Time for another installment of our February “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016”. This time out? Well how about some “female empowerment” from a somewhat unexpected source, the country of Brunei, with a look at director Siti Kamaluddin’s 2014 “Yasmine”.

Our synopsis goes like this: “Living alone with her strict father, Yasmine is a free-spirited girl, sometimes unruly and even rebellious. When her father tells her she’s been refused a school loan and must study far from her friends, at a grim public college, she takes the news very poorly. To top it off, Adi, her old school’s silat prodigy with whom Yasmine is hopelessly in love, now has his eye instead on her rival Dewi, also a practitioner of that same martial art. So she joins the humble silat club at her new college, building a friendship with her teammates Ali and Nadia. Soon she convinces them to join her in signing up for the same intercollegiate silat competition that Dewi and Adi are participating in, with hopes winning Adi’s affections once more. Yasmine is forced to undertake her training in secrecy, because her father harbors an unexplained contempt for the sport and forbids her any involvement with it. As the first round of the competition approaches, Yasmine is driven to excel at all cost, possibly even the loss of her newfound friends. Eventually, her unbridled ambition, her single minded vendetta with Dewi, and her fixation on Adi will soon push Yasmine to learn the secret why her father wants nothing to do with silat.”

Sound a little like “The Karate Kid”? Well… yes… but being a film from Brunei, I was certainly expecting something a wee bit different. Trust me… Brunei is definitely not a place I really associated with “female empowerment”. Nope. So was I surprised or disappointed with what was on hand? Guess you’ll have to “Read On” and find out, won’t you? ;)

So… when I first encountered this film, I was somewhat surprised by all the positive buzz surrounding it. I mean… it’s a film from Brunei… ummmm… a place not exactly high on the list of enlightened modern societies these days. Heck… the local Sultan’s recent total imposition of strict Sharia Law in all of Brunei means that my sweet and loving wife Carolyn and I would be arrested… prosecuted… and promptly executed by stoning just for being together as a lesbian couple if we ever made the unfortunate mistake of visiting the country. No kidding. (Breathe Miyuki… Breathe… I like to think I’m a fairly open minded woman with a reasonable respect for other people… other beliefs and other cultures… I reeeaaallly, honestly try to be… but this sorta *&#@% is just plain wrong! It hurts and scares me to the core to think about the misery such narrow minded crap inflicts on innocent people. OK… OK… Get a grip and stop ranting Miyuki… :razz: ) Given that… I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of the “warm fuzzy feelings” from a movie featuring a female character trying to be strong and independent in a society that pretty much views women as the possessions of their families or husbands. Wasn’t even sure I wanted to watch a movie from a place like that.  But… I’m a curious, stubborn lil’ goof when it comes to movies…

So I crossed my lil’ fingers, took that leap of faith, and gave it a look-see… and surprise, surprise…. it actually turned out to be be pretty darn good.

It starts off right smack in the middle of some tense Martial Art duel one dark night somewhere out in the rural countryside that isn’t just a polite sporting event, but instead a deadly no-holds-barred smackdown looking like it came right out of one of those Thai kickboxing movies yours truly loves. Before we get to figure out what’s what, the whole thing shift to the warm a sunny world of our film’s heroine Yasmine (played by Liyana Yus) as she awakes to start the morning on her last day of High School. There’s an adorably cute bit where she has to quickly sneak back into her house after a night spent sleeping in her treehouse and have breakfast with her dad (played by “Golden Cane”s Reza Rahadian) before heading off to school. A quick trip in her very own little mini-cooper car, where she and her friends eagerly greet each other to discuss how great college is gonna be once they all graduate. Great for all of them except Yasmine, it seems…. Unfortunately, her father has neglected to tell her that the wonderful Private school all her friends will attend is way out of his financial reach. Instead, she’s going to have to attend a relatively stifling public college without them. D’ohhh!! :(

Now that doesn’t go down really well. Our heroine gets a bit snippy and resentful at first, showing up at her new school with every intention of continuing her rebellious independent streak to set herself apart from her fellow students. That doesn’t work out well… If her new school is about anything, it’s all about conforming, getting with the program, and not rocking the boat. They’re not having any of Yasmine’s spunky individuality… not her attitude or her bright red hijab…

But this one is a “coming-of-age” film and soon enough, Yasmine is trying her best to both “reconnect” with her old friends who’s new life at their new college is slowly but surely moving them away from her, as well as try to find new friends amongst her own fellow students. Mostly though…. she really wants to get back together with an old crush, the hunky Adi (played by Aryl Falak) even though he’s now the big silat star at her old friends new private college. Problem is, he’s got a new girl in his life, Dewi (played by Mentari De Marelle) and it looks like she’s out of luck.

Ahhhhh!! But Yasmine’s got a plan… she decides the best way to get Adi back is to join her new school’s silat team and train for the annual countrywide tournament. One problem? Her school doesn’t actually have a silat team. So, after convincing her new friends Ali and Nadiah (played by Roy Sungkono and Nadiah Wahid respectively) to join with her, she begins her training in the Martial Art of silat. Mind you… she’s got an uphill battle before her, especially given that it’s easily evident that her school’s resident “silat master” Tong Lung (played by Dwi Sasono) is really nothing more than a posturing fraud with little or no Martial knowledge outside of some vague fortune cookie quotations.

Worse… her father absolutely forbids Yasmine to get involved in silat training at all for reasons we’ll discover later. Surprisingly… for me anyways… Yasmine defies all her father’s attempts to dissuade her, even going so far as to trying to win over her strict Qur’an reading tutor to her side. By now… both Carolyn and I were pretty darn well rooting for Yasmine to succeed and pleasantly surprised to find how much the film wasn’t just a bunch of lame moralist propaganda about how a good dutiful girl ought suppress her individuality to behave in modern Brunei. Yasmine is presented throughout as a well realized character with both her flaws and her virtues while still being very much a believable individual with her own dreams and ideas. Given that, it wasn’t hard to become invested in the story of the film. :)

Eventually, after a long search, she and her friends track down a true Master of the Art, confined to a wheelchair by a mysterious injury, named Jamal (played by Agus Kuncoro) who decides to teach them what he knows. But… as much as you want to wish her well, you just know her single-minded obsession to master the art of silat is going to blind her to the consequences of that “win at all costs” approach. Firstly she’s blind to the growing attraction her friend and fellow team-member Ali begins to have for her. Worse… she begins to alienate her new friends and taint her spirit by delving into the more brutal and forbidden aspects of the combat arts from a Dark Master, things meant only for pain and punishment not sport or the true spirit of silat.

All of this leads us along through the expected tournament at the climax as Yasmine finally learns all the important life lessons about friendship, romance, discipline, and even the tragic secret that binds both her father and Master Jamal together and which finally explains his fierce opposition to his daughter becoming a silat practitioner leading to some touching “father-daughter bonding”… Awwwww!!

If you’ve already watched “The Karate Kid” then you’ve really kind of already seen the ending it has in store… and trust this lil’ Catgirl, “Yasmine” doesn’t miss a beat to reach pretty much the same place, although in no way was watching this one a disappointment by any means. It’s a really nice movie… and no one is more surprised more than I, just how much I really liked it.

Seriously. I honestly didn’t start out thinking I would. Most of that was due to my misgivings over what little I knew about life in Brunei and the message a film from there might want to send to young women with dreams and notions that weren’t exactly the most socially conforming. Bravo for proving me wrong and making me root for this funny, spunky, and very real feeling young girl. She’s a person I feel I could be friends with if we ever met… even if I don’t share her culture or background. Hey… that’s a start, right? (Mind you… I have to admit this wee lady is still somewhat totally scared about that whole “stoning” thing for we lesbians… so don’t expect me and the wife to visit any time soon… now I’m just saying. :) )

The acting, particularly by our young lead Liyana Yus as our heroine Yasmine, is excellent, with good cinematography and really nice fight choreography by Chan Man-ching, a longtime associate of Jackie Chan. Overall, it’s a classy, well crafted, good looking film, that while not perhaps being the most original plot-wise, nonetheless manages not to embarrass itself or come across as a mere cheap copy. This wee Catgirl gives it a well earned 4 “Meows” out of 5. Not a perfect film, but… for this lady anyway… a surprisingly good one and well worth a look.

As far as I can tell, there isn’t a DVD available for it yet, although I’ll definitely want a copy once there is…. you can watch it like I did by steaming from either iTunes or Amazon or any of the other big online streaming services. Definitely… do it, if Martial Art coming of age films are your thing, you’ll probably be as happy as me.

Trailer? But of course! Complete with English subtitles too!!Doesn’t your Favorite Catgirl always do her best to find you a nifty video goodie to wrap things up? ;)

Time for another entry in February’s “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016”, and this time out we have 2015’s Chinese period Martial Art drama “The Assassin”.

The synopsis reads as follows: “Tang Dynasty China. 10-year-old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in her task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised – a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China. After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings. A slave to the orders of her mistress, Nie Yinniang must choose: sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins.”

OK… Pretty young girl raised to become the deadliest assassin in ancient China… sounds like we’ve got a promising selection for our current theme, but naturally, the only way to know for certain if this one is gonna satisfy your Favorite Catgirl’s thirst for oodles of “Female Empowerment” is to give it a watch, right? So let’s not waste any more time and get right to it then shall we? ;)

This particular one’s been out in HK for a couple months now on DVD, and as much as I wanted to pick it up, there hasn’t been a big enough pile of DVD’s released there to lure me into another overseas internet shopping splurge. Luckily for me, the Region 1 DVD release happened just in time for our festival, so after a quick trip to our local Walmart, a copy is finally in my lil’ paws at last! Yay!

So… firstly I have to say this one definitely wasn’t what I had been expecting. The Trailer, of course, paints this one as a fairly typical wuxia outing… lots of the normal Martial Arts hijinx with the wire work and frantic kung-fu battles on rooftops, in shadowy ghostly forests, and the like. It’s definitely sold that way… but unfortunately, it’s really not that kind of film at all. Nope. It’s an entirely different sort of animal indeed. Instead of focusing on the action elements, “The Assassin” pretty much prefers to dwell primarily on the history, imagery, and charm of the long vanished Tang Dynasty. Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou certainly is a master of cinematography… I’ll give him that… but somewhere along the way on this one, he seems to have gotten almost too obsessed with getting the imagery right at the expense of the story, and for me, anyways, the story always matters more than making it all look pretty.

So what that means, is that rather than getting a Martial Arts drama, we get in it’s place a mostly tedious plot in which our film’s title heroine, Nie Yinniang (played by Shu Qui) is supposed to have been raised since childhood by a Martial Nun and trained to become an instrument of death to keep the balance between the Imperial Court and frontier provinces that have become overly strong and overly independent constantly seeking to challenge the central authority for supremacy. You’d expect a plot full of melodramatic intrigue and violent death right? OK… sounds like a promising plot possibility… but unfortunately for just about anybody not already well versed in the intricacies of 8th century Chinese history and politics, this one is also pretty much completely incomprehensible. I’ve watched a lot of Chinese film over the years, so I sort of knew some of what was going on, but my poor Carolyn… they pretty must lost her in about the first 20 minutes. :(

That means our film will have to rely on the action to keep otherwise confused viewers interested, right? Problem is, our director wants to make a Martial Art film that isn’t actually about the fighting at all. He’d rather have our characters emote… or just move around his artfully dressed scenes with silent purpose in the hopes of giving us the cinematic equivalent of gourmet food. Sure… it all looks good, smells wonderful, and is presented with all the style and flair of a master chef, but ultimately when you pop a bite in your mouth at last…. it just plain isn’t very tasty and appetizing. Pretty much, that’s our film here in a nutshell.

Basically our heroine moves through this story like a ghost… brooding a lot, not achieving anything, never explaining anything or even settling the situation. She just sort of exists, with no real foundation for her motivations presented in any way for us to get a grip on her character. She’s supposed to have been betrothed to her intended target, her cousin the military governor Tian Ji’an (played by Chang Chen), but since she was a 10 year old girl when she got stolen away to begin her training, it would seem that there really isn’t any real basis for any emotional attachment between them… and it certainly isn’t played as if they are anything more than total strangers to one another. That’s the biggest problem with this film… all the characters look precisely right… but once they move, they just end up being empty and hollow beyond that pretty surface.

Mostly, I found this one to be a long, drawn out overly long exercise in how not to tell a Martial Art story. I think I’d have preferred about 20 minutes less film than I got. Seriously. One can go on about how pretty and beautifully shot it is till the end of time, but when all is said and done, it’s like a painting…. you take a look, you appreciate the image and you move on. Nobody wants to stare at the same picture for hours….. :(

Sigh. I wanted to like this one. Really I did. I’ve been waiting for it for nearly half a year to reach DVD, but now that I’ve seen it, I just can’t say I liked it at all. I found it boring, confusing, pretentious, and totally lacking in any real drama or audience appeal. It didn’t engage me… didn’t thrill me… didn’t wow me with it’s impressive beauty after the first 30 minutes or so.

Maybe I’m too lowbrow for this kind of film, but for me it scores only a paltry 2 “Meows” out of 5. Want beautiful cinematography, amazing use of color and contrast, and a good Martial Art story? Watch Jet Li’s “Hero” instead…. now that’s a Martial Arts epic that scores as an artistic achievement in film making as well.

The DVD? Well, the Region 1 DVD by Well-Go is at least an excellent choice if you still find yourself wanting to take a peek at this one, presented both widescreen and in the original Chinese language with the excellent English subtitles you want. All for about 15-20$ US, although I’d suggest a rental first before plunking your cash down for copy of your very own. Trust me…  ;)

Our trailer? Well here it goes, much better than the film itself, all English subtitled for your enjoyment. :)

Whoooo!! Boy… The snow and ice sure are blowin’ hard outside my window today, but your Favorite Catgirl is still at it with yet another entry in February’s “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016”. This time out, we’re off to Korea for a look at 2015’s swordplay film “Memories of the Sword”.

The synopsis reads as follows: “During Korea’s Goryeo dynasty, a trio of heroic peasant warriors is betrayed by one of their own during a violent uprising against a corrupt governor’s tyranny that leaves the greatest fighter among them and his beloved wife dead at the hand of a traitor. Over the next eighteen years, one of them, now a blind swords woman, trains the fallen soldier’s daughter in the art of the sword so she may finally avenge his death.”

After being so darned disappointed by “The Assassin”, I was definitely looking for a good old fashioned Martial Art film with some “girl power” to raise my spirits and help me battle the winter blues… luckily for me, Korea is always willing to answer a goofy Catgirl’s wishes. :) Wanna hear all the nifty details? Then you know what you gotta do, o’ Gentle Visitors…

Yep. Winter hasn’t been very… well… “wintery” this season. At least not until now, when the season is soooo nearly done. Now we’re getting all the snow… and the cold… and buttloads of nasty ice too. It’s weather like this that seems to hit me particularly hard now that my seasonal depression seems to be so darn magnified by my current hormonal situation. All I want is to be a dull goofy lil’ slug and stay inside… with little or no ambition or energy to fight back. Luckily for me… as always… movies are my saviors. They let me travel the world and see exciting and exotic places while my own world seems so stuck in it’s own private Ice Age. Our February festival has helped, and especially when it comes to films like 2015’s Korean swordplay melodrama “Memories of the Sword”. Now this one is definitely Neko’s kind of movie. ;)

So lets see… this one gets underway as our young heroine Hong-ee (played by Kim Go-eun) lives a carefree life in a tiny village at the port of Byukran where her days seem to be filled with frolicsome play in golden fields of sunflowers. We know she’s something special when she playfully displays her amazing Martial Art prowess by leaping over 20 foot sunflowers in a single bound. Oh yes… Hong-ee is gifted…

She’s also a wild little free spirit who wants nothing else but to compete in the Martial Art matches hosted by the powerful General Yoo-baek (played by Lee Byung-hun), his way of finding suitable candidates for his own personal army that he plans to use in his schemes to cement his power at court. But naturally… young girls in the Goryeo era aren’t permitted to be soldiers… You know what that means, right? ;)

Yep. She goes ahead and dresses as a young man, dons a mask and bullies her way into the arena one afternoon to do it anyway. There’s plenty of swordplay and wuxia wire-work, and it isn’t long before the general notices that her impressive skills are eerily similar to an old acquaintance of his… one he badly wants to find… at any cost.

Why you ask? Well, here Neko’s kind of gotta delve into the somewhat complicated backstory of this one in order to explain, so it’s “Spoiler Alert” time for all those of you out there who might want to see this one with all those surprises intact. ;)

So after she fights the current winner Yool (played by Lee Junho) to a standstill, General Yoo-baek first tries to have his men capture her (Yeah… like that’s actually gonna happen… ;) ) and then he tracks her down himself after she escapes into the nearby city to try her skills himself. It’s another neat lil’ duel that our girl barely escapes from only to have to explain to her blind mom Wallso (played by Jeon Do-yeon) what in heck she was even doing exposing herself to such danger.

Here’s where our requisite backstory comes in… Seems that our girl Hong-ee is not actually Wallso’s daughter at all. Nope. She’s been raised by that blind teashop owner and trained in all those crazy swordplay and Martial skills just so she can eventually go on that bloody road of vengeance and kill the two people responsible for her real parents deaths when she reaches her twentieth birthday. Guess who they are? Yep… General Yoo-baek is one of them…. and in one of those classic moments of Martial Art movie melodrama, the second turns out to be none other than Wallso herself!! O_o

Say what? Yep.. seems that some 18 years earlier, the blind woman Hong-ee has always known as her mother Wallso was actually Seol-rang, one of three peasant heroes along with Hong-ee’s father Poong-cheon and her lover Deok-gi, now the ambitious General Yoo-baek. The trio were originally responsible for a successful peasant revolt against the tyranny of the local Goryeo Governor of the province. But, at the climax of their success, Deok-gi betrayed them to the government forces in exchange for a position as General of the army. He threatens to kill Poong-cheon’s wife and baby daughter Hong-ee, but before Poong-cheon can save them, he’s reluctantly killed by Seol-rang out of loyalty to her lover. Seol-rang thinks this will save them, but she has no idea how deep Deok-gi’s thirst for power runs, and he slaughters them anyways. It’s then, the heroes broken and the revolt destroyed, that she takes Hong-ee and disappears swearing to her lover that someday Hong-ee would kill them both to set things right.

Awwww crap. Now doesn’t it always suck when you find out that your Mom isn’t really your Mom and worse, that she’s the one responsible for your real parents deaths? Yes, yes it does…

So our story gets it’s prerequisite tragic backstory rolling… and our heroine finds herself having to step up and start that quest for bloody revenge long before she’s ready. Along the way, she finds love in the form of Yool, the young soldier she fought in the beginning, loses her adopted little brother because of her own ill-advised identity theft as part of her “dress like a guy” disguise plan, find out how her Mom got blinded, and finally discovers the real truth of her identity and just who her “real” mother is…. all in about an hour and forty minutes.

Mmmmm…. and along the way, your favorite Catgirl got her fill of gorgeous scenery, amazing costumes, lots and lots of wuxia combat goodness, and a plot that while complex, isn’t too darn out there story wise to be able to follow it. Just what I was looking for. :)

“Memories of the Sword” isn’t perhaps the most original swordplay story to come along, but it certainly ticks all the right boxes for Wuxia film fans. We get craploads of Shakespearean melodrama melded to the wire-fu driven superhero action of the Wuxia genre and served up with competent acting and excellent cinematography that makes for a pleasant and enjoyable movie watching experience. Want some drama? It’s in there. Want a fresh faced heroine willing to go the distance for love and honor? It’s in there. Want lots of beautiful slow motion sword duels with all that gravity defying wire-fu goodness you know and love? It’s in there. Want one of those tragic yet poignantly perfect endings where you even feel bad for the villain? Yep… it’s in there too.

“Memories of the Sword” was soooo much more satisfying a movie for me than “The Assassin”. It’s nowhere as artistic, but as pure movie entertainment, it does the trick perfectly. Neko gives this one a well deserved 3 “Meows” out of 5. Even Carolyn agreed it was a much more viscerally and emotionally satisfying film.

