepy lake. Before they can both die, the monster pulls them from the seething fog-shrouded water and leaves them beneath a tree set ablaze by a lightning strike. When the next day rolls around, our rustic villagers… looking like most of those Slavic mobs from any old horror movie… find them. The dark haired beauty, Pannochka (played by Olga Zaytseva) is near death… able only to gasp out some cryptic last wishes to her father before expiring and her blonde friend Nastusya (played by Agniya Ditkovskite)… well she’s now a gibbering imbecile, her mind shattered by the horrors of their supernatural encounter. The grungy local priest starts throwing around the words “witch” and “Satan”… and heck you just know that’s gonna get all the peasants undies in a bunch. Wow… so… now that’s a pretty snazzy beginning for our story, right?

Then we hang an abrupt left. We’re suddenly in England where stuffy Lord Dudley (played by Charles Dance) bursts into his daughter’s bedroom to interrupt a bit of sexy funtime with our film’s apparent hero, traveling cartographer Johnathan Green (played by Jason Flemyng). Ummmm? Huh?

Yeah, yeah… unfortunately this movie likes to do that. Much of that I’m thinking is due to the long production time this film spent being made. Years worth, in fact…The result tends to make it feel like two different films crudely stitched together throughout from footage shot years apart at times and using two entirely different scripts. The result is at times jarring. The feeling you get is that the story started out as a straight classic horror movie, then got “re-imagined” at some point as a kind of “Van Helsing” meets “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” sort of horror/action mash-up. Why the Russians figured they needed an English hero for their Gogol inspired story is beyond me. Maybe they were thinking of the purely box-office possibilities for foreign film sales? If so, it’s an unfortunate and clumsy choice, story wise in this wee Catgirl’s opinion…

The bulk of our story then follows our logical, scientific cartographer as he takes his steampunk carriage stuffed with the latest in map making tech deep into the uncharted expanse of the wilderness beyond even the Transylvanian reaches of Europe and into the dark “Terra incognito” of old Russia. Here he becomes involved in the wierd goings on surrounding the death of Pannochka, her supposed “witchcraft from beyond the grave” and the truth behind our mysterious “beast with seven horns” who may… or may not.. be the Devil himself. There’s a local priest stirring up trouble, a definite power struggle between him and Pannochka’s father the local Boyar, lots of mistrustful peasants just waiting for someone to convince them to commence the sharpening of the ol’ farm implements and lighting those pesky torches. It all should be a pretty fun story, right?

Sigh…. unfortunately for me, it all kind of fails though, falling through under the sheer weight of a plot too darn crammed full of neat ideas and almost uncomprehendingly complicated plot notions to work well on any level. Does it want to be a straight adventure story? Ummmm, sort of. But our hero isn’t actually interested in becoming that deeply involved with any of the locals to form any real friendships or connections. Ok then. Does it want to be a straight up horror story? No, not really, all the great special effects aside, it teases about that more than seeking to scare anybody successfully. A pity, there are some really great possibilities here for that kind of thing.

Neko can’t really go into great detail as to what exactly is happening without ruining it but good for you, o’ Gentle Visitors, so let’s simply say the big “twist” upon which the whole story depends is ultimately a disappointing one, and one you and I have had forced on us plenty of other times by horror movies that don’t really want to be seen as horror stories….

Don’t get me wrong. This movie was actually worth a look. Worth the long wait as a great horror movie? Nawwww… Still, the images and ideas that sit at it’s core could easily be mined by others for some seriously good filmmaking if anybody was in a mood to give a knockoff a try. That film I’d probably enjoy a whole lot more. Your own experience may differ. This lil’ Catgirl? I’ll stick with the 1967 Soviet original.

The DVD itself wasn’t too bad. I wish the film had included the original Russian language audio option, but “Forbidden Empire” as it’s inexplicably titled here in the US, comes only on Region 1 DVD in a dubbed to English version. It’s widescreen, and thankfully free of all the 3D hijinx that would have probably ruined the experience completely for me and Carolyn. In cdue consideration, I can only award “Viy 3D” a paltry 3 “Meows” out of 5, mostly for the look of the film itself and some of the scenes that captured the charm of the original 1967 film and threw w in the special effects to make them work even better.

Not exactly the sort of film I’d hoped to see after waiting 10 years, but hey, at least I got to see it finally. Gotta take your victories where you can I guess.

Still think I could be wrong? Wanna see it for yourself? The have a peek at the Trailer, it’s a pretty one, that’s for sure…. ;)

Well… weird funk or not, it’s time this wee lady forces herself to get with it and get back to what we do here at the ol’ Litterbox, and that’s reviewing all the goofiest horror movies any other self respecting lady would pass up in a heartbeat. It’s October… and as promised, we’re celebrating Halloween with my annual Halloween Movie Review Festival. This time out… vampire movies, and what better way to start than with my first ever Cambodian horror movie, 2004’s “vampire-witch with flying head” film, “Nieng Arp”?

Our synopsis? Ok… “In the middle of a long night, a young woman and her boyfriend are confronted by a group of gangsters on their way home. The girl is then violently raped and her lover is killed by the brutal action of the cruel gangsters. During her loss of consciousness, she later is possessed by an old vampire witch because the saliva of a witch’s head accidentally fell on her mouth, immediately making her part of the next generation of Arp ghosts. After becoming an Arp, she takes vengeance on the gang that raped her.