The DVD? Well, we got to see this one on the recent Region 1 release as well, also by WellGo and as with “The Assassin”, it’s a class act DVD wise, having been presented in widescreen letter-boxed format with the original Korea audio and those wonderfully perfect English subtitles a certain Catgirl loves. There’s a Region 3 Korean release out there too, as well as a HK one, but if you are in the US, you can’t go wrong choosing our own domestic version for right around 15$ US.

Of course, as always, there’s a Trailer… Why the heck wouldn’t there be? ;)

Time for another of our February festival reviews for our “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016″, and this time one of those classics I told you I had on tap, 1985’s Hong Kong action fav, “Yes, Madam!” featuring the dynamic pairing of Michele Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock.

Our synopsis? “Investigating the murder of a rich Westerner, tough Hong Kong Senior Inspector Ng is forced to team up with equally tough Scotland Yard Inspector Carrie Morris to track down secret microfilm evidence that contains complete details of a triad boss and his gang’s illegal activities, evidence which has fallen into the hands of a trio of hapless bumbling thieves. Bullets flying, fists and kicks exploding, it’s a race to the finish to see who will find the microfilm first with the lives of those low level crooks always hanging in the balance.”

This one’s an old movie from waaay back in the day, and probably the inspiration for the torrent of “Tough Lady Cop” movies that ruled the late 80’s and early 90’s HK movie scene. Yours truly caught it back when I was in college as part of the wave of HK action films that began showing up here in the US. While maybe not the best of them, it most certainly made it’s mark and cemented the careers of both Michele Yeoh and her co-star Cynthia Rothrock as the ruling queens of HK action cinema. Been some time since I gave it a watch, so with our current theme festival underway, I dug my old Mei Ah Region 3 release out and decided it was time to see it again. Wanna share my cinematic memories? Then, by all means, “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitors! ;)

Early 80’s Hong Kong cinema was in a transition phase from the old school Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films a seeking a new vibe when this one was made. It was also one of the first of the more recent Asian cinema films I got to see at the time when I first encountered them in college back in the day… up til then my exposure to Asian film had mostly been the badly dubbed Kung-Fu films of the 60’s and 70’s with a healthy flavoring of rubber-suited Japanese kaiju cinema thrown in that played on our TV when I was a wee girl. I’d always expected that there were more worthy films going on over there, but it wasn’t until college when I really got to find out about any of them. “Yes, Madam!” was for me one of the first… along with John Woo’s “The Killer” and Tsui Hark’s wonderful “A Chinese Ghost Story”. These were my initial glimpse into the cinema that this wee lady now pretty much makes her steady diet, movie wise. ;)

Watching this one again after so long was just plain weird… I had forgotten so much about it and seeing it now I was so struck by how much a product of it’s time it really was. Part of it was of course seeing Michelle Yeoh so young again… it’s her, but my goodness!! How truly “80’s” she looked back then, kind of like “Miami Vice”- Hong Kong style. ;) But the very story itself also captures the wild, somewhat rough and uneven film plots of the Hong Kong cinema from way back then too.

What’s it all about? Well… basically the story revolves around two thieves, Asprin (played by Hoi Mang) and Strepsil (played by John Shum) who make their living, among other nefarious activities, stealing from hotel guests while disguised as room service guys. It’s a pretty good scam too, until they get accidentally involved in robbing the room of a wealthy foreigner named Richard Norten and stealing his passport. Problem is, they do it without knowing he’s been already been killed during a deal gone bad by a vicious hit man in the pay of local Triad boss Mr. Tin (played by James Tien). They barely escape the hotel one step ahead of both the vicious hit man (played by Dick Wei) and our beautiful cop Inspector Ng (played by Michelle Yeoh). What they don’t know is that the passport contains secret microfilm evidence of Tin’s nefarious activities and he’ll do just about anything including cold blooded murder to get it back. They, of course, pass that stolen passport along to their forger friend Panadol (played by director Tsui Hark of “A Chinese Ghost Story” fame) and that pretty much sets up the rest of out story as everybody tries to catch them and get their hands on that evidence.

Richard Norten was a British citizen, so naturally they dispatch an officer to join the investigation, Scotland Yard Inspector Carrie Morris (played by Cynthia Rothrock). We get that usual prickly introduction as our two tough lady cops spar over jurisdiction, methodology, and general rivalry. You’ve seen “Lethal Weapon”? Then you basically get the idea… only with lots more estrogen and Martial Arts thrown in… ;)

Mostly our uneven plot wobbles back and forth between this police procedural action story and the more slapstick comedy tale of our three bumbling crooks, never quite deciding if it’s a tense dramatic action film or a light-hearted HK crime farce. But that’s OK… it’s not really why we’re watching this one anyways. Nope, we’re here to watch our two female leads go from one amazing stunt filled fight scene to the next, giving us a chance for them to wow us with their amazing Martial Art skills. That they do, indeed…

Thank goodness, because neither of our heroines really wows us with their acting skills in this one. Still… you have to remember that Michelle Yeoh was just starting out her career and has thankfully come a long long way since these early days. Cynthia Rothrock? Well… she was, and still probably is, an absolutely amazing Martial Artist and although she never really improved as an actress, she’s always been one of those people with an undefinable charisma that goes a long way towards making up for her lack of acting range. In short, the ladies more than hold their own throughout, making the film an enjoyable bit of bone crunching eye candy, especially in their final big fight scene at Mr. Tin’s palatial lair. (Filled with plenty of that other big HK 80’s stunt favorite… smashing people though big ol’ honking glass thingees…. gotta love that!)

So, with our story pretty much a standard by-the-numbers old favorite, a whole dollop of occasionally off-color HK humor and slapstick comedy, and a goodly number of well choreographed fight scenes to give us our action, “Yes, Madam!” is still a good basic film, overall. While not innovative or groundbreaking, it’s not embarrassing either, even if it’s portrayal of “strong women” is awfully stereotypically sexist and played fairly broad and cardboard. But… hey… it was a start, and for the most part both Carolyn and I enjoyed this little “blast from the past”. Even if I am now having some serious “Miami Vice” flashbacks….

For it’s cheesy, dated and totally predictable story, I can truthfully only give “Yes, Madam!” a barely passing rating, but then, ultimately the well done action sequences and stage presence of both our heroines brings it up to a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5. Heck… I’ll admit it… I’d enjoy seeing Michelle Yeoh yank two bad guys through a big ol’ glass balcony any day of the week. Throw in a spunky blonde sidekick kicking idiots in the head repeatedly and I’m sold. I’m just that sort of lady…. ;)

DVD? Well… like I said, I watched this on an old Region 3 Mei Ah release out of HK, but I’m pretty certain you ought to be able to find a copy fairly easily in whatever Region or neck of the woods you might find yourselves in o’ Gentle Visitors. While not a great movie, it does truly deserve the title of “Martial Art Classic” and for most of us, that’s damn good enough. :)

Trailer? Why yes, of course! From the UK, where this particular one is also known as “Police Assassins”… (although for sheer giggles, I still prefer the goofy Japanese title… “Lady Hard: Great Hong Kong Criminal Investigation”) ;)

Our February “Martial Arts Mayhem: Fighting Femmes Festival – 2016″ continues! This time out how about some feisty stick fighting Hindi women out to kick butt and protect and empower the poor, exploited, and downtrodden women of rural India… by ganging up and beating the living beejeebits outta some slimy guys and battling corrupt government officials with both ballots and sticks? Ummm, yep, that’s definitely the sorta movie we’re looking for this month… ;)

Our synopsis? Ok, try this: “A fearless peasant heroine named Rajjo  creates a sanctuary village where abandoned and abused girls and women are taught to read and make a life for themselves making baskets, grinding spices, and weaving beautiful pink saris to sell. Together they grow strong and fight social injustice while battling a crooked politician out to trick the poor rural people for her own wicked enrichment.”

Well… While it’s fair to say it’s not exactly a Martial Art film, nonetheless this one oozes lots of action, drama, and “female empowerment”… and from the trailer, it looks like we’ll certainly get our fill of crazy stick fighting lady action. I’m thinking it’s a good pick for our theme this month. Wanna find out if it’s a good match for our festival? Then hurry on up and “Read On”… :)

India is really starting to move into the Martial Art film genre with a vengeance. So why not do a movie featuring a spunky peasant heroine who uses the traditional Hindi stick fighting art of Lathi Khela? Sounds good to this lil’ Catgirl. :)

This particular film is a highly fictionalized account (although for legal reasons the filmmakers denied it like crazy… ;) ) of the life and career of Sampat Pal Devi, the controversial leader of the real life original Gulabi Gang. I’d actually never really heard of her and her struggles against the very entrenched and casually accepted misogynistic way Indian women are marginalized and treated in their culture. That’s a problem Neko has seen in other Indian films and always rankled about, so when I heard about this particular film, I was immediately interested in giving it a look. One quick eBay later and a copy made it’s way to my mailbox from exotic India just in time for this month’s festival.

Our film starts out with our heroine Rajjo as a little girl in the poor rural north of India, enduring the daily brutal treatment of her vicious stepmother who resents little Rajjo’s burning desire to go to school and become more than just another nameless peasant living a meaningless life of servitude. That lady is one mean piece of work… not only does she constantly harass little Rajjo, but browbeats her loving father as well. Despite this, her spirit remains firm, and by the time she’s grown to womanhood, Rajjo (now played by Madhuri Dixit) has created an Ashram, a spiritual sanctuary where she’s gathered a group of formerly abused and abandoned women to give them a place to find peace and strength, supporting themselves by hard honest labor while building a community that can fiercely defend itself from the exploitation and misogyny of the world around them. But… trust me… Rajjo is no Gandhi… there’s gonna be no “passive resistance” when the pink saris of the Gulaab Gang decide to move against injustice. ;)

No, these ladies are ready to kick butt if necessary, when a cruel world decides to try to mess with them. Not that they don’t try to take an enlightened route to achieve their ends… an example being the creepy way they deal with a local government official starving them from needed electricity. He underestimates their resolve, and soon an army of pink saris descend upon his compound, trapping him and his cronies in their headquarters, nailing them inside and cutting off electricity, water, and food until they comply with Rajjo’s request to turn on the power.

Rajjo always tries to lead her gang of women with a gentle understated strength, but in almost every case, again and again she’s forced to show that iron strength that proves women are no mere weak things to be used or abused at will. It isn’t long before she’s an unofficial spokesperson for the poor rural people and comes to the notice of ambitious politician Sumitra Devi (played by Juhi Chawla) who sees her message of “female empowerment” as a tool she might corrupt for her own selfish means to power.

Rajjo’s no stupid peasant to be fooled though, and once she realizes how truly corrupt and self-serving Sumitra really is, it isn’t long before she begins her own political campaign in an effort to defeat her and free the people from such exploitative rule. That’s when things get all dangerous.

Sumitra is evil. There’s just no way to describe it otherwise. There’s a very real suggestion that she had a hand in the murder of her own husband so that she might use public sympathy for her widowed status to win his political seat. Her staff are a mixed bag of thugs and yes-men all jockeying to curry her favor for their own purposes. She is willing to commit any crime, even murder, to achieve her ends and her ambition knows no bounds. Neko immediately hated her cool calm and utterly amoral character… so stereotypical yet somehow so refreshing as well.

I’m thinking it was a really smart choice to square our heroine off against such an intelligent powerful female opponent in this story rather than the tired old “wicked misogynistic male governor”. It made for a much more satisfying conflict as these two very strong female characters battle for the soul of the people and their own vision of the future. Both actresses are at the top of their form throughout lending a very real chemistry to the rivalry between them.

The majority of the story is tied up with that political campaign, as Rajjo tries to beat Sumitra at her own game, only to discover that Indian politics is a thorny and thoroughly corrupt process that Sumitra has mastered at every level. There’s just no beating her with simple truth and honor, and ultimately only Sumitra’s own arrogance will cause her to make the mistake of thinking she can simply murder Rajjo and her women openly and not suffer consequences that allows our heroine to prevail.

Yep. That would be our climax, but before we get there, there’s plenty of the usual Hindi film hi-jinx to endure, with all the expected singing and dancing numbers scattered here and there to break things up, as well as more than a few chances for the ladies to demonstrate their street fighting skills. Yep, most of the big fight scenes aren’t really Martial Art fights… and there is precious little of the lathi khela art on display. Mostly our ladies demonstrate just how nasty farm implements like sickles, knives, and axes can be when you really want. Rajjo herself, does do some neat wuxia style “wire-fu”, making impossibly cool looking leaps over trucks and opponents so she can smack the snot out of them with her stick, but she’s pretty much the exception, as the rest of our women show themselves merely to be accomplished brawlers willing to take some injury to dish out the punishment to their foes. The fights are perhaps more realistic that way, but far less than artistic. Not disappointing, but a missed opportunity to make “Gulaab Gang” more than just a “ripped from the headlines” actioner and let it reach the level of “cult classic”. I would have liked a bit more of the Martial Art stuff, like how our heroine learned her stick fighting and so on, but…. Oh well… it’s still refreshing to see Indian ladies kicking butt for a change, so I’ll cut them some slack. ;)

Now, for some unexplained reason, this particular film was a dismal flop in India itself. Why? Who the heck knows… It’s well made, well acted, with competent stunt work and excellent colorful cinematography, and comes in at just over 2 hours and 15 minutes of run time, a fairly tight little movie by Hindi standards. The story? Remarkably it gives you not one but two powerful female characters to enjoy, and is in no way a cop out to the tired idea that women are the “weaker” sex. Both Carolyn and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

How much? Well, personally, I’d give this one a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5. If strong feisty women standing up for themselves and taking on a wicked system on their own terms is your idea of a good story, you could do worse than to spend an evening giving this one a watch.

The DVD? Well, I watched this on the actual Indian release by Junglee Home Video, in it’s widescreen letterboxed format. It’s in Hindi, of course, but there are excellent separate English subs on board for those of us who need them, all for right around 9$ US. How can you go wrong with that? I certainly don’t know… ;)

Naturally… there’s a Trailer, filled with all the stick fighting, butt kicking, singing and dancing fun you might want… ;)

Well… the weather here has turned silly and unseasonably cold again, and on this wee lady’s day off, your Favorite Catgirl Princess finds herself completely unwilling to venture forth on a miserably cloudy, damp, and chilly afternoon to do much of anything.😦 But… upside is… that means I’m trapped here in the apartment all by my lonesome and can’t think of a decent reason not to finally get back to the business of giving you all another long overdue Review of yet another trashy foreign horror goodie that finally made it’s way to our DVD player a night or two back. So… lucky you.. it’s time for Neko to share her impressions of Malay director James Lee’s 2011 horror film “Claypot Curry Killers”.😉

Our synopsis? Well here goes… “Following the grisly murder of her mean-spirited husband, a single mother and her three daughters find a way not only to dispense justice against all abusive men but also to make a good recipe for their restaurant’s famous claypot curry dishes. The best thing to do to an enemy, cut them up and eat them up.”

Cannibals, murder, female empowerment… and spicy, yummy curry? Oh heck, yes…. this one definitely sounds like a certain goofy Catgirl’s idea of movie fun. So what the heck are we waitin’ for? Let get to it, shall we?

So this one’s been out there for quite a while… 2010 or so… and Neko’s been eagerly awaiting a release ever since I first caught wind of it all those years ago, but unfortunately this has been one of those stubborn ones that has been stuck in DVD limbo for like forever. Didn’t help that it never ever originally got a theatrical release in Malaysia itself…. having quickly gotten itself banned right after being made for it’s exploitative subject themes of sex, violence, and cannibalism… all absolute taboo “no-no’s” in that country. Apparently… with that kind of stigma and without any theatrical release, that meant that overseas sales of this one were needlessly complicated. I knew it would eventually happen… it was just a matter of where and when. So began this crazy lady’s loooonggg wait.

Eventually that release came. To Germany, where an uncut version found it’s way onto Region 2 DVD and Bluray… but without any English subtitles. Darn…. I had just about convinced myself to bite the bullet, pick up a copy and roll up my sleeves for the torturous task of doing my own translated from the German ones, when another release popped up on Region 4 in the “Land Down Under”, sunny Australia. Ahhhhh…. Australia… I always knew there had to be a decent reason the British moved all those criminals down there all those years ago. Somehow they must have known a certain goofy Catgirl would someday want an English speaking country in close proximity to all her favorite Asian movie sources, all ready and willing to subtitle movies into English just for her. (Ummmm? Wait a minute… You mean to tell me that’s not really why they are there?😉 )

Anyways, I assumed this one was gonna be pretty darn nasty. I mean… it got banned… right? This just had to mean that “Claypot Curry Killers” was as gory and bloody and downright nasty as some of those really extreme Thai horror efforts like “Meat Grinder” or Indonesia’s “Rumah Darah”. Yep… that’s what I was expecting. Did I get that sort of movie? Ummmm…. not really.

Director James Lee wanted to go that extreme I think, but given that Malaysia isn’t really that open to stuff that particularly graphic the end result ended up being pretty tame by Western standards. so what the heck does it have going for it? Well. For the most part, a pretty standard by-the-books plot I swear I’ve seen somewhere before….

Our story gets going as Mrs. Chew (played by Pearlly Chua), the mom of 3 daughters is forced to kill her husband after she discovers out that he has been abusing his daughters. Yep… although they don’t explicitly say it, yeah…. it’s that kind of abuse…. eeeewwwhhh! One nasty domestic abuse fight later and with hubby lying dead in a pool of blood, Mrs. Chew does the only thing she can do to dispose of the body. Yep. Chop him up and cook him into a batch of her restaurant’s famous curry. But that’s just an isolated thing, right? Nope… before long, one of her hubby’s sleazy gambling creditors comes by to collect on the money he’s owed. When he doesn’t get it, he suggests taking it out in trade with eldest daughter Xi Xi. Like that’s gonna happen…. Nope. He’s just another mean dumbass for the pot. On a positive note… this new “secret ingredient” turns out to be just the big hit with her customers that she needs to insure her ability to provide a living for her and her daughters from then on.

We jump ahead, and the girls all grow up, one by one slowly becoming as cruel and crazy as dear old Mom. Eldest daughter Xi Xi (now played by Debbie Goh) leads her sisters, becoming an alluring seductress using her beauty to lure unsuspecting Lotharios to the slaughter in the abattoir in the rear of the restaurant where middle sister Xi Yu (played by Mandy Chen) and the youngest Xi Mei (played by Olivia Kang) assist dear old Mom in the messy work of butchering and cooking their victims into delicious curry. By the time our story reaches it’s conclusion, both these two initially reluctant killers become as cold and sociopathic as their big sis.

That transformation forms the central part of the film, along with the machinations of a couple of TV con men, Master Chef Chow(played by Jeff Chin) and his assistant (played by Elvis Chin) as they try to steal away Mrs. Chew’s secret family recipe to allow Chef Chow to save his miserably failed restaurant chain and revive his flagging reputation as the greatest Curry Chef in Kuala Lumpur. Through it all, it’s obvious eldest daughter Xi Xi has been at the family’s horrid trade for too long… she’s not only cold and jaded, immune to the horrors she commits, but has actually come to realize she relishes her role in the gruesome slaughter enjoying the feelings of strength and power that it gives her. Her soul is gone… and her younger sisters now teeter on the edge of that same madness. Middle sister Xi Yu, has retreated into herself, shy and anguished by the blood and cruelty, she’s only too anxious to accept the romantic advances of shy handsome Dr. Cheong (played by Steve Yap) who seems genuinely attracted to her despite her crippled leg and social awkwardness. Can a pure innocent love save her from her life of horror? Ummmm…. it’s a horror movie, so probably not.😉 Younger sister Xi Mei? Well, She’s a part time college student… so a forbidden school romance can give her the chance to escape, right? Ummmmm… yeah… really wouldn’t count on that one either.

Yeah. Mostly one can expect that basically we learn that “Family Comes First”. Anything else is just going to get in the way. Especially when bloody murder is on the menu.

Sounds like we should get some serious bloody mayhem too, doesn’t it? Yeah… but remember. It’s a Malay film. There are limits… even for those seeking to break boundaries. With that said, it’s not surprising that much of the bloodiest stuff occurs juuuussst out of frame, so to speak. Much of the sexy stuff is just talk… a little titillating inference and not all that truly graphic at all. Well… with one exception. There is one particularly nasty sequence in which Xi Xi sadistically tortures one of her victims culminating in a “Lorena Bobbitt” moment that probably had those Malay censors flipping their proverbial shit over. Yep. Can’t say I’ve seen all that many other penis severing scenes in Malay cinema, and trust me… this wee Catgirl’s seen more than a few Malay horror movies in her day.

So how do I rate this one? Well… truthfully I can’t honestly see what all the big deal was about “Banning” it. It’s just not all that particularly shocking… or bloody… or gory. The story? Hmmmm? Certainly ticks all the usual boxes. Nasty incest rape? Check. Cannibalism? Check. Plenty of “Sex & Death”? Yeah, it’s got that too. Body horror? Oh yes… it’s in there.

But that’s the problem. I’ve really seen all this before… and done with much more daring and flair. My feeling is that this one deserves a 3 “Meows” out of 5, and barely that. Mostly for actually trying to go to such a daring and exploitative place, even if ultimately it chickens out at the last moment. I guess we’ll have to keep looking to the Thais to give us the ultimate in gooey nasty horror fun. Oh well…

At least the Region 4 Australian DVD proved more than adequate for my needs. It’s widescreen… and uncut as best I can tell, with the more extreme “Foreign ending” rather than the original somewhat more tame one used for the one brief Malay TV release. (Yep… don’t know how, but this film actually did play for a brief time on one of the Malay TV channels. Pay TV? Maybe…. I’m not really sure. Any Gentle Visitors from Malaysia… feel free to enlighten a curious Catgirl.😉 ) The whole thing is available direct from Australia for right around 20$ US. Worth a buy? Probably only if you are a goofy bad movie fanatic with a need to say you’ve seen every strange foreign horror movie ever made. Yeah… like me.😉

Trailer? Yes… yes… C’mon now, Gentle Visitors… I’d never leave you without a lil’ nugget of video goodness to wrap things up, now would I? Perish the thought…

Well… I know… it’s been another couple of weeks… (Bad kitty!! Baaaad, bad kitty!!). So that means it’s most definitely time, long overdue, for another review here at the ol’ Litterbox, and this time out, it’s another visit to the grim world of the Zombie Apocalypse, Russian style, with the 2012 film “Meteletsa: Winter of the Dead”. Did somebody say… “Zombies”? Yep… you all know a certain wee Catlady can never get enough of those…😉

Synopsis? Well, “The Russian Winter is a terrible thing…… especially if it arrives in mid-July. It was the hottest Russian summer on record until a freak snowstorm breaks that heat and heralds the arrival of a flesh-hungry army of the undead. They seem hell bent on destroying a sleepy Russian town and ruining the day of intrepid Moscow TV reporter, Kosta and the sexy rollerblading girl he ran into while running for his life. Now all he has to do is somehow avoid the zombies, get the girl, stop from being shot by her father, and stay away of the sharp end of a mad Russian Orthodox Priest’s axe while still making his deadline!”

This one’s been out for a while now, and it’s another of those odd foreign films that stubbornly avoided falling into my clutches. No DVD… until recently… and then only a Spanish release missing those ever so handy English subtitles I want. But finally it popped up. On steaming video release…. hey… wait a minute that’s new. But… since I’ve got an Amazon account, I’m all set I guess. Wanna know how it all went? Then ya know what ya gotta do, eh, Gentle Visitors?😉

“Streaming video”…. yep, gotta tell ya, this is definitely another sign this wee lady is getting older.

I would have missed the availability of this one if it weren’t for my friend Sam telling me she’d seen it advertised on Amazon. 10 years younger than me she’s sooooo darn much more comfortable with the whole modern “plugged-in” world that we all live in today. Streaming video… social media…. Internet-only web series… the “cloud”…. those are certainly things I’m not exactly up to speed on. I definitely still think “analog” in what is now a “digital” world. Even though I’m pretty much a whiz on the whole Internet shopping thing world wide, it seems I just kinda have a blind spot when it comes to the idea of “digital media”. I mean… if it’s not a tangible physical thing, then how can you say you “own” it? Just feels wrong…. (My goodness…. I’m actually having one of those “Back in my day” moments…. I guess I really am an old lady…. Hehehehe!!!)

Anyways… this one gets going right away. It’s a fairly unpretentious little slice of zombie cinema that knows it doesn’t really need to give too much backstory to get a plot off the ground in this genre. Why are the naughty zombies running amok? No idea, really… there’s some weird unseasonable snow storm in mid summer and BAM!!! Up to our necks in the cranky “living impaired”. Our story sort of follows a young TV reporter from Moscow, named Kostya (or Constantine…. the subtitles use one name and the ads for this one use another… Go figure…) who has come to a small nameless regional Russian city to cover the local elections for his TV network. Kostya (played by Mikhail Borzenkov) is trying to find his way to a big protest rally where he’s supposed to hook up with his cameraman and support guys, but the sudden onset of the Zombie Apocalypse leaves him lost and stranded somewhere in the city with only the company of a plucky young rollerblading hottie named Iskra (played by Tatyana Zhevnova). The two of them spend most of the movie trying to make their way to some kind of safety with much of the usual zombie hi-jinx to spice things up along the way.

While this is happening, we get a kind of “found footage” thing as cameraman Vladik (played by Ilya Cherepko) and crew manage to team up with local strongman and political candidate Khan (played by Sergey Shirochin) and his super well armed “bodyguards” to do basically the same thing. Khan is not just a politician…. nope. He’s one of those rich Russian mafia guys mucking about in politics and has decided to use the Zombie Apocalypse to settle the score with his chief rival, local Militia Captain Igor Knyazev (played by Dmitriy Kozhuro) for having run off with Khan’s younger sexy wife Dasha (played by Yuliya Yudintseva). Oh… and just to complicate things as we pop back and forth between groups, naturally hot little Iskra turns out to be Khan’s daughter. You just know that assures us our two groups will have to meet up eventually….

Yes… yes… eventually… at least that’s the basic idea, anyways. Problem is we don’t get a whole lot of character development or story while we’re waiting for that to happen, Lots and lots of zombies… but we all sort of expected that, didn’t we? You’d sort of expect Kostya and Iskra to somehow become a couple, romantic feelings all magnified by the perils they have to survive together and whatnot. Nope… doesn’t really happen. Ok… Ok… then there’s the whole issue of Iskra, her daddy, and her estranged mother and her new lover. That’s gotta lead to some drama, right? Ummmmm…. yeah… not really. We get one scene between Iskra and Dasha where we figure out that Iskra is pissed with mommy about her affair, but after having a small fight that wrecks their car, nothing gets resolved and before any real progress is made both Dasha and Igor become yet another part of the body count. Heck… Khan never even catches up with them to settle things either. So what is our story all about then? Well… it’s not about that crazy ax wielding priest, Father Michael (played by Aleksandr Abramovich) whom we saw in the Trailers for this one either. Now there’s a potentially interesting guy. But nope… he just sort of show up towards the end of our movie to behead a few zombies in a nifty scene or two before joining our list of dead cast members. Darn….

Nope. Basically we get a fairly muddled mess of a film that seems to understand the whole “zombies want to eat everybody” idea, but no clue how to actually populate out story with any characters you want to root for while all the gory stuff is unfolding. That’s a real shame too… because for a low budget Russian film, the zombie stuff is actually pretty good all round for the most part.

So then, does anybody survive this one? Ummmm… after my review so far, do any of you really care? No? Didn’t think so. Let’s just say… there are two survivors… just exactly who you’d suspect they would be… and the movie sets itself up for a sequel at the finale. I just wouldn’t ever expect to see that get made… trust me.

Sigh. Yep, I have to admit I was pretty darn disappointed with this one. Much of that was probably due to the way in which I watched this one. Somehow I’m getting the feeling that I’ll never be a fan of “Streaming Video On Demand” as a way of receiving my foreign movie fix. I just don’t like watching a movie on my desktop computer. Nope. Too darn tiny. Have to sit in front of my desktop rather than lay on my couch and relax…. Too darn laggy too. Yep. It was sooooo darn annoying to have to keep physically “thunking” my computer’s wireless link to get the film to play every five minutes or so as it would lock up and freeze on me. My bad, I suppose… but I never get that problem with my DVD player. (Yes… yes… I know. Miyuki’s being “Little Miss Cranky Pants” again… But, hey…. back in my day…. ) At least this whole streaming thing made it one of those films I could watch in an afternoon while Carolyn was at work… thank goodness my dear wife didn’t have to sit through it with me. She’s a really… really… good sport, but I actually want her to enjoy sharing my goofy fascination with foreign films not dread them and I’m thinking this experience wouldn’t have me helped with that. Nope. Not at all.

So. With all that, I guess that means this wee Catgirl is going to have to give “Meteletsa: Winter of the Dead” a paltry 2 “Meows” out of 5 overall. yep. Just can’t really recommend it for a watch… even at 2-3$ for a one time rental. Darn it. I really had been expecting a crazy lil’ gem of a movie after the years I spent waiting for it. Just didn’t work out that way. Still…. on the plus side, the actual chance to catch what would otherwise have been yet another foreign horror film tantalizingly out of this wee lady’s reach means that if I pay attention, there are probably a few other films lurking out there either on Amazon or iTunes that can help fill in the blanks for movies I just gotta see at any cost…. Guess I have to keep my eyes open from now on.

Yep… so I guess that’s that. There’s a Trailer for this one… actually there has been for a while now, although I had the darnedest time finding the film itself. So even if your Favorite Catgirl Movie Reviewer didn’t like it all that much, if it’s something you think might tickle you just the right way too, here goes!

Well, it’s Summer, and on warm Summer evenings hereabouts there’s nothing better to beat the heat than to slip off to our local cinema for a “Movie Nite/ Date Nite” mashup, just my sweetie and I and a blissfully cool air-conditioned theater for an evening of movie watchin’ fun. Last week we managed such a combination, and had the opportunity to choose from two different “Ocean themed” films. One… a big budget animated romp under the sea with the talking fishies…. or one with a tiny cast and deadly danger from one sinister insatiably flesh-devouring monster shark. Hehehehe…. guess which one this wee lady picked.😉

Our synopsis? “Still reeling from the loss of her mother to cancer, medical student Nancy Adams travels to an idyllic secluded beach in Mexico for some much-needed solace. Abandoned by her friend and despite the danger of surfing alone, Nancy decides to soak up the sun and hit the waves anyways. Suddenly and without warning, a great white shark attacks, wounding her badly and forcing her to swim to a giant rock for safety. Left injured and alone and stranded 200 yards from shore, the frightened young woman must now fight for her life as the deadly predator circles her in its feeding ground. Now her desperate fight for survival is really on…”

Eeeeeehhhh!! I just love survival stories… and man-eating monster critters… and we get all that and a spunky heroine for our main character too!! How could this not be a great lil’ popcorn crunchin’ roller-coaster ride of guilty fun? I was soooooo ready for this one, even if my darling Carolyn seemed a lil’ less enthusiastic. Yep. We just had to pick this one…. and we could always “Find Dory” another time.

So was this a good choice for “Movie/Date Nite”? One way to know o’ Gentle Visitors…😉

Little did I know when we entered that darkened theater that I wasn’t in for just another bit of bloody movie watching fun, but that I’d also learn something personal about my darling wife as well. Just when I thought I knew all of her darkest secrets….

So popcorn in hand we slipped into our seats and let the darkness enfold us in it’s coolness and our film got going right away and we were introduced to our film’s heroine Nancy Adams (played by Blake Lively) and her local guide Carlos (played by Óscar Jaenada), as they bumps and bounces their way through the jungles of Mexico looking for that isolated beach Nancy’s mother once visited when she was pregnant with Nancy, the beach she always claimed was the most perfect surfing in the world.

It’s an important pilgrimage for Nancy. Her mom was an amazing woman… expert surfer and fearless world traveler who seemed capable of anything. Until cancer took her away forever and left Nancy struggling to cope with her loss. So… as our story begins she’s left her medical school to try to find some inner peace, some closure, and some way to touch her mother’s spirit even if it’s to finally visit that one perfect place, her mother’s special secret place that she’d always heard about as she grew up.

She’s supposed to be sharing this with her BFF, but we never even meet her… seems she’s too darn hung over to want to take a bumpy jeep ride into the remote boondocks… not when she can just blow her friend off to hook up with some local Lothario she met the night before. Grrrr…. the one selfish person in this story Neko reeeeaaaly wants to see eaten by a shark and she never even makes an appearance….

Anyways… Nancy finds that beach…. and it’s every bit as beautiful and unspoiled as she always imagined. She unwinds, takes in some sun, and even meets a couple of nice hunky locals (played by Angelo José Lozano Corzo and José Manuel Trujillo Salas) to do some surfing with. Initially shy and mistrustful, she eventually realizes they are just a couple of good guys only out for the same relaxing fun she is and they have a great afternoon together… the film giving us some really nice well filmed gorgeous surfing scenes before the sun starts to set and the guys bid her farewell. Nancy takes a break, calls up her little sister Chloe (played by Sedona Legge) and it’s then we learn just how much her mother’s death has rocked Nancy’s world to it’s core. The surprise and suddenness of her vital amazing mother’s death from cancer has left Nancy reeling and even questioning whether she should abandon medical school just as she approaches her graduation. Chloe tries to perk her up, reminding her that she wants Nancy to teach her to surf just the way their mother taught Nancy, telling her that their mother was someone who would never give up, never surrender to grief, and never stop fighting no matter what. Not ready to give up her grief, Nancy ends the call and decides to catch one more wave by herself before heading back to her hotel. Big honking mistake….

After paddling out to catch that wave, Nancy notices a large whale carcass floating about twenty yards away and paddles over to investigate. The gigantic rotting carcass floats amid a slick of blood and whale oil, being picked apart by a flock of seagulls and stench that I can only imagine. She moves away, unaware of the ominous shadow now stealthy lurking in the water beneath her. Catching the next wave, she’s smashed off her board by the killer shark that has set it’s sights on killing anything in it’s territory. Pulled down by the surf, Nancy slams into the rocky bottom opening her head and filling the water with blood. Oooops….

As she groggily tries to regain her board our monster strikes, savagely biting her leg and dragging her under to certain death. The blood fills the water…. it’s confusing.. chaotic and horrible… it’s incredibly personal and realistic… and that’s when Carolyn freaked.

I suppose I should have figured it out already. I mean, Carolyn and I have known each other for over half our lives, but you have to understand just how good my lovely wife really is when it comes to hiding things behind her usual calm composed and altogether adult “face”. I’ve learned it’s something she unconsciously developed over the years… a mask she wears to be taken seriously by the world and to keep herself always feeling in control of things. So different from the way I am…. I just wear my feelings right out in the open for good or ill. Not that my Carolyn isn’t outgoing… she just likes to keep her personal feelings… well… personal. She only lets the few people reaaallly close to her ever see behind that mask to any great degree. And lil’ ol’ me? As long as we’ve been together, she’s found she has very few defenses to keep her hiding away that surprisingly fragile inner woman she really can be. But this one certainly caught me by surprise.

Anyways… at this point in our movie, my adorable wife let out a shriek and grabbed my arm strong enough to bruise me, coming right out of her seat and burying her face in my shoulder. Finishing the movie was… well… not gonna happen. So I hustled her out of there as fast as I could and after she got control of herself we went to have coffee across the street and I got to hear exactly why my usually unflappable wifey just went absolutely apeshit.

So. Way back when she was a little girl of 6 or so, it seems my darling had herself a nasty run-in with a neighbor’s doberman. One hot summer day… one little girl on a trike… one very old, very mean dog probably suffering from canine dementia. She got attacked… pulled off her bike, savagely mauled and bitten, and put in the hospital. Luckily her dad was in the driveway and able to beat that vicious thing off of her as quickly as he did. It left her terrified of dogs… all dogs… for a couple of years after that, and even after she finally grew up and mostly over it, apparently she still secretly harbored a dread fear of being eaten alive by something. I’ve seen her scar of course, four inches or so way up on her inner thigh, which today is just a pale zigzag patch of skin that never tans no matter how much sun it gets. She’d never really mentioned what had happened before.. and she’d even had a dog ( a tiny friendly little brown mutt named Farley who apparently was part of her “therapy” to reduce her anxiety around dogs) as a pet when I visited her home during college. But… like I say, she’s very closed mouthed about personal stuff. I had just never seen her react like that before… worse than any panic attack or nightmare I’d ever had or experienced.

It does explain why she always been less than happy with my occasional movie choice over the years featuring killer animals. Now that I think about it, those always were the movies that had her taking inordinate numbers of trips out of the room to the kitchen or the bathroom while they were on…. I’d always figured she just didn’t like the film. Apparently this one just caught her off guard and was just too darn real for her to handle. Stupid, stupid me… I felt terrible about it. I mean… Carolyn’s always indulging me and my admittedly gory movie tastes…. and I usually let her.

Well… after having a long talk about Carolyn being honest and feeling good about telling lil’ ol’ me when she’s not interested in watching one of the grisly movies that make crazy lil’ me as happy as a clam, we headed home and I promised I’d share such movie fare with Sam in future instead of inflicting them on her. That and I promised next time out she could definitely pick our film.

*****

Now…. I did actually get to see the rest of this one… a couple days later for a matinee before I headed into work so here’s the rest of my “Reviewus Interuptus”.  Let’s see…. Oh yeah. The big shark attack. Yep, this is definitely one nasty bit of business. In reality, our heroine should be a goner… but this is fiction so Miss Lively manages to smack the shark in the head and gets loose, crawling to safety atop that stinking whale carcass before our angry monster rams it from below forcing her to make a hasty swim to a nearby exposed rock barely in the nick of time. Her wound? OMG…. it’s unbelievably nasty. Probably a good thing I’d hauled Carolyn outta there before she saw it last time. It’s deep, bloody and requires our heroine to rig a tourniquet out of her wetsuit to keep from just plain bleeding out. Heck… how she doesn’t just die from shock is a miracle in itself.

Now were into the main part of our tale. Nancy is stranded on this rock… badly hurt… surrounded by shallow water with our shark swimming around her in constant readiness to finish her off if she’s forced into the water again. Oh…. and our little rock? It’s a tidal island that will disappear as soon as high tide happens. Awwww crap.

It’s survival time… and our heroine has to carry the film from this point on, suturing her wound with her mother’s necklace and her earrings and trying to figure out how to escape to shore before becoming shark food. The story goes pretty much as you’d expect…. lots of tense conversations with herself…. well… and the wounded seagull who shares her rocky haven. You keep expecting people to show up… and they do, like a drunken guy who tries to steal her rucksack, phone, and surfboard. Problem is, that nasty ol’ shark is one sneaky bastard and keeps eating all her would-be rescuers as they appear in our story. Even those friendly surfer dudes who come back next day only to get chomped on before she can warn them. Eventually she finds that only she can save herself by finding that inner strength her mother had to do what seems impossible.

With high tide making her position untenable, Nancy realizes her only chance to survive is not to try to make the beach in an impossible swim with her leg, but to make an equally dangerous swim for a nearby nautical buoy instead. We get a great little chase scene through a swarm of stinging jellyfish that lets her reach safety barely ahead of the shark. It’s a more secure place than her sinking rock, but the wound in her leg has begun to go septic and dehydration and exposure are slowly pushing her beyond human endurance. It’s only a matter of time before she dies…. or gets angry enough to take the fight to her enemy on his terms.

Yeah… yeah…. now it’s definitely a given that our plucky heroine is gonna beat the monster shark. It’s just that kinda movie. How does that all happen? Neko’s not gonna ruin it for you. Let’s just say that eventually her local guide Carlos is gonna show up after her final duel with the crazy shark just in the nick of time to get our girl to medical help so that we’ll get our perquisite upbeat ending a year later when Dr. Nancy sporting her scars like a badge of honor and lil’ sister Chloe are going surfing together back home in Galveston, Texas just the way she learned from her mother all those years ago.

Yep. It ended up being a pretty darn serviceable lil’ shark movie. Lots of action, plenty of suspense, a whole lot of nasty bloody action all put together in a tight little hour and a half. Miss Lively certainly looks the part as our surfing heroine, appearing comfortable in both the surfing and action scenes, and making you root for her to pull off the impossible and somehow come out on top despite the odds. She carries the movie pretty well too, considering it’s mostly a one character story with only 4 or five other characters in it at all. The plot plays all the expected notes and sticks to a tried and true story-line. Don’t expect it to be more than that and you ought to enjoy it as much as I did.