A group of students come to her house, discovering her true identity by unlocking several secrets in the basement under her lonely villa. One by one the students are killed by the Arp. However, all of the female students are spared. One male survivor does escape and manages to find a new way to be rid of the evil spirit of Arp and thus save his lover, who happens to be the Arp’s daughter, from inheriting the curse of the Flying Vampire”

Oooohhh!! Sounds like a winner. Right? At least it certainly did waaaay back when I first heard of it about a decade ago. However, Cambodian DVD’s are about as difficult for me to get here in the good ol’ US as they can be, so actually finding this one was a major undertaking. But… as with all things, that just means your Favorite Catgirl has to be patient. If I’m lucky, a film like this eventually finds it’s way into my grasp. Just this month, it finally did, English subtitles and all. So now… if you are curious about just how good Cambodian Horror films might possibly be, then just “Read On” and let this obsessive Catgirl tell you all about it. ;)

Well… although I usually prefer to find a DVD… or at worst a VCD… to be able to actually see this one I ended up encountering a Youtube video with embedded English subtitles. Not the best choice for viewing I admit, but given the scarcity of Cambodian DVD’s in my neck of the woods, sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. The nice thing? Well, it meant I’d watch this one by myself on my computer without having to subject my sweetie to what I had the sneaking suspicion might be a rather… **ahem**… primitive bit of film-making who’s appeal would be it’s sheer novelty if anything else.

One look on a quiet afternoon while my dear wife was at work convinced me I’d definitely made the right choice. Let’s be charitable, and simply say that apparently Cambodia’s film industry is still in it’s infancy… and that the “baby” has some serious growing to do. ;)

Story wise, we get a fairly simple plot, thank goodness. It’s set in modern Cambodia, out in the rural reaches of Battambang province. We start off as a young peasant girl struggles with the pain of going into labor, much to the annoyance of her neighbors and family. Seems she’s made the poor choice to have her baby on the one night that the local opera troupe is giving a performance. Seriously. She’s moaning in terrible pain, and obviously in need of help, but the only dialog we get is just how much missing that opera performance is cramping her mom’s style. Sheesh!!

She has the baby… but all this commotion has drawn the attention of this creepy old woman who turns out to be an Arp… yes, a local version of one of those crazy flying “vampire head witch” thingees like the pennangalan from Malaysia or the krasue from Thailand. It shows up after dark to swoop into her room and eat the baby, maybe snack on some menstrual blood or whatever. This is when you know the film is seriously cheesy, giving us this badly video superimposed woman’s head clumsily moving through the air with all the grace of a bad high-school Halloween prank. No… wait a moment… high-school pranks have gotten pretty darn sophisticated these days since computer skills have improved among our nation’s youth… this, on the other hand, is soooo much worse. Not even worse in that “so bad and stupid it’s quaint” way either…. this wee Catgirl just means the “special effects” on display really… and I mean really… suck. Not kidding ya…. No better way to say it. I just guess Cambodian audiences have way lower expectations, as this particular film is actually a huge box-office smash there. Seriously. ;)

Anyways… our vampire hag gets driven off by the villagers, and wounded by a spear which sends her and her drippy innards flying off to our next scene… Here, lovely local beauty Maya and her boyfriend are walking home from that big opera show they mentioned earlier when a group of nasty local thugs waylay them in the lonely jungle, kill Maya’s boyfriend and then proceed to violently gang rape her. After they leave her lying unconscious in the jungle to go do whatever it is nasty thugs do to celebrate a thing like a gang rape, the vampire hag crashes into the trees above her and some of it’s icky essence drips down into Maya’s mouth. Apparently that’s sufficient to pass along the curse of the vampire….

Sixteen years pass, and we catch up with Maya, who now lives with her daughter Paulika in the same village and who now transforms at night into our title monster to fly about seeking her vengeance on the thugs who killed her lover and violated her. Okey dokey then… all we need is some teenage victims to pad things out and we’ve got us a horror story, right?

Don’t worry. Right on schedule we get our requite college students on holiday to picturesque Battambang to do some school study on the ancient Khmer ruins in the area. We get the standard stereotypical group. Our handsome hunky hero Satha, his best buddy, the requisite gay guy… sigh… and two or three girls including the “brainy one” with a crush on our hero, her best girlfriend the “pudgy one”, and another one who just tags along to be an extra victim when the plot starts to drag. Names? Do you really think you need them? No, no, no… just move along… trust Neko, you’ll thank me. ;)

So of course, the gang needs a place to stay here in rural Batammbang, so naturally they stop by Madam Maya’s and get offered free lodging so long as they behave themselves and promise never to go into the basement. Oh… yeah… like that’s gonna stop them….

Anyways… in between Maya’s nightly jaunts to find and kill those gang guys, we get a chaste lil’ love story developing between pretty Paulika and hunky Satha, all the while our other kids keep seeing the creepy vampire head flying here and there. More terrible video compositing and a practical effect worthy of a groan or two: a truly awful dolls head with what I presume to be real intestines stuffed into it all hanging from a wire swung about enthusiastically by a boom guy. I tell you, Ed Wood would be sooooo envious… Hehehehe!!

The story drags…. None of the murders is particularly inventive or even scary. Our group of amateur “Scooby-Doo” wannabees can seem to figure out they are in danger until Maya get’s the idea they “know too much”. Weird given that she could easily have avoided “those meddling kids” by simply not allowing them to stay at her home. But… I guess we wouldn’t have had much of a movie then.

Well… do we at least learn any of the folklore behind our title monster? Ummmm? Not really. Pretty much the Arp wants to just fly around at night waving it’s innards about until some brave peasant figures out that if your guts are just hanging there it’s pretty easy to mess you up by using any of the standard pointy weapons of death to whack them. No silver weapons or sticky rice needed. I kid you not.

Whew…. how this movie managed to pad it’s run time to over two hours is soooo beyond me. I seriously was about done by the time I was half way through this snooze fest. But… I’d been searching for this film for over a decade, so your Favorite Catgirl bravely soldiered on till the well overdue and ultimately stupid finish. So then, did the evil Maya get her revenge? Do Satha and Paulika survive to live happily ever after? Do you even care?