Even if it scared the shit of of my darling wife, I found it a nice little suspenseful thriller, and give it a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5. If it comes to parts ’round you, you could do worse than give it a peek.

Yep… I know I veered a bit to the “personal” with this Review, but I’ve always found cinema to be something that my experience of has to be shaped by my own life, so even if I went off in a tangent, that’s kinda how movies are for me. Life and fiction all squooshed together. I hope to be a wee less rambling next time out. Promise…😉

Trailer? Yep… Neko’s got ya covered.

So for our first entry to this month’s “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016”, I have for you a review of a 2011 Thai horror comedy that has been just about impossible for this wee kitten to pin down over the years since it first came out, “Gancore Gud” aka “Dead Bite”. Impossible to track down? Ha!! Not for a reeeeaallly determined Catgirl if she’s patient and sets herself to the task…

Our synopsis goes like this: “A Thai Hip-hop group, Gancore Club, traveling to a promotional photo-shoot by ship becomes stranded on reputedly haunted Mermaid Island, run afoul of strange aquatic zombies and the vicious locals who try to hunt them down as sacrifices to their mysterious and sexy island mermaid goddess.”

Ummmm? Crazy Thai Hip-hop guys? Oodles of pretty Thai girls in Bikinis? Killer islanders with butt loads of pointy weapons and a thirst for blood? Mermaids and zombies? All in the same movie? Heck yes!!! Neko is sooooo there!😉

So. Wanna hear the crazy plot and find out if it’s maybe gonna jump to the top of your “Don’t Miss” list too? Then by now, Gentle Visitor, you know the drill….😉

This one came out a few years ago right after the Thais stopped subtitling most of their domestically released DVD’s.😦 I spent quite a bit of time looking around for the next few years hoping it would pop up somewhere else… Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan… or at least some decent fansubs so I could work my Catgirl Magic on an original disc… but nope. Nada. Dang. I reaaaallly wanted a copy… Still, I never completely stopped looking…. oh, no. Patience is a virtue.😉

So it was no huge surprise that just this last week it finally made it’s way into my clutches at last. How? Ummmm? Let’s just say we were two ships passing in the night… and “What happens on Youtube stays on Youtube”. At least until somebody removes it…. Hehehehe!!😉

So what’s it all about, then? Well we get introduced right away to rapper Joey Boy (played by Apisit Opasaimlikit himself) as he answers a phone somewhere in the dark, scattered among the severed bits of his friends. Our movie is mostly a flashback as he recounts the tale of how he ended up in this wet miserably dark place to some incredulous fan-girl over the phone. Originally he and his crew, the hip-hop group Gancore Club began their misadventures by playing some rural gig waaaay out in the sticks somewhere in Thailand. I’m guessing that these guys are somewhat more celebrities in Thailand than the rest of the world, so naturally our film doesn’t waste a lot of time introducing them from a character development standpoint. Not really important, it’s enough to know our guys fill the “Abbott & Costello” roles for our movie as our heroes meet the various monsters and have their wacky adventures.

That rural gig? Well, we get a quick musical number to satisfy the fans, then find out the entire village they just played for are ghosts… Yep, cue the screaming and patented “Scooby-Doo” escape bit. It leaves the gang stranded without pay just in time for their manager to call them up with the offer of what should be a “fun in the sun” romp at sea with a boatload of hot sexy magazine models off to a promotional photo-shoot. How can that go wrong? Yeah… right…

At sea, our guys romp with the ladies and unwind, we get introduced to a promising young hottie named Bowling (played by Pakjira Wisawawisut) who catches Joey Boy’s eye and who both Carolyn snd I figured would be our film’s obligatory love interest and “damsel in distress”. In any other film, she probably would be… but this one is less a romance and more of a goofy fluffy comedy with monsters. Let’s just say, even as pretty as she is, it would be best not to get tooooo fond of her….😉

Ocean hi-jinx only go so far, so it isn’t long before the helpful boatman tells our guys all about picturesque “Mermaid Island”, an exotic lil’ out of the way spot just perfect for the photo-shoot and maybe some party time with our bevy of beach beauties. It’s something no self respecting hard partying music stars can pass up….

Once we arrive we get some nice party scenes to show off our sexy ladies frolicking and playing on the beach checking off another Exploitation film “must have” for all the fanboys in the audience. (And some fangirls too…. my sweet Carolyn certainly enjoyed watching her fair share of pretty Asian girls in bikinis…. At least that explains why she’s wanted us to go to the beach sooooo darn much this month…😉 ) But then we get down to the gore….

Out of nowhere, a horde of axe-wielding cannibalistic killers rushes out of the forest and begins hacking our group into bloody bits! Musicians and bikini models are really no match for vicious cannibal islanders… trust me. Just about when it looks like our gang is finished, a freak storm comes out of nowhere and then stuff reeeeaaally gets weird. How? Well… from out of the ocean comes a bunch of aquatic flesh eating zombies to start attacking both the local villagers and our unlucky boys & girls. Aquatic zombies? Ummmm… OK. Didn’t see that coming. Other than being sorta “H.P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones” crossed with the cast of “Dawn of the Dead”, our “sea-zombies” seem to follow all the usual rules for the zombie apocalypse. They bite you, you turn into one of them… Wanna kill them? It’s either smash them in the noggin or chop them to bloody bits. OK… I guess we’re good then.

In the havoc, the gang gets split. Pretty Bowling gets herself eaten by zombies right in front of truly freaked out Joey Boy, rapper “Golf” Sing Neua, a.k.a. Fukking Hero gets bitten and eventually turns into one of the flesh chompin’ zombies, DJ Spidamonkee gets his leg bitten, but survives by having it chopped off so he can spend the rest of our movie milking the comedic possibilities of fleeing the zombie apocalypse like a pirate who’s lost his peg. From this point on. it’s pretty much a story in which our heroes run in spastic terror from one encounter with killer locals to more run-ins with the soggy undead.

Eventually our story kinda takes a moment to explain just what the heck is happening. Seems waaaay back in WW2 the Japanese invaded the island and while they were here they caught themselves a Mermaid. Oh…. yeah…. it seems “Mermaid Island” was really petty aptly named. Anyways…. according to legend, if you eat Mermaid flesh, you gain eternal life. The Japanese try to experiment on this by feeding some to local girl Payee (played by Lakana Wattanawongsiri) who does indeed gain eternal life and beauty, but in her struggles with her captors bites one and guess what? Eating Mermaid meat also gives you some kind of freaky rabies that turns those you bite into flesh eating crazed zombies that have to stay wet or they shrivel up and are destroyed. Hey… who’d have guessed?

75 years later and Payee is now the undisputed eternally beautiful “Goddess” of the island, ruling over the locals, leading them in their cultish worship of the mummified mermaid, and using them to attack any foolish visitors to the island so she can feed her zombie father who hangs out in a jungle pool waiting for his juicy meat snacks. Yep… this lady reeeeaaally holds a grudge.

So then mostly we’re in for an extended plot bit where our guys get split up and run around doing goofy things like eating magic mushrooms, having crazy hallucinations, dealing with the killer locals and plotting an escape to a boat just tantalizingly out of reach off the coast in zombie and shark infested waters. Somewhere along the line, they encounter a Japanese tour guide and his pretty client Miyuki (played by Kumiko Sugaho) who’s Granddad turns out to have been the Japaneses commander on the island back in the day. Naturally she’s here for reasons less than altruistic, but does eventually lead our guys to a cache of old Japanese munitions and stuff to make our big climactic battle scene against the forces of the undead a big bloody success.

Does anybody survive? Does Joey Boy ever get the girl… any girl? What’s Miyuki’s deep dark secret? Guess you’ll have to watch it yourself to find out…😉

Gotta say. This one is a freaky hoot. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but certainly understands that whole “Abbott & Costello Meet the Monsters” vibe I remember from old B&W movies on TV back in the day. I suppose it would have made much more sense if I knew who any of these Thai celebrities actually were, but sadly my knowledge of the Thai Hip-hop music scene is pretty lacking. I must have missed tons of great “in jokes”. Still, this one is a pretty serviceable horror/comedy overall and for the life of me I can’t really understand why it hasn’t made an appearance outside of Thailand in some DVD release or other.

In wrap-up, I give “Gancore Gud” a pretty respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a fairly nice lil’ offbeat zombie comedy. It’ll never win any awards, but by goodness…. if it actually made it to an English subtitle release somewhere, this wee lady would actually wanna get a copy for the collection. Seriously. (Big… big hint Thailand. I don’t know what idiot actually convinced you to stop subtitling all your domestic DVD’s to facilitate licensing but they are completely wrong minded on that. Domestic Thai DVD licensing to other regions for release would not be threatened by that. Only truly nutty collectors like this lady would ever buy domestic discs directly and then have them shipped to them at nearly the cost of the disc itself. In actuality you are lowering the visibility of your film industry with this practice by preventing the real loyal fans like yours truly from seeing them at all and killing the very internet buzz that would have overseas distributors clamoring to license these for sale in other regions. So… if you want to actually sell your cinema overseas, kinda rethink things. Seriously.)

Well… that’s our first Mermaid fantasy. Neat to get one that also came with zombies… Until next time, “Splish splash and Meow, Meow for now!”

Trailer? Yep… Complete with all the Hip-hop, mermaid zombie bikini madness intact. Enjoy!

With our August “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival” currently chugging along in full swing here at the Litterbox, you Gentle Visitors just know this Catgirl Princess couldn’t pass up a chance to do her own review of HK filmmaker Stephen Chow’s latest romantic comedy “The Mermaid”, just available here on Region 1 DVD release. Sigh… Neko’s got a real soft spot for sweet magical romantic comedies…💖

Did somebody say synopsis? Yep, and it goes like this here: “Pretty, naive young mermaid Shan is sent to the human world on a secret mission by her people to play the part of a sexy temptress so she can assassinate Lui Xuan, a spoiled millionaire developer with a real estate project that threatens to destroy the last remaining ecosystem of her race. But despite her resolve to finish him off, Shan ends up falling in love with him instead. Can she put aside her feelings and save her people or will the mermaids fade away once and for all and become nothing more than legend?”

💕 Awwwwwww!!💕 Sweet adorable magical girlfriend romance movies… This wee lady can never ever get enough of those. Ghosts, Fox Spirits, Aliens, you name it… so why not one about one with a cute girl who is half human and half goldfish? Yeah… I’m there. The fact that this one is by the director  of one of my all time favorite films, “Kung Fu Hustle” only makes me want to see it even more.

It’s a surprising smash hit in Asia, but will it live up to this wee lady’s hopes and expectations for movie goodness? Guess we’ll all find out…

This one’s been out for a while now, but rather than grab it right away on the HK release I’ve been waiting impatiently for the Region 1 that I just knew was coming along. Once it did, I grabbed it and by happy coincidence managed to have more than a few other “mermaid encounters” movie-wise that pretty much convinced me on the subject of this month’s Review theme. Ooohhhh! And it’s certainly a really nice counterpoint to the other “scary mermaid” horror offerings that I’ll be bringing you as we go along in the next few weeks.😉

Our film gets underway as rich playboy millionaire Liu Xuan (played by Deng Chao) starts planning his latest big development project by purchasing the pristine Green Gulf wildlife reserve at a crazy price despite the fact that such properties are off limits for redevelopment. But our greedy tycoon has a way of sneaking around that restriction. He’s been doing some “unrelated” off shore sonar technology studies nearby that, unknown to anybody outside his own people, is really responsible for driving away all marine life from the area and making his newly acquired property eligible for “land reclamation”. Yep… if he has his way, this gorgeous unspoiled gem will soon be just yet another tacky tourist resort earning him and his sexy amoral business partner and lover Ruolan (played by Kitty Zhang) a tidy profit.

What he doesn’t know is that along with all the dolphins and sea turtles, he’s also decimating the last vestiges of the merpeople, already driven nearly into extinction by man’s pollution and exploitation of the seas. Driven into a corner, they’ve decided enough is enough and it’s time to strike back.

Their plan? Why to kill Liu Xuan, of course, by dispatching the lovely young mermaid Shan-Shan (played by Jelly Lin) to infiltrate the human world and use her feminine wiles to get close enough to Xuan to lure him to his death. There’s only one problem… Sweet adorable Shan just doesn’t have the heart of a ruthless killer.

She’s not much of a “femme fatale” or “sex kitten” either… being just hapless when it comes to understanding human beings and garnering all her “knowledge” from a steady diet of terrible HK TV. But… in her own odd quirky way, she slowly manages to charm the roguish Xuan with her unsophisticated and downright odd sweetness. It’s the whole “Magical Girlfriend” trope in a nutshell, and Jelly Lin does it to perfection. Somehow you just know that by our film’s climax she have found the diamond lurking beneath Xuan’s boorish exterior and we’ll get our romantic happy ending.

On our way there we get plenty of CGI enhanced comedy bits done in that broad “Looney Tunes” way that direct Stephen Chow is famous for. Mostly these work, although I’d have to say that to me at least, “The Mermaid” plays itself out much more as a standard by-the-numbers exercise in film-making than I had hoped for. There’s a lot here that is good, but nothing as novel or different as struck me with “Kung Fu Hustle”.

Some bits stand out… like that truly bizarre opening sequence in a tacky local sideshow called “The Museum of World Exotic Animals” featuring some of the downright cheapest exhibits ever fostered off to the public as “entertainment” such as a stuffed gecko passed off as a tiny shrunken T-Rex to a dog painted with stripes and called a panther, or a “mermaid”, part doll, part salted fish and a shame to even the worst of “Fiji Mermaids”. It leads to perhaps the one moment of true “horror” to be found within, when the lazy owner of the show tries to silence his critics by masquerading himself as a mermaid in drag. Your Favorite Catgirl’s eyes still ache over that vision….😉

My absolute favorite scene, by and large, hearkens back to “Hustle” itself as our adorable heroine tries at one point to assassinate Xuan on her own with her deadly “sea-ninja” skills and arsenal of poisonous sea urchins and a fishbone dagger while on a private dinner date only to hurt herself, again and again. Yes… I know… Chow’s done that before…. but it’s still hilarious and Jelly Lin owns it.

Finally… throw in another short bit as Xuan tries to get the police to believe the crazy story that mermaids are really trying to kill him. Priceless….

So. All in all I have to say I really did like this one, although I can’t honestly say this was Stephen Chow at his greatest. At best I suppose it’s fair to say that if it were a musical album rather than a film, then this one was more like “Stephen Chow’s Greatest Hits”. It’s good… and if you like Stephen Chow then you’ll definitely enjoy it… but it’s still more of a collection of past glories than a showcase for a new big hit.

With that I award “The Mermaid” a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s not my favorite Stephen Chow effort, it’s not my favorite Magical Girlfriend romance, and I’m thinking I really liked 1984’s “Splash” a “Meow” more than this one as mermaid stories go, but as movies go it’s still definitely a nice and entertaining film with a good heart and a sound ecological message that will make you smile and maybe even giggle here and there. Heck… and that ain’t bad, now is it?

The Region1 DVD was a good choice to see this one, available uncut and letterboxed with perfect English subtitles or even a dubbing in both English and… of all choices… Thai. Neat, huh? All for right around 15$ US. Makes missing this one pretty darn impossible, right?

Ohhh!! And lest I forget… Good friend of the Litterbox and fellow Asian film fan, Stephen already got to see this one and reviewed it HERE over at his very own blog, Gweilo Ramblings, so if you want another take on this why not pop over and have at peek? I get the sense from his Review that he liked it a bit more than I, but maybe that’s just my feeling. I just love giving my friends a lil “shout-out” now and again.😉

So… let’s see..anything else? Oh, right!! Trailer comin’ right up!😉

“Splish, splash!!” Our Mermaid fun continues here at the Litterbox with another of those odd little Indonesian Horror goodies that your Favorite Catgirl Princess just can’t seem to live without. Up this time out for our “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival” we have 2011’s “Arwah Kuntilanak Duyung” or… if my Indonesian translating skills are improving “Demon Mermaid Spirit”.😉

Our synopsis is as follows: “Linda and Ardo meet and fall in love on a beach. Ardo was so happy to have Linda, so he purchased a beach villa for his beloved wife. But the beach was haunted by the spirit of a murdered woman Ayshah who has become a mermaid demon who causes much mischief as she seeks out her killer to get revenge for her untimely death.”

Yep… it’s our old friend Dewi Perssik, Indonesian dangdut singer and wannabee actress donning the “Fins & Tail”still trying her darnedest to be Indonesia’s Top “Scream Queen” and horror movie star. Persistent lil’ lady isn’t she? Here’s hoping she’s managed to elevate this one above the usual “craptastic” standards that most low budget Indonesian horror seems to revel in. But… hey… Your Favorite Catgirl Princess isn’t holding her breath with anticipation, Hehehe!!!

It’s been a while since we saw Dewi here at the ol’ Litterbox. Poor dear has had to headline a veritable rogues gallery of downright crappy movies the last few years while trying to get her film career going. I’d been wanting to catch this particular effort for quite a while since rumors of it surfaced at Twitchfilm and other film sites I frequent, but unfortunately for me it came out right about the time my one reliable Indonesian DVD source went belly up so I missed the chance to grab a copy. Thank goodness for eBay… somebody’s always trying to sell their old movie collections and the terrible ones this kitten likes are always pretty darn…. err… ummm… “thrifty and reasonable” price-wise.😉

Good thing too… because there are really two kinds of Indonesian horror movies. On the one hand we have some truly scary and impressively slick efforts that more than stack up against the best horror films made anywhere in the world…. and then on the other hand there are a virtual deluge of pretty darn crappy fly-by-night efforts made only to cram as much risque sexploitation as the censors will allow along with downright crude humor and terrible acting into a plot that sounds like some drunken frat boy’s last hangover crossed with an Ed Wood film. Yeah. That bad. And that’s coming from a lady that actually kinda likes bad films….

Unfortunately for us, this time out we have a rather excellent example of the latter.

Basically our very stupid story seems to revolve around two newlyweds, Ardo (played by Afdhal Yusman) and his new bride Linda (played by Dian) who meet while she’s experiencing a flat tire and Ardo is off in the woods peeing on a pocong. Seriously… I kid you not. They immediately fall in love and then become the owners of a seaside bungalow they plan to run as some kind of Bed& Breakfast. (I think… our movie really wasn’t toooo darn clear on this… ) It’s reputed to be haunted… naturally… and the sketchy guy they buy it from doesn’t let them in on that lil’ piece of info during his sale pitch. Hey… what do you expect when you buy a house at the drop of a hat from a guy you just happen to run into alongside the road? I bet you that if he wasn’t also selling stuff out of the trunk of his car too he probably should have been…

Wannabee Real Estate agent Jati (played by Saipul Jamil) is a sleazebag. Plainly put. I almost don’t feel sorry for poor Ardo and Linda for falling for this guy’s sales pitch. He spends most of out movie screwing around with a series of stupid, empty headed bimbos that he physically abuses and treats like cheap hookers. More on that later…

Until then our plot lurches unevenly along as all the ghostly stuff gets underway. First off we find out that there’s a pocong hopping around messing with a couple of hapless bike taxi guys, you know, doing that whole “ghost in a bag thing”… Why? Darned if I know, it has nothing whatsoever to do with our mermaid ghost and feels crammed in merely to help pad this one’s pathetic 77 minute runtime.

Our mermaid meanwhile gets practically no screen-time till right around the halfway point even after one of those silly bike guys angers her by tossing his wife’s placenta and some afterbirth into the waters of her beach thus waking her from her watery grave and unleashing her “wrath”. Huh? Yeah… not kidding.

So… what’s the big “wrath” of the demon mermaid? Well… once it finally gets going, it mostly seems to consist of Dewi doing her own interpretation of “Splash” meets “Rain Man” with this annoying tittering laugh that makes her sound more retarded than scary and frolicking about where people can see her… letting them kinda freak… and then disappearing till her next goofy prank appearance. Ummmm? Yeeeaaahhh…😦 I guess “scary” has a whole different meaning in Indonesia.

So… err… ummmm… what’s her big problem? I mean don’t ghosts usually have some big grudge they have to work out so they can pass along to the afterworld? Yeah… yeah… don’t worry… we’ve got that… but don’t find out what exactly the heck it is until the very last few minutes of our film…. and then only as a lame “tacked on” ending to sorta wrap things up.