Gotta say. I like trashy movies. But this one was the “Bataan Death March” of horror movies… an experience I’d never want to live through again. It just… plain… stunk…. My sweet Carolyn owed me some serious sweet kisses for sparing her this one… and promptly paid me in full after I told her how terrible it was. ;) This film earns a paltry single “Meow” out of 5, earning that one only by virtue of being so utterly silly that it will make almost any other movie I ever watch seem like a masterpiece by comparison. Thank you, o’ thank you, Youtube for making it possible for me to see this one without the indignity of having to actually buy it in any format. Sorry Cambodia, but it’s the truth…. Maybe there’s a worse film out there…. and I hear Nigeria makes some truly wretched ones…. but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to look long and hard to find that film.

Trailer? Not bloody likely for this one… However, as I said, the entire film is actually currently available at Youtube, at least until somebody complains, I suppose, so if you are so inclined, why not pop over there and give it a watch? But remember… it’s bad, and not in a “good” way.

“Bodiless Vampire” (2004)”

Time to get us back on track here for our Halloween Fright Film Review Festival before we turn from pumpkins to jack-o-lanterns. This time out, how about some lesbian vampire schoolgirl antics with a peek at 2012’s “The Moth Diaries”? Hmmmm? Lots of virginal nubile young women and the always popular supernatural lesbian vampire threat from beyond the grave. Hey… it’s worked pretty well since “Carmilla”… so why not give this old idea one more try? ;)

Our synopsis goes like this: “As she begins a new semester, Rebecca is suspicious of the new girl at her boarding school, Ernessa. Darkly pretty and mysterious, she easily comes between Rebecca and her dearest friend Lucy straining their intimate friendship. But is Rebecca just jealous of Ernessa’s blossoming bond with Lucy, or does the new girl truly possess a dark and terrible secret desire to steal away not just Lucy’s heart, but her immortal soul as well?”

Vintage old private school… lots of precocious nubile girls on the cusp of womanhood… creepy goings on all surrounding the stereotypical mysterious beauty from old Europe… who may or may not be a blood drinking creature of the night. Yep. Sounds like oodles and oodles of horror movies this wee lady’s seen before. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but will “The Moth Diaries” do that old story something novel or new? Let’s all find out shall we?

So it’s pretty certain we’ll be on familiar ground with this one. We start out as our film’s heroine Rebecca (played by Sarah Bolger) arrives back at her private boarding school for the start of a new semester with her best friend Lucy (played by Sarah Gadon) and all of the other girls she’s befriended since the tragic suicide of her poet father landed her here some two years earlier. She’s happy to be reunited with them all and at first all seems happy and normal until the arrival of darkly mysterious English exchange student Ernessa Bloch (played by Lily Cole). Almost immediately Lucy is drawn by the new girl and her fascination grows, creating a rift between her and Rebecca who’s reaction to Ernessa is one of suspicion and distrust.

At first, this seems to be nothing more than petty jealousy at the growing loss of Lucy’s exclusive friendship, but as the story unfolds, more and more inexplicable things seem to convince Rebecca that something is very, very wrong with Ernessa… something dangerous and evil. Sounds like we’re getting ready for some serious spooky stuff, right?

Well… errrr… ummmm… not really as much as a certain lil’ Catgirl would have liked. Instead  of giving us the standard undead hi-jinx you might expect, things at this point proceed in a fairly “non-horrible” sort of way. In fact… they kinda plod along like the plot of one of those soap opera style teen dramas on TV. You know the ones I mean… Girl has friends… new cool mysterious sexy girl transfers to school and right away disrupts the clique stealing away all the first girls friends and causing all sorts of drama and catty bitchiness to ensue. Ick!! I lived through far more than enough of that kind of stuff in High School myself… I certainly don’t need it invading my vampire movie!! But darn it… that seems to be the main idea here. Sigh…

Ok…Ok… so maybe the movie thought it would be “different” if it tried to be all “Psychological” and maybe make it seem like our heroine might just be tip-toeing on that ever so delicate edge between sanity and… well… not sanity. I mean… supposedly there’s the whole understated and pretty underdeveloped subplot that maybe Rebecca might have taken her father’s suicide to heart and now secretly toys with the idea of following his example. Except that the story never makes our heroine broody and dark enough for that kind of subplot to seem credible. Well… so what if maybe it’s a “Psycho-sexual” examination of Rebecca as she’s becoming aware of her growing desires and her latent lesbian attraction to Lucy? Again… not really all that good a fit, despite the addition of hunky English teacher, Mr Davies (played by Scott Speedman) to serve as a counterpoint to any of that stuff. She seems interested in him in that goofy infatuationary way schoolgirls in these movies always seem to be for sexy older teachers even though for me, that whole plot element seemed awfully creepy. Apparently he’s just in the movie to give them an excuse to introduce the “Carmilla” story to our heroine as a possible catalyst to her probable mental issues.

Mostly that’s the whole problem with this one. It’s just not certain what kind of movie it really wants to be. It’s a fairly tepid horror movie…. hardly any blood or gore (Except for a dream sequence in which Ernessa slits her wrist and becomes a proverbial fountain of blood in the school library…)  or even any of the expected vampiric bits you’d think we’d get. No fangs… no bats… no girls with puncture wounds on their necks… just a lot of “wasting away” stuff and a couple of story notions that make Ernessa seem more like a ghost than a vampire. Like her one spooky scene where she’s able to walk through a solid glass window without opening it. Or maybe not… remember, this movie keep making you wonder if what we see isn’t all just some hallucinations in our possibly crazy heroine’s mind.

Well… is it one of those psychological dramas about adolescent alienation and social maladjustment? If so, it kinda really doesn’t succeed in that either. Grrrr…. well… at least it’s got all that risque titillating lesbian subtext going on to hold our story together, right? Ahhhh… wrong again. Although there’s one scene in which our groggy heroine awakens, covered in blood from what seems to be a really heavy menstruation only to look for help from her best friend and discovering her naked in her bed with Ernessa. It’s never made clear whether that was an illicit lesbian fling or a nocturnal vampire feeding attack…. who knows? Worse… it might even have been nothing more than a disjointed nightmare sequence jammed into the tale with no resolution or connection to anything else. Auuugghhh!!