I’d warn you about “spoilers” right about now, but I’m thinking having me spill the beans for you is soooo darn much more preferable than having you need to sit through this on for yourself. Trust me.

So, it turns out our sleazebag Jati was Dewi’s husband… or boyfriend… again, the story isn’t particularly clear on stuff. She tells him she’s pregnant and so he brutally kills her, chainsaws her to bits, and dumps her body into the sea. Dipshit… hasn’t he been paying attention to Indonesian horror stories? Murder a pregnant woman and she always comes back as a kuntilanak to seek revenge. Always… always… always. Or in this case, a mermaid kuntilanak… He does that again at our film’s climax to yet another one of his poor girlfriends and this time finally Dewi shows up long enough to scare him into crashing his car to kill him… then she and Jati’s new most recent dead girlfriend Neneng can go back to the sea to happily frolic about in the surf like carefree Marineworld hostesses. Roll those credits. Please, quickly….😉

Oh yeah. This one really stank. Kinda like dead mermaids left out in the sun too long after an toxic oil spill… and no amount of Dawn dish detergent or air fresheners are gonna fix it. I’m just soooo darn glad I didn’t subject my sweet Carolyn to having to watch it with me. I give this pathetic excuse for a film a measly 1 “Meow” out of 5 and definitely warn my Gentle Visitors to avoid it like the Jersey Beach at low tide.

Dewi… Dewi… Dewi… I feel for you, I really do and if these are the sorts of films you are stuck making, I’d seriously suggest that you might want to rethink your whole “actress” gig. On the bright side… there really couldn’t be anywhere to go but up from here… Goodness, I’m soooo hoping my next mermaid movie can wash away the memories of this one. The plot was terrible, with no continuity or common sense, no clue about proper narrative flow, horribly unoriginal and lacking in any real sexy fun to even try to distract the viewer from it’s stupidity. Film-making at it’s worst.

As always, as bad as it was, there a goofy lil’ Trailer for this that’s even better than the film itself, and here we go o’ Gentle Visitors!

Time for another entry in our “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016”, and for some spooky fun we’re taking a peek at 2001’s pay cable remake of a 1956 classic, “She Creature”. Made for the Cinemax pay cable TV movie channel, it was part of a series of 5 Halloween films called “Creature Features”, all of which borrowed the titles of some of American International Pictures classic films of the 50’s and 60’s to make new films that weren’t strict “remakes” in as much as inspired tributes to those old classic movies. Of them all, “She Creature”, I personally think, was the best, and had the most lasting impression on this wee Catgirl. So much so that I naturally picked up a copy once these were released on DVD.

A quick synopsis? How’s this then: “Two Irish carnival workers, Angus and Lily, operate a lackluster sideshow for a tacky rundown circus. All of that has the potential to change when they meet an old sailor, Mr. Woolrich, who happens to possess a real mermaid. With visions of fame and success running through his head, Angus abducts the mermaid and boards a boat to America with Lily. However, the mermaid is not as docile as she seems, and as the voyage begins to go terribly wrong, crew members start mysteriously disappearing.”

Yep… a real honest-to-goodness period piece mermaid horror story. Neko just loves those…. Wanna hear the details and find out if it’s worth hunting down for a look? Then Gentle Visitors, you know what you gotta do, right?😉

This version of “She Creature” blends the old folklore about mermaids with the old Greek myths of the sirens to have us see our title mermaid as a deadly and inhuman seductress luring men to their deaths in a particularly bloody and horrific fashion. Sexploitation movie gold at it’s titillating and risque best… Personally I’ve never quite understood the whole sex-appeal of the mermaid. Seriously. I mean… yes… they are usually awfully pretty and bountifully bosomy décolletage, at least from the waist up, but…. errrr…. ummmm…. they have scaly fishy tails instead of proper “lady bits” which kinda sounds like a deal breaker for most horny sailors if you ask me. But hey… I’m willing to roll with it…😉

This one gets underway on the proverbial “dark and stormy night” in 1905 and an old lady wanders the halls of a suitably creepy Irish mansion overlooking the pounding surf on a perilously craggy cliff. Withing moments, a vicious unseen thing strikes, and with screams of terror she’s torn apart! Yep… now that’s the way to get a horror story rolling.

The scene then shifts to a tacky little carnival, where a sideshow barker fills a tent for the freak show unveiling of a “zombie” from the West Indies. Provoked by a heckler in the crowd our zombie runs amok, threatening to kill the audience before being entranced by the siren song emanating from another nearby tent where a mermaid is kept in a glassed in tank. It’s all a hoax of course, a cheap, but effective bit of showmanship for the gullible crowd, but it does pique the interest of an obviously intoxicated old man, who returns later after the carnival has closed only to find that the “mermaid” is a fake, in reality nothing more than pretty English actress Lillian (played by Carla Gugino) putting on a sideshow for her lover Angus (played by Rufus Sewell) the manager of the sideshow.

He breaks down, and Lilly prevails upon Angus to escort the sad old man home out of pity. That creepy mansion on the cliff…. oh yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere. The old man, Capt. Woolrich (played by Aubrey Morris) invites them in to explain himself and we discover that he had believed that the carnival had actually been harboring a real mermaid… and he wished only to warn them of the dangers such a creature truly represented. Naturally our duo is skeptical of his tales of dangerous sea creatures and the legendary “Forbidden Isle” of the mermaids until he reveals his secret. He has a real mermaid (played by Rya Kihlstedt)… the one responsible for the murder of his own wife, imprisoned here in this very house! Gasp!!😉

The mermaid turns out to be very, very real indeed, kept chained in an armored half cage/ half aquarium tank for reasons that are never really explained. I mean… where did Capt. Woolrich originally find her? Why has he kept her here for what sounds like years… even after by his own admission she has killed, and presumably eaten his wife? We never really learn anything and although the plot doesn’t need it, I’ve always wanted to know the backstory here… that could have been a movie in itself. Oh well…

Angus naturally sees the dollar signs the minute he realizes what captain Woolrich has, but Lilly on the other hand is both entranced and frightened by the sexy inhuman captor. Angus offers to buy her to take away with them to America, where he feels the sensation will make him and Lilly rich beyond their wildest dreams. Woolrich however, sobering up, declares he’ll never sell her, that he lives now only to watch her slowly die as she wastes away in the tank.

Think that will stop Angus’s plans? Think again. Although Lilly tries to talk him out of pursuing his ideas any further, he sneaks back to Woolrich’s mansion with several of the other carnies to try to steal the mermaid. In the course of the crime, capt. Woolrich suffers a fatal heart attack and dies, but they’ve all come too far down that road to just abandon the prize now. So it’s a quick midnight trip to the harbor, a little hush money in the right hands, and our little carnival troupe is off to America with the mermaid secretly smuggled aboard to the cargo hold, some lame story about Woolrich changing his mind about the sale, and Lilly none the wiser.

As the journey begins, Lilly begins to suspect that there’s more to the eerie mute beauty of their aquatic captive. She begins having disturbing dreams and experiencing an inexplicable surge in her libido that draw uncomfortable parallels to the diary of Mrs. Woolrich which Angus claims to have bought from the Captain along with his researches into the mermaid myth.

Add to the tension a man in the crew who recognizes Lilly form waaaay before her carnival days, a life in London where she… as a harlot named Maryanne… made her living whoring and fleecing sailors with her charms. His name is Miles (played by Gil Bellows) and he’s one of those men she played wrong those years ago… and now he wants some payback. Yep. Lilly… or Maryanne… is in hot water now. Luckily for her she’s got a “guardian angel” watching over her now… or something far darker and more menacing.

In her nightmares, Lilly finds herself blurring her own existence with that of the mermaid, and witnessing the horrible death of Miles in a fevered dream, only to be awakened by a commotion on deck as the crew captures the mermaid trying to make her escape to the sea. She would have made it except for being inexplicably drunk…. Hmmmm? I guess you really are what… or who… you eat, eh? Yep… the secret is out about the mysterious cargo and the superstitious sailors have a fit over her.

Somehow… and I can’t imagine how… the crew completely misses Miles’ disappearance on that very same night, not even missing him for several days. When they do, they just automatically assume he fell overboard or something drunk off his ass. Say what? yep… that’s how it gets explained.

Angus manages to sooth things by making a deal with Captain Dunn (played by Jim Piddock) to keep the crew in line and let him keep the mermaid rather than throwing her overboard to placate his men. He still believes that his fortunes depend upon getting to America and displaying her for the world to see. Goofy, goofy guy. He’s gonna wish he’d never seen her….

Lilly keeps reading Mrs. Woolrich’s journal and finds out that she believed the mermaid to have been communicating with her psychically as well as her presence having had some eerie fertility effect on her that resulted in Mrs. Woolrich becoming pregnant at her age. Lilly finds this to be all too true… she’s been barren since a botched back alley abortion went terribly wrong but soon finds herself with morning sickness and all the signs of having inexplicably conceived a child herself.

More people die… and eventually it’s horribly evident that the mermaid has been using her psychic siren powers on the crew as well, driving Captain Dunn to alter the ship’s course and send the ship towards the Forbidden Isles of the mermaids and their spawning waters. Why? Well the night of the Full Moon is coming… the one night when mermaids transform from their normal aquatic forms to become fully human women, part of their life-cycle that permits them to breed…

Stupid, stupid sailors figure it’s time for one big gang-bang and nothing or no one can stop them from unleashing their lusts… However… once our crazed crew has had their way with the mermaid, the horror begins… all according to her real plan all along.

With the treacherous rocks of the Forbidden Archipelago tearing at the ship’s hull, she transforms again… from trembling vulnerable maiden to monstrous scaled beast with razor claws and the strength of 10 men. Let the killing begin!!

This is where Stan Winston gets to unleash some pretty impressive practical make-up and special effects work making “She Creature” look pretty darn big-budget for a made-for-TV film. Nobody really does effects like this anymore in an age of digital CGI rendered monsters and that’s a shame, because when they are done right such old-school effects really rock…😉

Eventually everybody dies… puny human guns proving worthless before her supernatural vitality and it becomes obvious that our mermaid wasn’t any simple siren, but the legendary monstrous “Queen of the Lair”… all powerful matriarchal goddess of the mermaids, entrusted with the job of finding a suitable large number of victims to feed her brood of mermaid spawn. Sorta like “Mrs. Cthulhu” if you will. At the very climax, Lilly finds herself spared… for reasons again somewhat vague. She’s later found aboard the abandoned ship, among the carnage, the only survivor. Our story ends with her voice over as she explains to the audience that as respect for the Queen she keeps their secret… and perhaps something more. A young daughter with her own dark lovely hair, and the eerie glowing red eyes of a mermaid….

Whooo!! Yep. This one certainly gives us a pretty darn dark and terrible alternative to the more romantic visions of mermaids we usually get in movies. Not potential “magical girlfriends”… these creatures are inhuman and terrifying, with lusts that blur the line between hunger and procreation with a bloody horror that lies in stark opposition to their unearthly beauty. Neko liked this one a whole lot. It’s a simple film, with a modest budget, but it’s skillfully done to maximize it’s look and effectively sell it’s story. I give this film a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for itself. It’s well made, well acted, and atmospheric as all heck. Only a few niddling issues raise their ugly heads, plot wise and in no way interfere with the enjoyment of the film at all. I only wish all movies could be this well crafted.

Scary mermaids I wanted… and scary mermaids I got. Yay!! The film is available on Region 1 DVD as well as several other Regional releases, so finding it ought to be easy peasy. So, Gentle Visitors, if creepy mermaid horror is your thing, by all means hunt yourself down a copy if you haven’t already seen it for yourself. I’m thinking it’s a “sunken treasure” I know you’ll enjoy.

We finish with a Trailer as always, to give you all a peek at all the scary shenanigans! Enjoy!

Time for another Review, and this time out it’s a trip back to the 1960’s and the heyday of the Shaw Brothers with a look at the sumptuous 1965’s Huangmei opera film “The Mermaid” based on the 16th-century Chinese play “A Tale of Goddess of Mercy’s Fish Basket (觀音菩薩魚籃記)”. A virtuous scholar, a beautiful Carp Spirit Fairy, romance, comedy, mistaken identity gags, and oodles, and oodles of singing. Yep… they don’t make them like this anymore…

Our synopsis? Well it sorts goes like this: “A scholar named Zhang Zhen who finds himself taken in by the Prime Minister after the death of his beloved parents. Soon enough, Zhang Zhen falls in love with his benefactor’s pretty, but haughty daughter, Peony. But, there are two problems preventing a union between the two. For one, her father simply won’t approve of the match, and  Peony herself has no interest in the lowly Zhang as a suitor to begin with!

Stuck inside with nothing to do but study for exams, Zhang tries to brighten his spirits by feeding fish in a nearby pond. On one fateful day, a carp fairy transforms itself into a beautiful woman who just so happens to look exactly like Peony! Plenty of misunderstandings and misadventures ensue when this lovely Carp Spirit tries to adapt to life on the surface while trying to woo the scholar to whom she has lost her heart! Who will Zhang choose – his first love, Peony or the vivacious mermaid?”

Yep… sweet, sweet romance and magical hi-jinx abound. But will I be able to sit through all the singing and dancing? Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?😉

Technically I suppose, calling this one a “mermaid” movie is a bit of a stretch considering that at no time in the movie does our heroine ever appear with a fishy tail or do just about anything you’d expect that seems particularly “mermaid-y”. Still… that’s the actual title that the Shaw Brothers themselves marketed this one under when they translated it to English. In a more literal translation it’s more properly “Fish Beauty” or the more eloquent “The Beautiful Carp Spirit”, and in it our heroine is yet another of those mischievous animal spirit fairies that occasionally visit the mortal world to pass as humans for various reasons. In this particular case that reason is love and the bulk of the story involves the problems that happen when contact between humans and spirits occur in violation of the strict orders of the Heavenly Bureaucracy. Still… it’s plenty enough “mermaid” enough for lil’ ol’ me, so I think we’ll let it in.

This one is an odd bird for lil’ ol’ me… I mean it’s an honest-to-goodness Chinese Huangmei opera film… and that means plenty of singing and dancing and really stylized combat and fight sequences. Heck… and I’m sometimes fatigued by Hindi films with their insistence on spicing things up with musical interludes! But… I do love vintage Shaw Brothers films… and this one’s been kicking around in my DVD pile for a whole loooonnng while…. and it’s “Mermaid Month” here at the Litterbox…. So I guess it’s time for this wee lady to bite the bullet and give it a try. What’s the worst that could happen?

Our story gets underway as we get introduced to our hero scholar Zhang Zhen (played by actress Ivy Ling Po. Yep… women playing men… I think it’s a Traditional Chinese opera thing…) who’s traveled a long way from home to honor a marriage contract set up by his parents years before. His parents have both died leaving him without wealth, and as soon as he turns up, Prime Minister Jin (played by Yang Chih-ching) starts squirming uncomfortably trying to figure out how he can avoid honoring this old family promise. Not only that, but Zhang’s prospective fiance, the beautiful Peony (played by Li Ching) seems more than a little dismissive of his very existence. Not exactly the welcome he was expecting.

To save face, The Prime Minister tells our hero that since he has yet to pass the Imperial Examinations to receive a post, he can stay in his old study while he prepares for the tests. Once he’s taken them and been awarded a position they can then revisit the idea of marriage to his daughter. He of course, hopes that either Zhang will become discouraged and leave first or simply fail to pass the exams making the marriage promise a moot point.

What nobody knows is that the lonely study overlooks a pretty pond in which the magical Carp Spirit lives (also played by Li Ching), spending her lonely days in meditation and longing for the life that pretty Peony leads. She’s taken to magically shape-shifting into her spitting image and practicing being a human girl with the help of the other water spirits of the pond. Once Zhang moves in and shows himself over then next few months, to be a diligent and honorable young man aching for love and romance she becomes totally smitten with him and decides to venture ashore to the human world to woo him in Peony’s form. Yep… you just know that’s gonna be trouble…😉

Overcoming her shyness, she meets him for the first time in his lonely room one winter evening, coming ashore by walking across the water atop a trail of mist to waken him from his sleep with a flirtatious tickle of her hair on his cheek. Awwww!! So… darn… cute!! I just loved that absolutely adorable moment in the film and I swear I’m gonna steal that as a sweet way of waking my own lovely sweetie sometime. Seriously… it’s just that amazingly romantic.

Zhang is overjoyed to finally be visited by who he thinks is Peony, come at last to swear her love. The Carp Spirit plays along, just so happy to be able spend time with Zhang and experience love as a mortal girl. They sing… they chastely profess their tender feelings for one another, and “Peony” promises to visit Zhang every evening at 9 to walk the gardens together. Their next few months fly by as they grow closer and closer. Zhang falls completely for her shy sweetness and loving heart. What could possibly go wrong to spoil it all?

Well, as spring finally arrives, the real Peony chooses to spend an evening in the gardens alone to write poetry and Zhang arrives expecting to meet his loving fiance only to encounter the haughty young maiden who has forgotten all about the poor scholar she met over a year or so ago. She cries out for help, thinking him a thief and once her servants arrive, basically has her father throw him out for having the gall to say that they were lovers. She’s mean, petty, and cruel, and Zhang’s heart shatters at what he thinks is her betrayal. Hurt and angry at Peony’s change of heart and disgusted with the materialistic and sanctimonious unprincipled attitudes of both her and her family, he leaves to start his long journey home.

The Carp Spirit is upset, and magically flies away from her pond on a cloud in search of Zhang, still hoping to be able to salvage their relationship while keeping her secret. She finds Zhang on the road, and when he sees her, he is angry and hurt, believing she tricked him so her father would be justified in breaking his promise of the marriage. “Peony” is reduced to tears, begging Zhang to forgive her and telling him she only wants to run away and be his wife and the mother of his child, forsaking her father’s wealth and privilege to be with him forever. Naturally one look in her tearful eyes and Zhang can’t help but believe her sincerity despite the oddness of it all.

As they make their way, they end up at a local festival where they spend an enjoyable time together until Prime Minister Jin accidentally runs into them and flips out. He has them both seized and brought back to his mansion so he can punish Zhang as the scoundrel he thinks he is for luring “Peony” away into a marriage that will give him leverage against Jin. Back at the mansion, naturally we get to the mistaken identity hi-jinx of the film once the two “Peonys” are finally brought together.

Everybody immediately knows some kind of spirit is up to something, but the Carp Spirit’s imitation is so perfect, that not only Zhang is confounded, but Peony’s own parents find themselves at a loss to tell the two apart. That means it’s time to summon the famous Ghost Hunting Judge Bao (played by Ching Miao) and his deadly “Ghost Cutting Sword”. Uh-oh…😦

The Carp Spirit knows she should flee, but loves Zhang too much to give up. With the help of her other water spirit friends, she conspires to duplicate Judge Bao and his entourage hoping to confuse things so much that the famous magistrate will find himself unable to separate her from Zhang. There’s a great “trial” sequence where the two Judge Baos interrogate the two Peonys only to end in a stalemate.

But Prime Minister Jin isn’t ready to give up. He hires an Exorcist to unleash the fury of the Celestial Generals and 4 Gods of the Heavens to subdue the imposter. Using her magic, the Carp Spirit frees Zhang and tries to make a getaway with him, to no avail. Nearly defeated by them, she’s forced to tell Zhang her true identity. Zhang realizes that the Peony he has come to love, the shy virtuous maiden with the heart of gold is really her and he swears that her deception means nothing, that he still loves her. Awwww!!! Like we didn’t know that’s how it was going to go. With the help of Peony’s Thousand Year Pearl, they escape beneath the pond to the Carp Spirit’s realm where her water spirit friends try to help them resist the unstoppable forces arrayed against them.

Naturally they lose… and just when it looks like the Generals are ready to destroy the Carp Spirit, the Goddess of Mercy Kwan Yin (played by Chen Yun-hua) arrives from Heaven on a cloud to intervene. The Carp Spirit is given two choices, either to return with the Goddess to the Southern Sea continue her training towards Enlightenment and become an Immortal or to forsake all her magical powers and become merely a mortal human woman and be together with Zhang. Oh yeah… wouldn’t be much of a movie if she picked the former now would it?

Yep, we get our happy ending as our two lovers set out on the long journey home, hand in hand, each happily lost the love the see in each others eyes. Roll those credits!!

Ahhhhh… now this was actually a delightful lil’ film. It’s most definitely an Opera all right, and more dialog is delivered in song than ever done without. There’s a “old-timey” feel to this one, giving it an almost fairy-tale feel throughout, perfect given the source material. The effects are hugely dated, but somehow all the more appropriate, and surprisingly effective, my particular favorite being the one used to make the Carp Spirit glide across her pond, trailing a delicate mist that seems to support her atop the water, done I think with some underwater rig and the clever use of dry ice. Nicely done….

The battle beneath the pond? Overblown and theatrical, it definitely captures the look of Chinese “operatic” combat, looking less real than staged, but still perfect for the film itself. Overall the entire film makes you feel like you are witnessing an Opera performance rather than watching a film. I found it both easy to watch and not at all boring. The love story? Priceless, with real chemistry between the leads… even in cross dress.

I give the film an easily awarded 4 “Meows” out of 5. It’s definitely a classic, and is Shaw Brothers at it’s most classy. If you haven’t seen it, or if you’ve never even seen a Huangmei opera film, then this one is a definite one to try.

It’s available, as I saw it on the Celestial Pictures Region 3 Widescreen restored disc for right around 15-20$ US. with great separate English subtitles and gloriously vibrant Technicolor. Well worth a look.

Here’s the original vintage Trailer in all it’s gloriously faded Technicolor glory. Enjoy!

Time for another Review in our month-long “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016”. This time out? How about an old B&W creature feature starring a young Dennis Hopper in one of his earliest film roles, 1961’s psychological mermaid suspense film “Night Tide”?

The synopsis reads: “While on shore leave, sailor Johnny Drake becomes enamored of Mora, a young woman who works as a “mermaid” at a sideshow attraction. But for Mora it’s no act. She actually believes that she really is a mermaid who is destined to murder men on the night of a full moon. Despite this, Johnny is still captivated by the mysterious woman, however, and begins to suspect that her boss, Capt. Murdock, may have something to do with Mora’s murderous thoughts.”

More carnival sideshow mermaid antics, along with some suspense and a bit of period fun. I first saw this one years ago on Saturday morning TV, and remembered it enough to want to take another peek just for you, o’ Gentle Visitors, so let’s jump in the “wayback machine” and get us some vintage chills and thrills…😉

Ahhhh…. Saturday morning at my house was a wonderful time when I was a little girl. If I got up early enough, there were always oodles of old movies playing on the glut of cable TV channels filled with lots and lots of B&W horror films from the 40’s right through the 60’s and 70’s. Cartoons were just waaaay to tame for this lil’ “wild child”… Miyuki loved her “creature features”. So much so that often my parents would often awaken Saturdays to find me already up, there in my pj’s lying on the living room floor watching some ghastly B movie and filling my little brain with all sorts of silly notions I could get up to once I was ready to head outside to play. Ummmm? Have I ever mentioned just how crazy a kid I was back then? I have? Oh, good… Hehehe…

So our story gets underway, seaman Johnny Drake (played by Dennis Hopper) is wandering about the boardwalk at Venice Beach and stops into a funky little jazz club where he meets the mysterious beauty Mora (played by Linda Lawson). Although she’s a bit aloof and standoffish at first, the two of them hit it off and after Johnny walks her home to her apartment above the marina merry-go-round. He manages to convince her to see him again for a proper date, and eventually they fall for each other.

Johnny is happy, but pretty much everyone else around them is wary of the romance, as two of her previous boyfriends have died mysteriously, drowned in the sea nearby. Ummmm?… OK…. That sounds pretty darn suspicious, right? Well to make matters worse, Mora herself believes she is a descendant of the “Sea People”, mythic siren-like mer-people who lure sailors to their deaths. Crazy, right? Well maybe not so much…

Strangely enough, Mora herself makes a living “playing” a mermaid in a cheesy sideshow at the pier for her guardian, the boozy ex-sailor Captain Murdock (played by Gavin Muir). You know the deal… 25 cents a peep at the “mermaid” lounging in the tank. Harmless, right?

Then who is the strange sinister foreign woman (played by Marjorie Cameron) that follows Mora around? Why is Mora so afraid of her? And why is it only Mora or Johnny seem able to see her? Is she one of the “Sea People” come to lure Mora back to the briny depths or just a figment of Mora’s overwrought imagination? Except of course… Johnny sees her too.

Basically our story wants to play coy, and we never really learn just who she is… and that’s OK. This one is less a real horror movie than an exercise in psychological horror. Poor Mora… originally an orphan that Captain Murdock picked up on a visit to the Aegean Isle of Mykonos, he’s raised her as his own daughter and tries to control her by filling her head with tales and legends of the Sea People and the Sirens. After a lifetime of being told she’s some kind of inhuman thing, is it any wonder our poor dear is more than a little neurotic?

But love can fix all that, right? Especially the pure and honest love of an All-American boy like Johnny. Ummmm? Nawwww… Not that kinda movie, people.

Along with Mora’s further decent into madness, poor Johnny starts to question his own grasp on sanity as he slowly comes to believe Mora’s terrible story. He has nightmares and dreams of Mora as both mermaid and monster and sees his very own death at her hands, but still can’t shake his attraction to her, even with Ellen, the sweet daughter of the Merry-Go-Round operator giving him the goo-goo eyes every time he stops in for coffee and to unload his suspicions and fears to a sympathetic ear.

Eventually Mora loses it… and in a moment of madness tries to drown Johnny while they are scuba-diving together, only to realize what horrible thing she almost did at the last moment. As Johnny struggles to the surface for air, Mora dives deep into the sea, dropping her own tanks and swimming away into the depths to die herself rather than risk any future harm to Johnny from her curse.

Still agonizing over Mora, despite what she attempted, Johnny returns to the boardwalk the very next night to discover that Captain Murdock has somehow recovered her lifeless body to place back on macabre display in the tank. He admits to having jealously killed Mora’s previous boyfriends in an effort to control and keep her all for himself. There’s a struggle, and Johnny barely escapes being shot to death before the police swoop in and grab them both up.

At the police station, Captain Murdock comes clean, exonerating Johnny, but claims to know nothing of the strange mystery woman, Mora’s stalker. Johnny is allowed to leave, and returns to his ship with the Shore Patrol, after finally connecting with Ellen and promising to return to visit her once things in his life return to normal. Our film ends, with a quick quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Annabel Lee”….

Hmmmm? So… not a “real mermaid” movie afterall. Although the film does hint pretty heavily that maybe those legends of Captain Murdock’s were true. It’s more a study in the way the human mind can be fooled by fear and superstition more than any real supernatural source. All in all, although fairly dated by modern standards, it hold up really well and I can see why I remembered it after all these years. To me, it was like an old episode of “The Alfred Hitchcock Show”… which loved these sorts of “maybe it is… maybe it isn’t” kind of stories. (Yes… lil’ Miyuki watched old reruns of that show too when she was a wee girl…. For me, back in the day “Old TV was good TV…” )

I give “Night Tide” a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5. Like I say, it holds up pretty well, even today, with competent acting, especially by Mr. Hopper. It’s not hard to see why he’s done so well for himself in the profession over the years, taking what was basically a throw-away B-movie and giving it his best effort. Now that’s a Professional. The cinematography is nice too, reminding me in many ways of “Carnival of Souls”, which came out the following year, especially in the way it presents the Venice Boardwalk by night in it’s vintage Black & White photography. Certain stories are actually helped by being done in B&W and this film is definitely one of them.

This one’s available on plenty of budget DVD’s, but there is actually a nice restored version too done by The Academy Film Archive, so if you want to give it a peek yourself, I’d say that’s the way to go. No muss, no fuss.

Old as this one is, I still managed to find the original theatrical Trailer online, so here it goes!

Our month long celebration of all things mermaid, “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016” continues! This time out, a perhaps odd little choice, the 2012 Hindi Social Drama film, “Jalpari: The Desert Mermaid”. Not reeeeaaallly a “mermaid” movie per se… but still an excellent lil’ film that Yours Truly wanted to include.

The synopsis? But of course! “Two city-bred kids, fearless tomboy Shreya and her little brother Sam travel to their dusty Haryana village for a vacation with their parents. What happens there is an adventure, which comes packed with significant life lessons. It’s not the idyllic village of their dreams but a problem-ridden place with dried up ponds, unfriendly villagers, unspoken secrets, out-of-bounds spaces, a child-eating witch and no girls, a reason why wives are imported from other states. In the backdrop of this engrossing adventure the social issue of female foeticide is subtly interwoven without being preachy and melodramatic.”

Ummmm? So this one isn’t actually a “mermaid” movie? “But… but… Neko” you ask“What about that witch in the synopsis? There is gonna be a witch, right?” Ummmm. Yeah… Gotta admit, this one sorta fooled yours truly when I was first tracking it down. It definitely didn’t turn out to be the movie I thought it was going to be. But guess what? It still turned out to be a really, really good movie that I ended up liking a whole lot. Wanna find out why? Then just “Read On”, o’ Gentle Visitors and find out!

If you are a regular visitor here at the ol’ Litterbox, then you must have a pretty darn good grasp of this wee lady’s movie tastes by now. They don’t usually run towards deep or meaningful “social commentary” or the like…. I’m pretty darn unsophisticated in my tastes for the most part. Give me some zombies… some ninjas… maybe a monster or ghost… and I’m one happy girl. With that in mind, I have to say I got tricked into seeing this particular film…. yep… occasionally it happens.

However… I’m actually really pretty darn happy about that. “Jalpari” turned out to be a pretty darn nice little film that had I known what it was actually about before I sat down to watch, I might have passed on. That would have been a shame. I’m willing to admit it.

Anyways, what’s the film all about? Well… to start with, it’s the story of one spunky lil’ girl’s holiday adventure to her father’s rural ancestral village and the secret that was hidden there among the dust and poverty. Our heroine Shreya (played by the delightful young actress Lehar Khan) is a peculiarly modern young tomboy growing up in the city of New Delhi, where her irrepressible spirit and fairly “unladylike” attitude place her at odds with Hindi society at large. To put it simply… she doesn’t feel the need to “color within the lines” and be what Indian culture says a young girl should be. She’s without a mother, thanks to a tragedy we never really hear about, leaving her to be raised by her father and grandmother (played by Suhasini Mulay). Thankfully, although her antics distress her grandmother, her physician father, Dr. Dev (played by Parvin Dabas) loves her with all his heart and actually encourages her independent spirit despite the trouble it sometimes brings to his door.

Like the Police… from the ominously named Security Branch… here to apprehend a potential terrorist, who it seems turns out to be the result of Shreya carrying on a correspondence with a pen-pal named Imran in Pakistan. I don’t know what’s scarier… the idea that the Security Services would actually come to arrest a little girl for some innocent letters to another child in another country or the implication that all mail from India heading to Pakistan is automatically read by nameless government goons as a matter of routine. It’s merely a tiny moment in our films beginning, but it stuck with this lady nonetheless.

Her little brother Sam (played by Krishang Trivedi) isn’t worried about his sister… Heck no!! he knows she’s scarier than any jail, and he’s just overjoyed at the prospect of inheriting his bossy big sister’s room. Yep… some serious “sibling rivalry” there…😉

But Dev gets things straightened out in time for Shreya to star in her school’s big stage play about mermaids. We get a really nice little song and dance sequence as Shreya happily takes the stage as “Princess of the Mermaids”… and afterwards, she’s aching to be able to accompany her father on his upcoming trip to the rural village he grew up in where he hopes to found a hospital to improve the lives of the rural poor his family left behind years ago. Finally… our “Mermaid Princess” hopes to actually be able to frolic in the lakes and pools she’s heard of but never seen in the city and actually learn to swim!!

But despite her eager excitement, her father is reluctant to bring her and Sam along with him. The rural village is a place he remembers as backward and ignorant… and probably not a welcoming place to a young woman aching to run free and express herself like Shreya does. Think that will stop our girl from trying to melt his heart and sway his decision? Heck no….

So before even the credits have rolled, our little family finds themselves on the dusty road home to remote Madhogarh village, in the Mahendragarh district of Haryana. Shreya is in for some surprises though… far from being the fertile farming paradise of her father’s youthful memories, the village is now nearly a drought plagued desert wasteland, with none of the ponds and lakes she’d been expecting.

The villagers themselves? Well they are as backward and superstitious as her father expected… seemingly pleased with his proposed gift of a hospital clinic, but also reluctant to accept his services as a doctor. The village headman even seems to resent his very presence, saying they already have a doctor who visits and cares for their need sufficiently. And Shreya? Well… at first the villagers take her and her short hair and jeans to be a boy rather than a girl… and once they find out otherwise, she gets some pretty peculiar looks from most of the locals.

Our heroine takes it all in stride. Her wild spirit wins over first her grandfather, and then his pretty housekeeper Shabri (played by Tannishtha Chatterjee), and even local boxing champion Veer (played by Rahul Singh), who all see her as a bright shinning bit of life come to awaken the color long missing in the otherwise drab village. Even without the streams, lakes and grasslands she expected, she’s determined to explore the surrounding countryside, convinced that somewhere out there must be a pond… one pond… where she can learn to swim before her vacation comes to a close. She just knows it has to be there, waiting for her.

This part of the film is pure magic… as Shreya and Sam have their own version of “Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn” getting up to mischief and having adventures with the local gang of kids. All boys… for strangely enough Shreya finds herself to be the only girl in the whole village… more on that quirk later.😉

My goodness…. how I really loved the character of Shreya!! She’s spunky, feisty, and fun with an irrepressible spirit of adventure and daydreams of being a magical mermaid princess. Watching her roam around the village in her jeans, with her trusty satchel and “fighting stick”… a gift to “the young warrior princess” from Veer… brought back oodles of fond memories of myself as a young girl. Little Miyuki, future “Catgirl Princess”, was that same crazy little tomboy back then, and if Shreya and I had ever met for real at that age, I just know we would have been kindred spirits and the best of friends… and probably gotten into all sorts of trouble together.

So what sort of adventure can such a girl get up to in such a dusty and boring backwater village? Well… luckily for Shreya, the local boys tell her about the Dayaan… the witch… that haunts the old ruined fort on the hill above the village. Wanna know why there aren’t any other girls here? It’s because the evil witch is reputed to stalk the village by night and has snatched them all away and eaten them!! Gasp!!

OK… OK… a cannibal witch!! Now we’re getting somewhere!! The gang of boys dare Shreya to visit the fort by night to prove her bravery and our lil’ heroine is more than brave enough to try despite the fact that the fort is supposed to be “off limits” by order of the village headman. Even her father tries to dissuade her, but naturally she sneaks out that very night to test the truth of the local rumors. Only to find…. they apparently are very, very true!! Something really does lurk in the darkness of the old fort!! Is it the witch? Is Shreya in danger of getting eaten like all the other girls before her?

Well… for you to learn that, Neko’s gonna have to give you her “Spoiler Alert”… cause we really can’t go any further without ruining things. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya…😉

Yes… someone does linger withing those forbidden ruins. Someone who is interested in lil’ Shreya, and someone who knows the terrible secret the villagers have been keeping. Where are all the little girls….?

After her close encounter with the witch, Shreya finds herself suddenly thrust into the role she’s never really wanted… to be a proper Hindi girl… even for just one day. You see, there’s also a local tradition in which on one day of the year, all girls are honored as “living goddesses”… all given the respect and expected to visit around the village sharing their beauty and the gift of good fortune with all. But it’s been a long time since there were any girls here, so our heroine finds herself in the uncomfortable position of accepting this duty. She even blesses the sick daughter-in-law of the village headman’s son… even though the headman has refused her father’s offer to doctor the sick girl. We are given the impression it’s because it would be unseemly for Dev… a man… to deal directly with a woman. Just not proper, you see… but this is just an excuse, a smokescreen to hide the truth. So of course… without prompt proper treatment, the woman dies and Shreya gets blamed. Her visit to the fort… the villagers believe she’s angered the witch and awakened her curse, so they want the kids to leave and for Dr. Dev to take them away before things get worse. Bullshit…😦

Finally… one evening before Dev was to take them back to Dehli, Shabri’s  husband Trilochan mysteriously takes her away at the angry request of his mother on an unknown midnight excursion. Shreya sees them leave… something unheard of after dark in this village and decides to get Sam and follow them. Where does that journey lead them? Why over the hill beyond the ruins of the fort into the “off limits” land where a deserted warehouse hides the real horror hidden here in Madhogarh village. A clandestine abortion clinic run at the orders of the village headman where illegal sonograms are used to determine the sex of unborn babies so that girl fetuses can be quietly aborted and thrown into that single remaining pond in the hills. The very pond Shreya has wanted for her joy, now revealed as a place of stinking misery and horror. The very butchery that the headman subjected his own daughter-in-law to and the botched complications of which killed her…😦

Arrrrrghhh!! This is the real message of our film, a very real and incredibly shameful practice plaguing modern India today. Female foeticide practiced to favor the birth of sons for Indian families. Yep… girls are without value you see… they can’t be the heads of families, “traditionally” don’t have the right to inherit land and money, and are a drain on a family’s resources, especially when you have to provide a “dowry” to even see them married and then become their husband’s “problem” to support. So it’s become a real shameful practice to quietly see that they never get born….

Our lil’ heroine interrupts such a shameful operation being forced upon the helpless Shabri, and it earns her a death at the hands of the headman’s goons who catch her and try to drown her in the fetid pond despite Sam finally finding his bravery and fighting to save his sister.

Shreya can’t swim… but miraculously she is borne to shore by the mysterious “witch”, who is still following her. It turns out to be the old village midwife, driven out by the headman long ago, who has been living in the ruins of the fort, despised and forgotten by the locals who are all secretly complicit in one way or another in this conspiracy. Luckily before the thugs can finish them all off, Dev and Veer arrive to put the evil doctor, his minions, and the headman in their place, saving Shabri’s baby and calling in the local police to arrest the villains.

These shameful secrets finally brought to life, the implication is that Dev will use his clinic to help restore the village to normal… to get them to see the value all these girl children could bring, and all because of the bravery and pluck of our little heroine who provided the inspiration for all the girls to come.

It’s a hopeful ending… but one that leaves you saddened by the reality behind the story. As an American woman, I myself sometimes take the freedoms and rights I have for granted. Films like this remind me that my life could have been terribly different had I the misfortune to be born in a less enlightened part of the world. What would have been my fate, had I been born somewhere that would have wanted to crush my spirit and mold me into their idea of a “woman’s place”? It chills my heart to even imagine it… Even Shreya’s final letter to her pen-pal Imran wonders what would have been her fate had her father not left that village when he did to embrace the modern world.

As angry as all this made me… and my adorable wife could see how those wicked ideas made me bubble and seethe with barely suppressed rage as our story reached it’s climax… I suppose I should be happy that director Nila Madhab Panda has made this film and shown that those stupid practices don’t have to continue to represent the future of India, that such practices can be changed. I hope they heed this and do… (Trust me… nobody wants this lady to be pissed at you. I have a particularly vicious streak hidden in this petite lil’ body… )

So there we are. A “mermaid” movie without a real mermaid, and a “witch” who isn’t really “wicked”, but with the most delightful lil heroine I could imagine battling perhaps the most evil idea one might imagine. I really did like this film a lot… even if the “real” subject made me angrier than I’ve been in quite a while. I’m going to give “Jalpari” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5. Much of that is the very sleek, very easy to follow plot, presented in a very “abbreviated” (for a Hindi film, anyways..) hour and a half. The music is integrated well… only a couple of songs really… and isn’t as jarring as some Hindi films. My biggest joy was with the character of our wee heroine Shreya herself… I enjoyed young Lehar Khan’s performance throughout and I hope she’s an inspiration to all Indian girls watching this one that you can grow up to be both a woman and be strong and independent minded too charting your own course in the world.

Now this one is easy to find on DVD… but unfortunately not with English subtitles. Luckily for you, it’s currently available for streaming on both Amazon and Itunes with those ever important subtitles on board for your enjoyment anytime. I’d say it’s definitely a must see… even if “social commentary” films aren’t your usual cup of tea either…

Naturally your Favorite Catgirl Princess snagged you a Trailer… with English subtitles to boot!