Sigh…. through all this Rebecca slowly gets abandoned and separated from her supposedly close knit group of friends, one of which dies… accidentally in a fall… two of whom leave school for various reasons… and Lucy who basically dumps her closest companion to hang with Ernessa even as she sickens and dies from either vampirism or an eating disorder, take your pick. (Weird by the by, that the school would expel one of the girls for a single disciplinary incident, but not immediately have Lucy’s parents come to retrieve their gravely ill daughter at the first sign of her becoming sick… Nope. Not credible at all…)

In general, by about the last half of this one, I was pretty darn ready for them to wrap things up. It’s a shame too, because the film gets the visual elements just about right, and the casting choices were good as well, particularly Lily Cole as Ernessa. It all looks so right. Unfortunately it all sounds so wrong.

I’d tell you how it all wraps up, but that would ruin just about any chance you’d have if you still decide to give it a watch for yourself. Let just skip right to it then. For being a fairly “PG” rated film masquerading as an “R” rated one, with ill-defined story goals and fairly uninspired logic and no real conclusion I give “The Moth Diaries” a fairly well deserved 2 “Meows” out of 5. Should you want to see it, it fairly easy to find on most regional DVD formats, but I’d recommend you catch this on on cable TV where it probably belongs. Yep. That’s that.

Trailer? Hehehehe… would this wee Catgirl ever fail you? Never, my Gentle Visitors… ;)

2015 has finally faded into 2016 and although I had another week with little to no ambition to speak of,  your Favorite Catgirl is finally back at things again here at the ol’ Litterbox. So I thought we might try to start this whole brand spankin’ new year off with a review of a DVD that’s been sitting in my ‘To Watch” pile for quite a while now. 2014’s Korean Suspense/ thriller “Manhole” aka “Maenhol”.

Our synopsis rolls like this: “Su-cheol is a serial killer who uses the city sewers down a manhole as his secret hideout. Late one night, a young deaf girl witnesses one of Su-cheol’s murders and he abducts her. Later, her older sister, Yeon-seo, determined to find her dear lost sister, discovers the manhole and goes down to find her. As Su-cheol’s blazing madness explodes due to the uninvited guests in his manhole, the two sisters stand against him in desperate attempts to escape out. “

Ummm? A crazy Serial Killer roaming the sewers of Seoul, popping up randomly and abducting and killing young women? Yeah…. just the sort of movie that normally your Favorite Catgirl finds tooooo darn close to reality for comfort. Definitely explains why this 2014 film’s been languishing in my “To Watch” pile for all this time. It might probably still be there if my sweet Carolyn hadn’t decided we needed to bring “some of your foreign movies for the family to watch” over our Holiday visit to Sandra’s. She volunteered to pick them out this year… which sorta surprised me since most of them aren’t in slipcases with any English words on them and Carolyn usually finds that terribly daunting. What they do always have is a plethora of vividly scary pictures plastered all over them and so, with one look at the cover of this one, it went right into our overnight bag.

So…. Was it a hidden gem that yours truly had been letting slip away? Or a lame excuse for “torture porn” at it’s worst that my “Magical Kitten’s Secret Intuition” had been warning me about all along? Guess the only way to find out, o’ Gentle Visitor, is for you to “Read On” and find out. ;)

Family Movie Night… one of Carolyn and my personal favorite additions to a visit with the family every time we visit for any length of time. It’s fun and so satisfying to be able to share one of my favorite passions with all my dear new family. The kids especially seem to get a real kick out of the glimpse of all the exotic movies they’ve never dreamed ever existed. I’m come to understand it’s one of the things that makes Aunt Miyuki “so darn cool”… something that always brings a smile to my face when I hear them say it. ;)

This year my sweet Carolyn decided she wanted to be the one to pick out our video goodies from my vast pile, and instead of taking one or two of the ones we’ve already watched, delved full force into my box of unopened DVD’s to grab something we’d all get to see for the first time. Somewhat surprising, since most of the slipcovers for my foreign movie goodies are usually a wee bit shy on English language elements to help her along in deciding exactly what the heck the film might be about. Thankfully, now that the kids are older, pretty much any of my films are OK for “General Family Viewing” fun… if you are somewhat open minded that is…. ;) (Who am I kidding? Most of my films are the cinematic equivalent of junk food… tasty and fun, but oh, so bad for you…. Ahhh well… Sandra’s a good sport… )

As I had expected, this particular one is more of a crime thriller than a true horror movie, and a fairly tame one at that, so  in the end it turned out to be a pretty good blind choice on Carolyn’s part.

So what’s this one all about then? Well, we get two stories here for the price of one really… our first one involves ex-cop Kim Jong-ho (played by Choi Deok-moon). He’s now a taxi driver, and it’s his daughter Kim Song-yi’s (played by Lee Young-yoo) kidnapping by our crazed sewer dwelling maniac that gets the ball rolling. Apparently despite the rash of disappearances of young women all over this one neighborhood in Seoul, the police are pretty clueless and fairly incompetent about doing… well… pretty much anything resembling a real investigation let alone finding any of the missing girls. This naturally makes Jong-ho absolutely desperate to find her himself with or without the help of his former colleagues on the force. Eventually, he manages to do what none of the real cops seem willing to do, and that’s to think outside the box, and finally figure out that the maniac is using a specific manhole as a door to his lair hidden somewhere in the maze of tunnels and drains beneath the streets. So… he can tell all this to the police and they’ll catch the guy, right? Ahhhh…. no. The police are so unwilling to actually listen to anybody… even an ex-cop… to actually do anything useful. Doesn’t help that the Police Commissioner himself even seems determined to just sweep any new clues or evidence under the rug just to make it “go away” or something. What an a-hole…. So, with no one listening to him, Jong-ho descends into the booby trapped sewers alone to try desperately to find his little girl before it’s too late.