Our “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016” continues at full speed!! Now it’s time for some scary mermaid action, Euro-style with a look at 2014’s low budget Serbian mermaid horror film “Mamula” or as it’s know most places, “Killer Mermaid”.

Our synopsis reads as follows: “Two young American women, Kelly and Lucy, go on a Mediterranean vacation for fun and sun with an old college friend from Serbia, Alex. Along the way, they will encounter a mysterious stranger and come to grips with a long held secret that will threaten their very lives when they uncover the watery lair of a man-eating mermaid siren hidden beneath an abandoned military fortress. What was once a carefree adventure soon becomes a deadly fight for survival against an ancient myth come to terrible life.”

Sounds like we have a winner here! Sexy fun in the sun, a deadly serial killer, a deserted Island with an ex-Nazi prison, and a killer mermaid with a taste for human meat… What more could this wee kitten want? Well… OK… maybe some kung-fu, but hey… you can’t always have everything…😉

This one is an odd little bird. It’s probably one of one a couple of films I’ve ever seen from this part of the former Warsaw pact. I know it’s the first Serbian horror film I’ve seen outside of 1973’s “Leptirica”… so it’s about time I check back to see what they are up to, right?

“Killer Mermaid” or “Mamula” as it was originally titled, is about a group of old college friends who get together on the coast of Montenegro at a beach resort for a chance to catch up on old times and maybe squeeze in some fun in the sun time together. Kelly (played by Kristina Klebe) and her ex roommate and bff Lucy (played by Ukrainian model and actress Natalia Guslistaya, credited here as Natalie Burn) plan to reconnect with Alex (played by Slobodan Stefanovic) a hunky Serbian guy they also went to school with back in the day. Lucy sort of hopes that she can maybe do a bit more than just “reconnect”… apparently her and Alex were a couple back then. Unfortunately for her, Alex has moved on, and brings along his new fiance Yasmin (played by Sofia Rajovic) to join them. There’s a little of the “green eyed monster” in the tension between this lover’s triangle, but despite that they soon get down to the business of partying like it’s the end of the world… Good thing too, because for them, it soon practically will be.

We get the first inkling that not all is well when we witness a sexy midnight rendezvous between a couple on the beach, Sergej (played by Janko Cekic) and blonde hottie Ana (played by Jelena Rakocevic). They were racing around the cliffs on Sergej’s motorcycle and stop for some quick sexytime fun only to have it interrupted by some strange singing that mesmerizes Sergej and lures him into leaping from the cliff into the sea never to be seen again. Poor Ana screams for help, only to have her screams answered by a creepy stranger in worn sailor’s togs who kills her with a nasty looking anchor-hook thingee. Well… guess she shoulda seen that coming the moment she took her top off… that’s like catnip to mad slashers even in Serbia…

Back with our little group, Lucy and Alex have a drunken tryst after Yasmin drinks herself sick, which you know is gonna make this group just that much more likely to smash apart once everyone knows about it and things get tough. Oooohhh!!! And to round things out, one of Alex’s local buddies local beach bum Bocan (played by Dragan Micanovic) joins up to round things out (and pad the potential body count)… along with a suggestion that they can visit the nearby deserted isle of Mamula for kicks. Hey… it’s waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere… used to be a military fort and was used as a concentration and torture camp for the Nazis in WW2 … and is currently “off limits” by the current Serbian government. What could possibly go wrong if they visit there? Hmmmmm?

They do get that requisite warning while partying at a local bar, warning them to stay away from Mamula by grizzly drunken old sailor and suspiciously creepy transient Nico (played by genre great, Franco Nero)… who also shares a suspicious resemblance to what little we saw of the crazy hook killer on the cliff. Oh crap… Carolyn and I both kept a keen eye on him for the next part of our film.

Yes… yes… I know… going to remote Mamula for fun and giggles sounds a thousand ways all around stupid, so naturally our little group is gonna go anyways. Wouldn’t have much of a movie if they didn’t…

We get some nice location footage of our happy group exploring the ruins of the fortress and then, right on cue, things get creepy. While high up above a old well at the center of the fort, they spy on some weird guy that looks like some dumpy watchman or groundskeeper (played by Miodrag Krstovic). He wanders in and starts pouring a bucket into the well… a bucket filled with blood and severed body parts. Yep… that ain’t good…

Turns out, this is our guy with the nasty killer hook… and once he realizes our little group is here gets right to the task of trying to kill them all. First… it’s sink the inflatable boat that out group arrived on… then chase them around the old fort with a shotgun and his hook. Well… at least I guess this lets Nico “off the hook” for the murders…😉

But what about our mermaid? Don’t worry… she’s lurking about. In fact, Kelly catches a glimpse of her when they look down that well and our little group figures she’s some sort of captive of our crazy killer imprisoned down in the passages beneath the fort. Naturally Kelly insists they have to try to save her…

That doesn’t go so darn well. For one thing, she’s got some sort of ability to hypnotize the guys with her singing and keeps trying to lure both Sergej and Bocan to their doom. it’s all our ladies can do to keep that from happening. Worse… the crazy killer seems to be working for her…

One by one they all die. Sergej first… lured to his doom by the siren song. Then Yasmin… killed by the hook and dismembered by our crazy mermaid henchman. Finally Lucy, overpowered and drowned by the mermaid… who it seems is a shapeshifting thing that can either appear as a beautiful merwoman (played by Serbian model Zorana Kostic Obradovic) or amphibious monster (played by Mina Sablic).

Our heroine Kelly and a badly hurt Bocan eventually find a map of the fort indicating that the government build a tunnel connecting the isle to the mainland, and barely escape ahead of the Mermaid and her henchman, running into Nico at the abandoned submarine pen on the mainland just in time for him to fill us all in about his mysterious connection to things.

Turns out he’s known about the mermaid all along. He was one of a number of marine engineers sent by the old Yugoslav Navy to build that tunnel years before. he and his men ran into the mermaid and she used her siren song to kill all of them but him. Or so he thought… seems his old lieutenant survived, becoming the lover and guardian killer of the mermaid. He’s the one who’s been doing all the murders to feed her… including pretty Ana, who turns out to have been Nico’s daughter. Her disappearance was what finally got Nico hunting for the mermaid again after all these years.

Naturally the mermaid follows them back to the town, eager to kill them to keep her existence secret and we get a final big showdown. Do our heroes win? Do they land the big one or does this fish get away? Guess you’ll have to watch for yourselves and find out.

Lets see. All in all, I’d have to say that “Mamula”ends up being a pretty standard “creature feature”. It follows all the expected conventions and checks all the expected boxes, plot wise. Nothing new or novel, but mostly enjoyable in the way such simple films like this can be. The acting is competent overall… although casting Ukrainian actress Natalia Guslistaya as an American college girl named Lucy was a bit of a stretch. Her English is good, but her slight accent gives her away easily. I’m not really certain why she wasn’t simply portrayed as yet another foreign student friend of Kelly’s. It wouldn’t have affected the story and would have felt more plausible. Franco Nero was a nice bonus lending both his name to the film’s marketing and a certain gravitas to the role of Nico. It’s always nice to see a familiar old actor still working now and again.

The CGI effects, done locally in Serbia, aren’t too bad, and blend pretty seamlessly with the practical make-up to make Scylla the mermaid work as a character. She doesn’t get too much screen time till near the end of the film, but when she does it all works effectively.

I guess i would give “Mamula” a good solid middle of the road 3 “Meows” out of 5. Of our two scary mermaid movies so far this month, I’m thinking I enjoyed “She Creature” slightly better, but this one comes in a close second.

The DVD? Well, I watched this on the Region 1 Widescreen release under the somewhat spoiler title “Killer Mermaid”. It was presented widescreen, with English audio throughout. You can also find versions in most other regions, either under that title, or as in the UK Region 2 with the alternate title “Nymph”.

And we close, as always with our quick video nugget of goodness to get you all in the mood, a nifty Trailer with plenty of Killer Mermaid action…😉

Can’t really do a proper Mermaid themed Review Festival without visiting some of the quaint antediluvian submarine horrors of H.P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, now can we? Although our “little mermaid” in this one has more resemblance to Ursula the Sea Witch than Princess Ariel, I’m thinking Stuart Gordon 2001’s Lovecraft inspired film “Dagon” fits in just fine. But then I’m a sucker for romance and even freaky octopus girls need sweet forbidden love too, now don’t they? Hehehehe!!

Our synopsis reads like this: “Paul Marsh is yachting along the Spanish coast with three companions when a freak storm causes their boat to founder on the rocks. With the ship sinking, and one of his friends trapped in the wreckage, Paul and his girlfriend Barbara take a small boat to a nearby village to find help to free them. But the town of Imboca and it’s locals seem odd and freakish, and their behavior grows increasingly strange and threatening. Soon it’s clear that Imboca is a place mired in a shadow of evil that threatens them all unless they can somehow get away. But… once Paul meets a local girl, who has appeared in his recent nightmares as a mermaid, he realizes that the fearful world of his dire dreams is now a deadly reality… a reality which he may never escape.”

So, if you, like a wee Catgirl, also have a taste for the icky cosmic horrors that inhabit Lovecraft’s tales of terror, then “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitors and lets all find out some of those secrets “man was not meant to know…”

The film opens with a dream sequence in which our hero Paul Marsh (played by Ezra Godden) is scuba diving and discovers weird cyclopean sunken ruins at the bottom of the sea. They are covered with odd runic glyphs and raised motifs of prehistoric sea creatures that he soon discovers are inlays of solid gold. Before he can really consider the meaning of this he encounters a beautiful naked mermaid girl (played by Macarena Gomez), who swims up and removes his mask before seemingly embracing him for a seductive kiss. But… in a moment of nightmare terror, her luscious lips part to reveal a mouth of horror crammed full of needle teeth as she sweeps in to devour him…

Annnnd then he awakens with a start in the arms of his girlfriend Barbara (played by Raquel Meroño). Yep… it was just all a dream… Or was it? Lovecraft loves to have his tortured protagonists suffer from prophetic nightmares and repressed memories, and director Stuart Gordon loves replicating the style of Lovecraft’s horror in his films, so naturally you just know our “mermaid” is gonna end up returning somewhere in the future. And somehow we also just know that’s not gonna be a good thing…

Not too long in the future either, because before we get much more than a quick introduction to girlfriend Barbara, and his yachting friends Howard and Vicki (played by Brendan Price and Birgit Bofarull respectively) a crazy storm blows up out of nowhere driving their boat up onto a reef, crushing a hole in the side and pinning Vicki below deck in the debris. Luckily, it would seem, they are right off shore from a little Spanish fishing village, so Paul and Barbara decide to take their inflatable launch ashore to get help.

The village, Imboca, is a dilapidated ramshackle place clinging to the land like the flotsam and jetsam left by an ill tide. With their rubber boat ruined by sharp rocks during the approach, they badly need to find someone to help before the yacht sinks. However, the village seems weirdly empty, but for eerie singing that they trace back to the local church. But this church is not your average church… it’s a freaky eerie place that definitely starts our little pair to worrying. Even after they find the oddly disturbing priest (played by Ferran Lahoz), who seems willing to help them.

They manage to get him to enlist the aid of some pretty sketchy fisherman and their boat to take Paul back out to the wreck, but the Priest convinces Barbara that she should go to the local Hotel to use the phone to summon a doctor for Vicki and contact the provincial police since there are none stationed in Imboca itself. Uhhh…. yeah… let yourselves get split up by the creepy locals… that sounds like a plan. It’s no surprise she gets assaulted and kidnapped by the “helpful” Priest and Hotel manager before Paul can return.

Paul heads out with the fishing boat, but while he’s on shore, Howard and Vicki have already met their horrible fate as some unseen thing from deep beneath the sea, drawn by Vicki’s seeping blood, has already risen to the surface to pull them both into the dark briney depths. But don’t worry… we’ll see them both again…

By now, those of you familiar with Lovecraft’s stories already know what’s afoot. Imboca is some sort of version of Innsmouth, decrepit home of the degenerate Deep Ones, those mutant fish people cultists of Cthulhu and his ilk. This time out, all the fishy worship is directed at Dagon, another of Lovecraft’s favorite evil Great Old Ones, but it’s pretty much business as usual for the forces of cosmic freaky evil. And exactly what business would that be? Well, the sacrifice of all male outsiders to the glory of the great Dagon, and giving all the unfortunate women to him for the vile purpose of breeding more crazy fish mutants. Ooops. I’m pretty certain poor Barbara isn’t gonna be happy…

With Howard and Vicki missing from the boat without a trace, Paul returns to shore and is told to go to the Hotel to rest, that Barbara has gone to a nearby town to fetch the police, and will meet him later. Left to wait for her in an old, filthy hotel room, he tries to vainly to sleep but dreams of the “mermaid” again and awakens in terror.

Before he can wonder where Barbara is, he is disturbed by a mob of the strange, fish-like locals approaching the hotel intent upon breaking into his room to seize him. Forced to make his hasty escape, he crashes into a tannery where macabre human skins are stretched across frame to dry. Here he finds Howard’s remains and knows at last the true danger that he is in.

While running in terror he encounters a lone drunkard named Ezequiel, the last human left in Imboca (played by Francisco Rabal). That’s handy because by this point we need somebody to fill us in with Imboca’s dark history. It’s a pretty standard tale. The village fell on hard times after the fish stocks became depleted. A merchant Captain Orpheus Cambarro (played by Alfredo Villa), already corrupted during his journeys to the Far East, introduces the village to the worship of Dagon. He promises both the return of the fish to Imboca and wealth from the sea in the form of gold, and at first the villagers are more than happy to abandon their Catholic Priest and the worship of a seemingly impotent God. Things only turn bad when Dagon begins to demand live sacrifices and human women to breed with. By then, with the murder of their original Priest on their hands, the villagers are damned and unable to say no.

He convinces Ezequiel to help him, and he gets led to the Mayor’s manor, so he can try to steal the town’s only car so he can escape to bring back help. Our hero isn’t much of a car thief, and nearly gets caught, but is saved from the mutants by the beautiful daughter of the Mayor named Uxia (also played by Macarena Gomez), who looks just like the mermaid from his dreams. She’s not surprised to meet him either… and seems to have been having the same recurring dreams about him as well. There’s some inexplicable connection between them and Paul feels it at once. She’s eerily seductive, and almost mesmerized Paul is drawn to her charms only to discover to his horror, that she’s in reality a half woman, half octopus mutant that sends him fleeing in horror despite her poignant pleas to stay by her side. (And here I thought mermaids with their fishy “lady bits” were nasty…)

There’s a bit more chasing around, but you know that eventually our hero will find the mind shattered Vicki, following her rape and now carrying the monstrous spawn of Dagon. She doesn’t last long, committing suicide rather than enduring the horror any more. Ezequiel and he get caught, and Ezequiel is skinned alive in a particularly horrible sequence. That leaves our shaken hero to face the mutants after Uxia intervenes on his behalf. Luckily for Paul… if anything in this movie can be called “lucky”… as the daughter of Mayor Xavier Cambarro, direct descendant of Captain Cambarro, Uxia is the High Priestess of Dagon and she has decided Paul is her destined soulmate. She implores him to join with her and revel in the gifts of Dagon rather than suffer the same terrible fate as Ezequiel. Some choice huh?

Paul seems to accept her proposal, and Uxia orders the Priest to make the arrangements for their marriage while she sees to the cult’s sacrifice of Barbara to the lusts of Dagon. Once she leaves Paul goes all apeshit and kills both his guard and the Priest and grabs a can of kerosene to follow the eerie chanting deep into the catacombs beneath Imboca. There the Imbocans are riotously reveling as Uxia tortures Barbara, who is chained to a winch above a deep well that leads through deep subterranean passages to the sea.

Paul arrives and uses the kerosene to break up the celebration, but not before Barbara is cast down the well into the grasp of Dagon. Paul pulls her up to the surface again… but it is too late. Dagon has had his filthy way with Barbara and all she wants to do is die. Luckily for her, Dagon lurches out of the well and tears her to bits right before Paul’s eyes, before plunging back into the Stygian depths of the well.

Then comes the prerequisite Mythos ending… for the hideously deformed Mayor Xavier Cambarro, reveals himself and tells Paul that the dreams he has been having prove that he is really Paulo, his long lost son, stolen away years before by Paul’s mother, another of the women lured to Imboca as breeding stock for the cult. This makes Uxia his half sister… and she implores him again to join them as her incestuous lover and rule the cult with her once her father has left the land to join Dagon in the depths for eternity.

Paul’s mind is close to shattering as he realizes the truth in what they have revealed… and he wants no part of it. He douses himself with the last of the kerosene and tries to kill himself by self-immolation, only to have Uxia throw herself and him into the well, where he discovers that the fire has opened the strange birthmarks along his side and revealed them as gills. His mind shattered… he surrenders to his fate as Uxia embraces him… and leads him deep into the ruins he’s dreamed of since the beginning of the film where they will apparently live forever in the domain of Dagon. Run those credits!

So that’s that. Not a bad little movie, but not much in the way of a character driven piece. It feels for the most part like a short story rather than a whole book… appropriate in a way, since it was inspired by short stories. Given the speed with which it moves, the suspense suffers a bit in favor of the gore. That’s somewhat at odds with Lovecraft’s style, which was more about making you feel the dread of his stories and situations than in bludgeoning you with shocks. Still, all in all, Gordon manages to capture the “body horror” aspect of Lovecraft’s work in his portrayal of the decaying and corruptive mutation that Dagon inspires among his cultists. I give it a pretty solid 3 “Meows” out of 5 for giving you the Heebie-jeebies in all the right ways.

The DVD was the Region 1 release, available for right around 10-15$ most places. It’s presented widescreen and letterboxed in mostly in English language… and also quite a bit of Spanish dialog as well. Thank goodness for the close captions…  definitely worth a look if squishy horror of a cosmic nature with evil mutant mermaids is your thing. (And if it is your thing, perhaps you should seek professional help… Hehehhe… )

Naturally there’s a Trailer, so prepare yourselves Gentle Visitors for the mind blasting cosmic horror that is… “Dagon”…

Wooo!! Well.. the month has flown by but before all the lovely mermaids sing their final siren songs and swim back into the murky depths of the deep green sea, we’ve still time for one last Review. So… now it’s time for perhaps the weirdest film of all in our “Frolicking Under The Sea: Mermaid Fantasy Film Festival – August 2016”, the 2015 Polish film fantasy “Córki Dancingu” aka “The Lure”. Get ready Gentle Visitors… I’m thinking this is probably the only Disco musical communist-period piece Horror Fantasy romance film about singing and dancing man-eating mermaid strippers ever made. Yep. Couldn’t pass this one up, not on your lives…

Our synopsis goes like this: “Two teenage Mermaid sisters – Silver and Gold – find themselves in the middle of the world of Warsaw dance parties of the ‘80s, vibrant with music, glittering with neon lights and sparkling sequins. They join the musicians of the “Figs and Dates” club-band and overnight become the sensation of the capital’s nightlife. Immersed in love and budding passions they forget their true nature for a while. But one single broken heart is enough for the situation to slip out of control and lead everyone towards tragedy…”

This is one of those crazy lil’ films that comes along once in a while and makes even this wee Catgirl shake her head and go “WTF…?”. One look at some of the early reviews and I knew I just had to get my Magical Catgirl Powers to working on finding a copy for myself. One quick internet shopping trip to Poland and I managed that very thing… but was all my eager curiosity worth the effort? One way to know for sure… Yep that’s your clue!! Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log…. you know you all wanna hear all about this goofy film.

Yep. Gotta admit… Haven’t seen a whole lot of Polish films… so this was virgin territory for me trying to locate this particular DVD. Thank goodness for Amazon and eBay… if it’s out there… somewhere… somebody will be willing to sell you a copy at one of those two marketplaces. So it was with this one, and earlier this month I finally located a decent seller in Poland itself who could get me a DVD in time for this Festival.