Meanwhile… our other story gets going too. That would involve the kidnapping of yet another girl, Soo-jung (played by Kim Sae-ron), the 14 year old deaf younger sister of our film’s main heroine Yeon-seo (played by Jung Yu-mi). Yeon-seo witnesses the abduction of her little sister and blindly follows our crazy psycho Soo-chul (played by Jung Kyung-ho) hoping to be able to free her before something terrible happens.

This is where pretty much the “meat-and-potatoes” of our film lies. Most of our story involves both Yeon-seo and Jong-ho creeping about the dark sewers trying to find their loved ones… all the while dodging both the killer, his fiendish deathtraps, and each other mistakenly as the nasty stuff happens.

That would be the suspenseful part. Mostly this is some pretty nice edge of your seat suspense storytelling with some nasty gore thrown in for seasoning now and again. Eventually poor Jong-ho discovers he’s too late to save his daughter… killed and then dumped into a pit with all Soo-chul’s earlier victims. After that, his story turns to one of anguish and revenge, while Yeon-seo is valiantly trying to link up with Soo-jung after the girl manages to slip away from her abductor into the maze of tunnels searching for a way to escape.

That leads to a fairly standard cat and mouse game of hide and seek, between our two frightened sisters and a maniac who knows these tunnels like the back of his hand. Oh…. and naturally, he’s got those same tunnels rigged with hidden cameras, deadly traps, and can control the lights to allow himself the option of creeping about with his snazzy night vision goggles, the ultimate predator in this labyrinthine prison beneath Seoul.

Now, for the most part, this is all pretty darn scary and really suspenseful. Mind you… there are a few glaring moments of utter plot stupidity to ruin the fun. One main one? Well… at one point, while separated by a locked grate our heroine tries to get her fleeing sister’s attention by yelling loudly and waving her hands revealing her location to our killer. Yelling? Yep… while completely out of sight… at her completely  deaf sister. The one who she well knows has been deaf for years. Yeah… like that was gonna work. That was silly… even the kids picked up on that particular bit of plot foolishness. At least we got a good laugh out of it.

Hmmmm? What else? Ahhhh…. yes… the crucial clue about the missing motorcycle cop killed early on by our psycho. He goes missing right next to that manhole our killer uses as his only entrance and exit to his lair. There’s a convenient traffic camera focused right on the spot…. which our psycho has tapped into of course to keep tabs on his front door. Naturally, he can turn it off too, all the better to keep his comings and going secret, but despite a policeman going missing, nobody seems to notice! Only Jong-ho puts two and two together enough figure out it’s significance, even though three other victims… one of them a sewer worker… all disappear from practically that exact same spot. Not exactly a shining endorsement for South Korean police work….

Ah well… I don’t usually watch these films for their amazing common sense plots or stellar continuity. Good thing, ’cause this one certainly needed more than a wee bit of suspension of disbelief to make it all work.

So? Do both our ex-cop hero and our stalwart heroine manage to team up in time to whack our crazy killer and save the poor little deaf girl from a fate worse than death? Yeah, yeah… you know that’s pretty much a given. Not without terrible cost of course… it’s an Asian film after all. And yes… even though our crazy villain seems to meet a terrible flaming death at the climax, it’s a given that his smoking carcass will somehow manage to rouse it’s medium rare self from the clutches of the Grim Reaper and slip off into the sewers just in case there’s enough money to be made for a sequel. :)

All in all, this one ended up being merely an acceptable exercise in suspense with far less gore than this wee lady’s been worried about seeing ever since I bought it. I usually don’t watch movies with psycho killers, but once in a while… especially if they are goofy and over-the-top enough, I get a guilty thrill out of seeing such hijinx. This one fell pretty much right in that vein. Not good… but not really bad either. For Family Film Night, it was a pretty good choice.

Now… from this wee Catgirl’s perspective, it rates at about 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a standard Korean film done to their usual high standards, with competent directing and cinematography. The acting was good, although I must confess nobody was really outstanding herein. Not surprising given the stereotypical characterizations in the script. I’d say if Korean film is your thing, it’s probably worth a look, but if you are expecting a lot of horror or gore, you’ll be disappointed mostly. But… hey… the family all liked it, so Aunt Miyuki’s tile as “cool Aunt” still stands…. and that’s worth oodles. ;)

The Korean DVD was excellent as always, although at 29$ US, is definitely pricey for a film I’ll probably only watch this one. If you are on the fence about watching it, I’d probably wait, you won’t really be missing a whole lot, trust me. So. That’s pretty much that, I guess.

Trailer? Oh my, yes… can’t forget that now can we? ;)

Time for another Review, and this time yours truly scores a surprising lil’ gem from Hungary, the quirky offbeat 2015 Fantasy/ Romance/ Comedy, “Liza, A Rókatündér” aka “Liza the Fox Fairy”.

Our synopsis for it goes sorta like this:“Somewhere in a fanciful alternate 1970s Budapest that never was, a shy, naive, and lonely nurse named Liza lives in a bizarre fantasy world where her only friend is the ghost of a dead 50’s Japanese Pop star named Tomy Tani. Inspired by a steady diet of Japanese romance novels, Liza dreams of one day finding her true love. On her 30th birthday she decides to break out of her shy lonely life to find it at last, but as all her potential suitors die one by one in violently odd and extreme ways, she begins to fear the worst: that perhaps she is cursed and has really become a mythical fox fairy, tragically doomed to remain alone forever!”

Hehehe… as you all know, o’ Gentle Visitors, this wee lady loves her goofy Asian Horror movies… and her weird Turkish ones… and… well… pretty much most all horror movies in general. But honestly… I also like quirky, odd little romantic films too. You know the ones. The ones where it’s not too odd to find a ghost or an alien or even a monster or two thrown in the mix just to spice things up. Those are usually the sorts of films I end up getting all teary and emotional about and usually love most of all. Go figure… I’m just goofy like that.

So… when a crazy little Hungarian movie about curses and Japanese Fox Spirits and romance came along, naturally it was a given that I’d have to track myself down a copy. A little web surfing later and eBay came to the rescue with just such a DVD… even complete with those ever so necessary English subtitles along for the ride. Yay!

So, you wanna hear Neko tell you all about it, do you? Then watcha waitin’ for? :)

Now when it comes to odd lil’ films, I’d say this one definitely fits the bill quite nicely. Director Károly Ujj Mészáros has created a whole fantasy world of weirdness for his film, “Liza, A Rókatündér”…. a crazy “Twilight Zone” alternate history 70’s Budapest (or “Csudapest”, as it’s named here)  where somehow the Warsaw Pact never happened, at least not in Hungary. It’s colorful and vibrant, and oh, so darn capitalist… but still grungy and shabby around the edges in that Eastern European way you’d kinda expect. I didn’t actually pick up on this at first… and it’s that clever subtlety that fills this movie with oodles of neat little things you only notice with subsequent viewings. Either way… you don’t miss those dour Soviet socialist notions at all, and this version of Hungary is definitely a much more lively place for it.

Our heroine Liza (played to perfection by Mónika Balsai) is a home health care nurse who’s spent her entire adult career as private caretaker for Márta Tanaka (played by Piroska Molnár) the bedridden elderly widow of the Japanese Ambassador to Hungary. Liza is that sort of sweet, naive, and utterly innocent ingénue with more than a smattering of shyness and awkward social cluelessness to keep her from having any sort of life beyond her nearly constant duties to old Márta. She spends her days caring for Márta and keeping the shabby little apartment clean and tidy with only one other companion to brighten her drab and isolated existence. That companion? Why the ghost of 50’s Japanese pop singer Tomy Tani (played by David Sakurai) whose songs are the favorites of both her and the elderly lady. They lip sync and dance to a tape of one of his old albums as she goes about her day, much to the confusion of poor Márta who, of course, is completely unaware of Liza’s “imaginary friend”.

But, Tomy is quite real, it seems… and as our story starts, he’s moved to jealousy by Liza’s decision to use the occasion of her 30’th birthday to break out of her routine and finally find the love and romance her sweet little heart has always secretly craved. Unfortunately for our dear Liza, her stunted social skills mean she has absolutely no experience interacting with others, and positively no idea about how she should even begin searching for that love. Luckily… or unluckily… thanks to her time as Márta’s nurse she’s become obsessed with all things Japanese including trashy Japanese pulp romance novels. It only makes sense to her that by trying to recreate the exact plot described in her favorite pulp-novel, she should have success. Ummmm… yeah. Poor, poor sweet girl… ;)

So it’s off to her local Mekk Burger restaurant ( a strange “Goat Themed” doppleganger version of the standard McDonald’s/ Burger King kind of fast food place… only in fantasy Hungary!!) for lunch, where the story insists she should have that fated meeting with the love of her life over a cold crab sandwich leading her to a life of “eternal spring” filled with cherry blossoms and love. But not if Tomy Tani has anything to say about it….

Here’s where our story goes a little bit dark, as the jealous spirit decides to ruin Liza’s chances for happiness all so he can lead her to misery and loneliness in the idea that once driven to suicide, she’ll be his for eternity. How can he do that? Why by inflicting her with a curse of the Fox Fairies so that every man in Liza’s life will meet a grisly, yet always hilarious, doom. Start the body count!!

First poor Márta who Tomy… really the spirit of the Grim Reaper, was supposed to take some 6 years earlier but fell in love with pretty Liza and couldn’t bear to finish his job and leave. Time to rectify that little oversight… Márta’s will leaves Liza her apartment and what little money she has, making all her greedy relatives stew with resentment, finally reporting her to the police as a potential murderer.

They investigate of course… and detective Zoltan (played by Szabolcs Bede Fazekas), recently arrived from the countryside, is assigned to ferret out exactly what’s what. Quirky Zoltan with his dour stone faced seriousness is a total opposite to Liza’s delightfully adorable naivete and it isn’t long before he finds himself attracted to her like a moth to a flame. Luckily for him, he has an almost supernatural ability to survive what have to be the most bizarre string of “accidents” thrown his way by Tomy, now determined to eliminate any perceived rivals for Liza’s affections. It starts to be quite the list too….

Poor Liza tries everything to find happiness. Her quest is constantly filled though with a string of hapless losers, Lotharios, and some downright crazy men, all of whom fall one by one to the lethally freakish accidents arranged by Tomy. These deaths are so ludicrously ridiculous at times as to almost be beyond belief. Funny, funny, funny!! In the most morbidly wacky way possible, mind you…

Through it all, Liza keeps seeing ominous signs that reveal to her her accursed fate. Everywhere foxes… shadows that look like foxes… old water stains with a vulpine look… and nightmares of herself as a fox tailed temptress in old Japan leading stalwart samurai to their doom. It starts to become more than she can bear. Only Zoltan…. who has rented Márta’s old room in order to “investigate” our heroine… is there to help lift her spirits. By now, the silly boob is quietly falling for Liza hard, but honorable and decent to a fault, wants only to prove Liza’s innocence and help her to find the elusive love that seems to be always just out of her reach, even if it’s with one of the terrible oafs and losers that keep finding their way into her sights. You just know they are going to get together… just as soon as she figures out it him that’s been fixing all the broken things in the apartment to lift her spirits and brighten her days.

Through it all, our poor Zoltan proves himself to be a man with serious staying power. Tomy tries to kill him constantly… by setting his head on fire, knocking him over backwards and cracking his skull, electrocuting him, and even breaking his neck. Nothing seems capable of finishing our hero for good. That’s the power of selfless true love for you…. That’s a good thing, because part of the cure for Liza’s curse is the selfless, pure, unwavering love of a good man.

But eventually, the number of chalk outlines on Liza’s apartment floor reaches downright silly proportions and our heroine succumbs to thoughts of suicide. Will our indestructible hero be able to save pretty Liza? Only one way to find out. Trust me. If you like sweet, quirky romance films as much as this goofy kitten, you’ll definitely want to find out by watching it for yourself.