Our film begins one dark evening as the members of a disco pop band, “Figs and Dates”, are having a drunken party at the seashore and attract the attention of two mermaid sisters, Srebrna  aka “Silver” and Zwota  aka “Golden” (played by Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska respectively). Initially our duo of carnivorous sirens want nothing more than to lure the male members of the group, Mietek (played by Jakub Gierszal) and Perkusista (played by Andrzej Konopka) into their clutches for a quick midnight snack. Only a piercing last minute scream from lead chanteuse Krysia (played by Kinga Preis) saves them…Yep… these two pretty girls are basically inhuman man-eating monsters at heart… so exactly how our boys go from appetizers to band mates would be pretty interesting, right? Unfortunately our movie skips right over that bothersome “detail” and rolls the opening credits before moving right into a glitzy disco performance by Krysia doing her rendition of Donna Summer’s hit “I Feel Love” back at the Warsaw nightclub and strip joint they all work at. That’s a shame too… it’s a neat scene I would have loved to see played out… our cannibal mermaids being sweet talked into joining the band and becoming backup singers and strippers rather than just devouring our drunken protagonists…. but that’s pretty much how our movie likes to roll… lots of pretty shiny scenes and eye candy and a celebration of 1980’s Warsaw’s club scene and very little in the way of meaningful character development. A shame really… as for the most part our film has about the craziest plot premise I’ve seen in a whole long while.

Basically the story is a loose… and I do mean very loose… version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” adapted to a modern disco musical. In it we get the story of our two mermaid sisters as they experience life playing as “human women” in the Mortal World. Well… not exactly human women… There’s the small quirk regarding their shape-shifting powers, that allows them to lose their mertails… that are more eel-like than fish-like… and get proper women’s legs. Like in 1984’s “Splash”, the two can get legs on dry land, but regain their mermaid tails when they get wet. As Mermaids, they have fishy smelling genitals waaaaay down on their tails, however… in a weird quirk, they are completely without belly buttons or… errr… ummm… “Lady bits”… as girls. Yep. Blank as a canvas. That’s gonna make romance a problem…

However that doesn’t seem to faze the manager of the strip club at all, who figures that the novelty of having two sexy mermaid sirens moonlighting as backup singers and strippers ought to be a sensational hit with his patrons. Turns out he’s right…. Silver and Golden are just happy to use the opportunity to explore the experiences and sensations that the Mortal world can offer them while they plan their eventual journey to swim to America. Funny how it turns out that both Mermaids and communist Poles both seem to regard the USA as the “Promised Land”in the 1980’s…

We get some really neat sequences here, like a crazy disco dance number that spontaneously erupts as our beauties are taken shopping for the first time at a department store. It’s colorful, wild and feels like the sort of thing you’d expect in a Hindi film. Problem is… the movie doesn’t sustain that vibe, seesawing back and forth between parody and drama in an uneven fashion the deeper we get into the story.

Basically our two mermaids are on different paths. Sweet blond Silver is playing the “Ariel” of our story, becoming smitten by Mietek and setting herself up for eventual misery as she tries in vain to become human enough for him to love. Two problems here. First, Mietek is pretty much a feckless and faithless lothario… He’s intrigued by the idea of being Silver’s lover, but also openly repulsed by her and ultimately not worthy of her feelings. True… he does tell Silver she’ll never be anything more than a “fish” to him, but he still seduces her anyways, even after she makes sacrifices for him. The other problem? Well… apparently there is the magical rule that dictates that if a mermaid ever falls in love with a human and he marries another, then she is doomed to dissolve away into seafoam on the sunrise of the day after his wedding. See where this is heading?

Golden on the other hand. She’s much more pragmatic. She’s a predator plain and simple and just out to sample whatever pleasures the human world has to offer. Sure she’s take a human lover… but it’s just as likely to end in bloody murder as not. In fact, she seems to take great pleasure from the hunt for such victims. She knows her sister is headed for trouble, but really doesn’t do much to prevent the tragedy that’s coming.

So… while Golden is having crazy interspecies lesbian encounters with lady monster hunters and hanging with fellow sea monster guy Tryton (played by Marcin Kowalczyk) and his heavy metal band, Silver becomes desperate enough to find a black market surgeon willing to saw off her mermaid tail and transplant it to a willing “donor” to get the legs (and “Lady Bits”) she thinks she needs to win Mietek’s heart. This bit of the film had me scratching my head in as much as it suggests that detailed knowledge of mermaids is pretty common, although the beginning of the film makes it seem like they are regarded as mere myths by most people. It’s a pretty schizophrenic way to tell a story, that’s for sure….

Tryton… the other mer creature in our film… is a perfect example of what I mean. He also is living here in Warsaw, and runs into our two sisters about midway through the film, but there’s no real explanation of even why he’s there, what the heck he is, and he seems pretty much superfluous to the plot entirely. Mostly he’s just some “bad boy” character for Golden to hang around with while she does her whole hedonistic thing. But then, “Córki Dancingu” is loaded with such dead end plot threads.

The final part of our story is depressing. Poor Silver finds she also has lost her siren voice along with her tail, and her terrible surgery has left her barely able to walk, so she loses her celebrity as both singer and exotic dancer. Mietek still finds her gross and repulsive, dropping her for another “real” woman at almost the first chance he can get. Golden refuses to work without her… and knows it’s only a matter of time before Mietek betrays her sister’s love dooming her. There is a mystical “out” for Silver… all she has to do is eat Mietek’s heart and she’ll return to normal, but even in the face of losing him to some slutty bimbo singer from another band, she can’t bring herself to hate him enough to save herself.

Naturally she dies tragically in Mietek’s arms, dissolving away to foam right before his eyes the morning after he marries that other woman. Golden loses it… assaults Mietek moments later and tears out his worthless throat before returning with her sorrows to the sea from whence they originally came. And that’s about it.

Hmmmm? This one is an odd bird alright. I wanted to like it a whole lot… and apparently it has won buttloads of awards at film festivals both in Europe as well as North America… but, at least as far a Carolyn and I were concerned, it’s ultimately a flawed film that raises more confused questions than it answers. It’s an uneven mix of genres… wanting at first glance to be a musical, but never going all out to be one. It kinda wants to be a fantasy romance with horror elements, but the romantic story is a depressing and tepid one at best. With it’s risqué nudity and titillating hints at mermaid sex, it sort of wants to be a “sexploitation” picture… but lacks the gusto to go all the way. In short… without a clear direction to go, the film ends up feeling as stitched together as our poor heroine Silver.

Now there are some good parts to this one. Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska certainly give us convincing mermaid Lolitas out for oodles of blood and sexy fun in the same vien as any of the supernatural heroines in an old Jean Rollin horror film. They both look really neat with their long eel-tails and I liked what little folklore about the sirens the story did employ, especially the crazy “whale sign” language that let them gossip together about the most wicked of notions without the pesky humans ever catching on. Fun, fun, fun. Had these two characters had a more coherent story to inhabit, I’m thinking this one would have been as fun to watch as the little Hungarian film “Liza, a Rókatündér”, which I absolutely loved.

But as it is, I can only give this one a measly 3 “Meows” out of 5. It just didn’t have “the magic” for me… as much as I had hoped it would. The DVD was nice though… Region 2 PAL formatted with excellent accurate separate English subtitles. I guess my only quibble is the price, which ended up being right around 30$ US with shipping and whatnot… awfully expensive for a film I didn’t end up loving to pieces. I don’t regret picking up a copy… but at that price I like to get more satisfaction from a film than I ultimately got. Mind you, your experience might be different…. after all, I have to temper my review with the knowledge that I’m probably not the originally intended audience for it.

So, I guess that wraps up our Review festival for this month…. but hopefully I’ll stay inspired and get back soon with some more postings for you all, my Gentle Visitors, and until then “Meow, meow, for now!!”

We’ve got a trailer, but trust me, it doesn’t even come close to describing this freaky story at all… for that you’d have to watch the movie for yourselves.

Yep… I know… it’s been a loooooong dry month here at the ol’ Litterbox. But… I’ve roused my lazy butt into action and so we finally have another Review, and this time out it’s an honest-to-goodness Asian ghost story… 2014’s Vietnamese film, “Đoạt Hồn” or as it’s known around these parts, “Hollow”. Yep. Been a while since we saw one of these.

It’s synopsis reads as follows: “Chi, a rebellious 18 year old girl, returns to her home town on the day her rich stepfather, Huy, makes a generous donation to a village temple. At the celebration, her sister, Ai, drowns in a nearby river. When Ai’s uncle Thuc, who is a policeman, travels to a village morgue to identify Ai’s dead body, the girl sits up, very much alive. Thuc brings Ai home to her family, but he doesn’t tell them about her death. Everything seems to be happy until Ai shows signs of spiritual possession. A shaman is brought in to perform an exorcism, but she is unsuccessful, claiming, “Your daughter is not possessed by a dead spirit, but by a lost soul of a living person”. To investigate the source of her sister’s possession, Chi journeys to the village where Ai was found. What she discovers is a community victimized by human trafficking and child prostitution. There is another little girl, whose tragedy is tied to Ai’s death by a secret, and a vengeful spirit that follows Chi home, and destroys her entire family, as dark secrets unravel and evil unleashes its true visage.”

So, if a story of ghostly possession, Vietnamese style, intrigues you, then all you have to do is “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitors and let your favorite movie watching Catgirl Princess give you all the details worth knowing…

I don’t get to watch a whole lot of Vietnamese films. Strange given that I pretty much watch every scary movie to come out of Asia that I can lay me little paws on, Problem is Vietnam isn’t exactly a huge DVD producing country… and for some goofy reason, I never seem to find other versions of their stuff readily available from the Hong Kong, Taiwanese, or Malaysian markets. Much of the reason for that I suppose is the rather primitive state of movie production in that nation compared to neighboring countries. Still… once in a while one of their films manages to crack the festival circuit and get enough good publicity to get noticed. Such was the way of it with this one.

It gets going with a scene on a bridge… and a beaten bloody young woman at the end of her rope, ready to end her misery with one lonely plunge into the river to end it all. Who is she? Don’t worry… we’ll find out soon enough.

Our real heroine is actually another young woman Chi (played by Nguyễn Hồng Ân) as she arrives at her home village to attend a ceremony at the local temple where her wealthy step-father is being honored for a gift he’s made to the temple. She’s a rebellious young girl with a real chip on her shoulder and more than a little dislike for her step-father Huy (played by Trần Bảo Sơn) … who sends out creepy pervy vibes every time pretty Chi is around him. It’s the main reason she’s off at boarding school… at least until she gets dismissed for her behavioral issues. At home, she’s seen more as an embarrassment to her mother Diep (played by Nguyễn Ngọc Hiệp) and the only one who seems to love her for herself is her adorable younger half-sister Ai (played by Thanh Mỹ). Even that comes with trouble… as cute little Ai is absolutely doted on by her father and mother… pushing Chi further from her family as the years go by. There’s also something else wrong… something nagging at Chi and worrying her to distraction. We wont find out exactly what that is right away… but trust Neko when I tell you it’s pretty darn important.

Anyways… Chi gets saddled with babysitting her little sister… too fidgety to stay still for the solemn ceremonies on hand, and in a moment of annoyed distraction loses track of her. Bad, bad, bad… as it gives some evil spirit in the nearby river the chance to seize little Ai and drag her screaming into the river to drown. There’s a desperate search, of course, but to no avail… and naturally Chi gets the blame for letting Ai slip from her sight.

A week passes… and then Chi’s uncle Thức, a police inspector, (played by Jayvee Mai) is summoned to a local morgue to identify her body, recently pulled from the river. She’s been pronounced dead… and most certainly looks pretty darn deceased… But… in a freaky twist, miraculously it seems little Ai isn’t dead after all.. Or is she?…

Well… apparently you don’t let a little thing like a missing week or so submerged in a river stand between you and the return of a beloved family member, so without so much as a confused look from the morgue attendant, Thức is allowed to take her home to her gratefully relieved family.

This of course is where our film pretty much abandoned all normality and heads deep into the land of shadows. It’s amazing to me how quickly everybody figures out some… thing… has a hold of little Ai and how perfectly normal it is to just get a shaman to jump right in and start trying to fix things. There’s lots of neat local religious and magical practices on hand as they try to exorcise Ai. Problem is… they just understand exactly what’s going on… and by the time they finally do unearth the nasty stuff lurking behind it all Chi and everybody are in for some pretty nasty surprises. Although I wont spoil things for you by giving up the goodies, plot-wise, let’s just say that Chi’s instinctual dislike of her stepfather is most definitely deserved…

Ultimately our story hangs on a very nifty notion in Vietnamese belief that you can be haunted not only by the dead, but by the living as well… but once we get into it, revenge is revenge. Regardless of who needs it. Trust me… the victims in this one really do need it too. Badly. There’s some truly sick stuff going on involving human trafficking, forced sex slavery, and child abuse behind it all.

Surprisingly, all this is told in a very slick, very well done film. It’s basically the same sort of “revenge melodrama” that forms the basis of most Asian horror, but I wasn’t expecting to find such a well made film coming from Vietnam featuring it. With few exceptions, most of Vietnamese film output these days is fairly low budget efforts aimed at a very unsophisticated local audience looking for the weird mix of lowbrow potty humor and paper thin plots featuring cheap effects and little or no cinematography or acting that please them on a basic level.  “Đoạt Hồn” is a whole other critter… and at least as far as this wee lady is concerned, easily equals the level of mid-level Thai horror efforts, even exceeding them at times.

Seriously. It’s that good. Definitely worth a look if Asian horror is your thing. I give this one a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5. Now… unfortunately actually seeing it might be a challenge for you all, Gentle Visitors. I’ve been looking about for a DVD… any DVD… subtitles or not. To no avail. So how did yours truly get her chance to watch it? Well… let’s just say Youtube has some surprising stuff that pops up on it once in a while… at least until the “powers that be” notice anyways… English subtitles and all. (And no…. I won’t be linking it here directly. You’ll have to just go looking for it yourselves… so there… )

But… I’m really serious about wanting a DVD of this one. Somebody take notice… and get your butts busy producing one. I’d buy one… and so would all the other Asian horror nuts out there like a certain goofy lil’ Catgirl. Otherwise, this is another little gem that will languish in it’s country of origin and be quickly forgotten by anybody outside of there. There are too many nifty films that this happen to without letting “Đoạt Hồn” become one of them.

Yep, there’s a Trailer alright… and here it goes!

Well… the Christmas Holiday has come and gone but I’ve still a wee bit of free time this week so I thought I might end our month long “dry spell” here at the ol’ Litterbox with a fresh new Review before 2016 disappears into the rear view mirror. This time out? How about an Iranian/Jordanian Ghost story? Yep… betcha’ you haven’t seen too darn many of those, have you o’ Gentle Visitors?

Our synopsis goes like this: “After Shideh’s building is hit by a missile during the Iran-Iraq War, a superstitious neighbor suggests that the missile was cursed and might be carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits. She becomes convinced a supernatural force within the building is attempting to possess her daughter Dorsa, and she has no choice but to confront these forces if she is to save her daughter and herself.”

Yep… it looks like those evil jinn are up to no good again. Sneakin’ about… corrupting souls… working their wicked schemes and generally wreaking havoc. Luckily a certain lil’ Catgirl is all up to speed on those critters thanks to all those Turkish horror goodies I’ve watched. So… I guess the real question is… are they scarier in Iran? Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

So this one is due out on DVD next month, but having heard all about it earlier on this year I couldn’t wait for that. not when I’m finally getting comfy with the whole “streaming video on demand” thingee. Yep foreign films are getting even more easily available… with decent English subtitles no less… these days.

This one is set in 1980’s Tehran during the “War of the Cities” where our heroine Shideh (played by Narges Rashidi)  is trying to make her life amid the misogynistic nightmare that is post-revolutionary Iran under constant threat of missile attack from Iraq. She’s a married woman with a husband Iraj (played by Bobby Naderi) and daughter Dorsa (played by Avin Manshadi), but before the Revolution she was a medical student training to become a doctor. Now that it’s over and her daughter is old enough, she’s ready to resume her studies and get her career back on track. Ummmm…. yeah… like that’s gonna happen. Naturally the new regime expects women to get with the new program and be good little domestics for their husbands. She’s given some bullshit story about a problem because of her pre-revolution involvement with student leftist groups but it’s pretty obvious that women’s rights have basically been reset to the stone age. She’s told to give up her dreams and go home… or else.

Grrrrrr!!! That got this wee lady’s hackles up. Her husband is no real help either. He’s already a doctor and he’s a lot more concerned about being called for military conscription and assigned to a frontline area of heavy fighting. He pays lip service to Shideh problems, but you get the feeling he’d rather she just shut up and stop making trouble. Or go wait out the missile attacks on Tehran by living with his mother and his family, despite knowing the friction between his religiously traditional family and independently minded wife.

So Shideh and little Dorsa stay at the apartment despite the danger, until eventually a missile strikes their building  and kills the one of the neighbors’ upstairs, leaving an omnious crack in their living room ceiling. Now is when the creepy stuff starts….

You see… something arrived along with this missile. Something evil. It targets little Dorsa… stealing her doll and working to set her against her increasingly paranoid mother and trying to split them apart.

The wife of the building’s owner, Mrs Ebrahimi,  becomes convinced it’s all the work of a Jinn, somehow brought from the sky to target Dorsa and ultimately steal her away forever. This middle part of our film is perhaps it’s best, as you begin to wonder just how real the supernatural threat might be. You get a real sense of Shideh’s isolation… how much she really isn’t a part of the “New” Iran, and how she feels she can depend upon no-one for help. Especially after one of the Jinn’s attacks drives her screaming from her home along with Dorsa in the middle of the night, only to get arrested by a night patrol of the thuggish Revolutionary Guard who threaten her for daring to be out after curfew without her headscarf. Yeah… brilliant machinegun-armed idiots who somehow figure the screaming woman running for her life at midnight needs nasty threats and a stern religious doctrine lesson rather than any sort of actual aid. Sure sounds like the sort of guys I’d want protecting me… not. Her husband? Absent Iraj is no help at all, calling him reveals he’s mostly concerned that Shideh’s independent attitude is more likely to create problems for him and his career rather than he is in supporting her in any meaningful way. His advice? Just suck it up and go stay with the mother-in-law who hates her and would probably be happy to turn her over to the “Morality Police” the first chance she got to steal away little Dorsa. Grrrrr, grrrr, grrrrr!!! With that sort of stuff going on, it’s no wonder poor Shideh feels lost and helpless. The questions are: Is the depression and stress of it all breaking her spirit? Is she slowly losing her mind? Or can it be that the menace is actually real?

Oh…. its real alright. The mysterious burqa shrouded figure continues to terrorize our heroine and with her fellow neighbors all leaving one by one to escape the missile threat, it’ll ultimately take everything Shideh has to save herself and Dorsa and somehow escape this nightmare alive once they are alone in the lonely apartment building. It uses all the usual ghostly tricks to menace them, moving objects, possessing Dorsa or even shapeshifting into her image to trick and harass Shideh. It’s a nasty piece of work alright.

All this turns out to be a pretty good little suspense film and works extremely well for the most part. The acting is good all round particularly Narges Rashidi who has to carry the bulk of the film as our frazzled heroine torn between wanting to be a good wife and mother and yet wanting her dreams for herself. “Under the Shadow” shows just how razor edged a line that must have been to walk for a woman in such a repressive time and place. It’s a bit slow to get going, using its first hour or so to set that mood, but once it does, the creepy stuff more than makes up for the wait.

Carolyn and I both liked it, even if the misogynistic atmosphere of its setting made me squirm a bit. That was intentional of course and it’s used to effect here to build suspense, increasing our heroine’s isolation and paranoia, which it most certainly does. Written and directed by Iranian-born Babak Anvari, it’s not exactly an Iranian film, being produced by a British film company Wigwam Films as an international co-production between Qatar, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. It is the first Persian language film this wee lady has ever seen though, and the little details seem authentic enough to let me feel comfortable calling it an Iranian film. (Even if I’m pretty certain the story as depicted wouldn’t be well received by the powers-that-be in present day Iran.)

I rate this one a firm 4 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a well done story, that while borrowing heavily from earlier genre efforts, manages to cloth them in what seems to be a very authentic Iranian take on the whole Ghost/ Haunting genre of horror films. So much so that I’ll definitely grab a copy of the DVD for my collection once it comes out on Region 1 this January. However, if you like a certain nutty Catgirl also just can’t wait, it’s available from most streaming services for a more than reasonable price. Give it a try!

Yep… naturally there’s a nifty Trailer to watch and here it goes!