My goodness. Where do I begin? This movie is just plain wonderful. There’s an amazing amount of just plain fun and funny things blended together with a quirky sweet romantic story that transcends cultural barriers to make for a film that yours truly absolutely loved. Seriously. I haven’t had this much enjoyment from a simple movie in quite some time. Mónika Balsai is delightful in the role of Liza. About the only thing amiss is that perhaps she physically “seems” older (Miss Balsai is actually 38 according to sources) than our 30 year old character should be, but more than pulls it off in the long run, bringing real heart and soul to Liza as she blossoms from naive girl-next-door to sweetly innocent sexy butterfly, something that in the hands of a lesser actress might have been nothing more that another simple take on “Amélie”. Mind you, yes… that same spirit inhabits this film, but throughout, “Liza” definitely chooses it’s own odd, colorful, and musically weird way to tell it’s story setting it apart and making it all uniquely it’s own. She’s supported by equally strong performances from Szabolcs Bede Fazekas and David Sakurai who has the look of 50’s Japanese Pop down to a tee.

Yep. The funny bits are funny… even the odd “Hungarian in-jokes” that I didn’t quite get the first time through, and it’s a film well worth a second.. or even third… viewing just to try to sort those notions out. (Trust me… after three viewings this wee Catgirl’s “Hungarian” movie filter is now working just fine. ;) )

So, I’d have to say I reeeeeaaally like this one. A lot!! I give it 4 well deserved “Meows” out of 5 with probably a goodly handful of happy “Purrs” of contentment thrown in for all the wonderful acting, the colorful cinematography, the overall offbeat humor, and all the numerous goofy and utterly odd characters that inhabit it. Carolyn liked it too… although I’m thinking she might be all “Liza”ed out after sitting through it three times with me over the last couple weeks… Good thing she utterly adores her goofy wifey. ;)

The DVD? Well, I managed to catch this one surprisingly on the official Hungarian Region 2 DVD release. My first official Hungarian purchase, and surprisingly it came widescreen in PAL format with almost perfect English subtitles as standard. Yay, Hungary!! Way to go! It’s available out there for a fairly nice price, right around 25 $ US shipping included, but well worth it if goofy foreign fantasy films… with a little sweet romance thrown in… are your thing too. Hopefully this one will break out and make it to the UK or US, ’cause Neko’s thinking it’ll be a hit with oodles of audiences all over the place. Take a Catgirl’s word on it, you won’t be sorry.

As always… for the true movie lovin’ connoisseurs among my Gentle Visitors, there’s a Trailer available just for you, complete with those ever so helpful English subtitles… Enjoy! ;)

January is soooo almost gone, and it strikes this wee lady that I’m still being a big ol’ lazy slug when it comes to being active here at the ol’ Litterbox. Sigh…

I’m almost back to my perky, quirky, downright silly self for the most part, so I guess I don’t really have any good excuses for my continued lack of attention to things. Plenty of healthy exercise this month and a renewed effort to get back to my Tai Chi swordplay regimen regularly have me back to the kind of physical shape I ought to be in. OK, then… You know what that means, right? No more excuses, Miyuki!! Time to rally this wee Catgirl’s “Warrior Spirit”, take a deep breath, and plunge back into things with everything I’ve got.

With that in mind, I’m dedicating the month of February to yet another go at a theme Review Festival… and this time out it’s gonna be movies all about us feisty ladies kicking serious butt. So…. get yourselves ready o’ Gentle Visitors, for “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016”. ;)

I’ve got a whole pile of recent Martial Arts female centric films on hand, and I’m definitely gonna spice it up with a look at a couple of old classics I’ve been itching to watch again. Just the kind of thing to get the ball rolling around here again.

Oooohhh! And to get ya in the mood for the kind of action this wee lady’s talkin’ about, o’ Gentle Visitors, how about a little video taste of things to come…Watch out! Every Lady is Kung-Fu Fighting!! ;)

February is here at last and with it the first featured Review of this month’s “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016”. First up? Well how about some “old school” Shaw Brothers style period piece Martial Arts storytelling by way of Indonesia with a look at 2014″s “Pendekar Tongkat Emas” aka “The Golden Cane Warrior”?

Our synopsis is as follows: “The Golden Cane: a relic of incomparable force, coveted by all. And with it, the training of a technique so unrivaled, it vanquishes all who dare oppose its power. As Master Cempaka and her four disciples – orphans of her enemies, now heirs to the Cane – prepare for the new warrior guardian to ascend, an act of villainous betrayal from within threatens to destroy the clan and destabilize the realm. Their only hope to restore order lies in finding the elusive White Dragon, the only remaining pupil still equipped to unlock the mysteries of the Golden Cane.”

Let’s see… we’ve got a nifty mystical weapon… a devastatingly deadly unstoppable “secret technique”… the classic old “aging Master passing the torch to his most worthy successor” plot idea… along with some good old fashioned jealous skulduggery by the stereotypical evil disciples trying to steal away the glory from the worthy one and give us the excuse for some serious “chop-socky” action. Yep, certainly sounds like all the classic old bits are in place.

Ooooohhh!!! Did Neko forget to mention that our movie’s modest, shy, brave, and truly worthy potential successor is a girl? But of course… that’s just how we gonna roll this month, Hehehehe!! ;)

So watcha’ all waitin’ for? Grab your popcorn, prepare for some Kung-Fu the way they used to make em’ back in the good ol’ days… and, of course, by all means “Read On” for all the details. ;)

Indonesia’s really been making some serious efforts to produce quality films in the last decade or so, and while in many ways they might struggle in some areas, the one place they seem really to shine is in the Martial Arts genre. Films Like “Merantau” and “The Raid”, along with it’s sequel, have helped redefine the Martial Art action genre by introducing the West to Indonesia’s own styles of indigenous deadly combat arts. Couple that with tight, well written scripts and plenty of local talent and it wasn’t hard to see why your truly has been waiting impatiently for this particular film to arrive on DVD. Luckily for me, it even made the jump to a decent Region 1 release making finally seeing it an easy, pleasant experience compared to my usual dogged scouring of the Internet for a look-see.

So… what’s our story all about then? Well, “The Golden Cane Warrior” is a fairly nice modern melding of film elements from the more recent Chinese Wuxia film craze coupled with more than a few passing nods to those old Shaw Brothers Classic films of the 70’s and 80’s this wee Catgirl watched by the crapload back in her misspent youth all pushed together with a good dose of Indonesian Martial Art folklore. While it’s not a perfect film, all said and done, it’s a remarkably good one that knows it’s target audience and just what we want in a film.

We pretty much get one of those classic old Martial Art film setups: The aging Master reaching the end of her time, who must decide which of her students is the truly worthy one to teach her last great secret before passing along the mantle of leadership. In this film, Master Cempaka (played by Christine Hakim) has quite the choice to make. Why, you ask? Well, she only has four disciples to choose amongst you see… all of them the children of former rivals that Cempaka was forced to kill during her youth while she was forging the reputation that made her into the feared “Master of the Golden Cane”, the most deadly Master of the Martial World. Ummmm? She killed their parents? Really? Ummmm…. errrr… so what are the chances any of these kids kinda holds a bit of a grudge about that now that they’ve all grown up? Pretty darn good as it turns out…

You see… whomever Cempaka chooses, doesn’t just get her job as Guru Master to the Golden Cane School, they also inherit her unbreakable masterwork golden staff and her reputation as the world’s deadliest fighter. Sound like there might just be some serious money to be made? You betcha….

Of our students, the most likely to be chosen is Kala Biru (played by Reza Rahadian). He’s the school’s best fighter, after all. Problem is, he’s also a prideful vain bully who wants Master Cempaka to choose him so he can finally throw off her silly rules about not using the Golden Cane techniques to promote himself as ultimate Master and allow him to push aside the ruling Council of Masters to seize leadership of all the clans himself. Well… what about her other senior pupil, Daya Gerhana (played by Tara Basro)? Not much of a better choice… especially since she’s Biru’s lover and confidant and shares his ambitions to rule the Martial World at any cost. That leaves us with either the silent child, her youngest disciple Angin (played by Aria Kusumah) or shy and respectful Merah Dara (played by Eva Celia). Dara lacks the experience of the others, but of course Guru Cempaka wisely sees that of them all, she’s the only one who truly has taken Cempaka’s lessons about the worthlessness of violence to heart. So… much to Biru and Gerhana’s smoldering jealousy, she gets selected to be Cempaka’s successor. Oh… yeah… like that’s gonna be the end of things.

In a page right out of one of those old Shaw epics, our villainous duo of traitors poison Cempaka, enough to weaken her and let their combined skills overwhelm her. Not before Cempaka passes the legendary Golden Cane to Dara and the knowledge that the final deadly technique requires not one loyal student to master it, but two. Weakened, dying, and running out of time, she can’t teach that to Dara and loyal Angin, but tells them to find another old Master, the White Dragon Warrior, to learn it.

Naturally Biru and Gerhana both claim that Biru was really the chosen Successor and frame our pretty heroine for her Master’s death… and pretty soon she’s a wanted fugitive with the meanest fighters of all the clans out to kill her and recover the Golden Cane.

From that point forward our story sticks pretty close to the sort of revenge driven plot you’d be comfy with from oodles of other classic Martial Art films. Yep. It’s not a hard story to follow. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad film mind you…. after all those old stories got to become classics for a reason. Simple story plots worked back then, and it pretty much works again just fine here.

This one isn’t exactly the bone crunching action film I was expecting, as it relies more on drama and character exposition, but fear not, they still manage to do some pretty nice stick fighting her and there throughout this one as well as oodles of that nasty close combat Silat fighting style you’d remember from “The Raid”. Nowhere near as brutal as was shown in “The Raid”, but certainly enough to make an impact. Expect plenty of the melodramatic drama of a good Martial Art story and you’ll be happy and comfortable.

Eventually our heroine finds her way to the White Dragon, although not without suffering agonizing loss… learns a secret about his past, finds out all the particulars of that last “secret technique” she needs, and teams up with him to defeat her evil fellow disciples in a final showdown to both restore her honor and return the Martial World to harmonious balance once more. Yep. All very familiar stuff.

But, still,  very well crafted stuff. While “The Golden Cane Warrior” isn’t the most original story to come along, it certainly plays very well as an excellent example of the genre and showcases the Indonesian fighting arts in a way they haven’t been for a Western audience, always a good thing. Neko ended up liking it a lot, especially our heroine, pretty Eva Celia, who makes Dara a very believable, vulnerable yet strong, and truly likable character. All the actors here are good, especially our main villain Biru, who comes across as a truly brutal and credible menace for out heroine to defeat.

All in all I’d give this one a well deserved 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s not the most groundbreaking original story to come along, but it tells that story in a good tight, workmanlike way hitting all the right notes at the appropriate times. It’s a well crafted, good looking film that will certainly satisfy fans of the genre. Heck… that’s all a certain wee Catgirl wants for a nice “Movie Nite” on the couch…

The DVD? Well… I would have preffered to find the Indonesian release for this one, but try as I might, I wasn’t able to track one down for it, until the Region 1 from WellGo came out here in the good ol’ US of A. That particular one appears to be uncut and widescreen, with the original Indonesian audio track on board as well as nice accurate English subtitles for good lil’ kittens like me to enjoy. All for right around 12-15 $ US too… not a bad lil’ price, so nobody’s got an excuse for missing this one, that’s for sure. Not a bad choice for the first outing in our marathon.

There’s a suitably nifty Trailer of course, filled with all the Martial Arts goodness you ought to need, o’ Gentle Visitor, so enjoy!!