Well... it's finally out! "Bitch Slap" is here at last.... Your Favorite Catgirl Princess has been awaiting this one for such a looonnng time I had begun to think it would never reach DVD. Sometimes that's a bad thing.... usually telling one that a film was just sooooo darn bad it would never have made back it's money in a Theatrical release. Then there a few of those fun lil' gems that have such a niche audience that Direct-to-DVD is just the way to go. Hopefully this is such a film....

Synopsis? Do we really need one? No, not really, but here it goes... "Three sexy "Bad Girls" travel to a remote desert hideaway to steal $200 million in diamonds from a ruthless underworld kingpin and things quickly spiral out of their control. Allegiances get switched, truths get revealed, criminals are unmasked and nothing (or nobody) is quite what it seems as the fate of the world is precariously balanced upon the fates of this trio of sexy femme fatales."

Made by two of the people involved with the wacky and super silly "Hercules" and "Xena, Warrior Princess" TV shows (as well as many of the same cast and crew), this one looked to be a fun little slice of naughty fun just the way Neko likes them. Not only that.... but it let me tell my sweet Carolyn that I finally had an honest to goodness English dialog movie for us to watch together.... (However, I might just have neglected to tell her the title..... Thank goodness she loves me... Hehehehe!!)

I'm expecting some gratuitous violence... some over-the-top bad girl combat... crazy villains that seriously need to be slapped, and all the exploitation goodies that can be crammed into a single movie. Will I get my wish?

Guess we'll all have to "Read On" to find out.....

Another nostalgia filled trip back to the days of your Favorite Catgirl's misspent youth and the Saturday morning movies that warped my lil' mind, gives us a look this time out at 1953's utterly "craptastic" "Robot Monster".

Even if you haven't seen this one you probably know it.... it's that one with an alien gorilla/ robot wearing a space helmet with TV rabbit ears on top. Yep... that silly alien!!

Our synopsis? Well this one goes sorta like this: "While on an afternoon picnic excursion with his mother and two sisters, a young boy named Johnny meets a pair of archeologists who are recording the primitive paintings a nearby cave.

After having a rather nasty fall, he is knocked unconscious and has a weird dream in which the Earth has been totally conquered and most of humanity killed by a freaky alien "gorilla-bot" called the Ro-Man, using the deadly "calcinator death ray". Apparently he and his family and the two scientists are the only survivors thanks to a secret inoculation serum. They try to survive and avoid capture and horrible death at the hands of Ro-Man, who, despite his alien origins, falls for Johnny's sexy scientist sister Alice. Will humanity somehow defeat the unfathomably unstoppable Ro-man in his clumsy monkey suit and space helmet, or are we all.... doomed?"

Hehehe!! This one completely redefines the idea of low budget film making and the very idea that the ludicrous alien Ro-man is still so well known while many other characters, better imagined and better realized, have faded from memory, speaks volumes about it's charm. Little Miyuki was never fooled by Ro-man.... but boy, did she ever eat this one up as a wee impressionable girl. Certainly it's a guilty pleasure for many of you gentle visitors as well.... so let's all get nostalgic together and take another look at this unabashedly "craptacular" 50's classic!!

Remember that one time when you had to make a gut-wrenching decision? Sure you do. How you carefully thought of the possibilities and their countless consequences? Did you go through all the possible scenarios in your head? If so, then feel free to welcome Mr. Nobody, the brand new film by Jaco van Dormael.

If you've ever felt like everyone else in the world is more prolific than you, then Jaco is also there to make you feel better: after his 1991 debut film Toto le Héros, van Dormael made Le Huitième Jour in 1996 and... erm no, that's it. Yes, van Dormael spent thirteen years coming up with a new film, giving the expression "the difficult third release" a completely new meaning. Mind you, he wasn't slacking, he just carefully crafted all the pieces of what would ultimately become Mr. Nobody. It almost makes you scared to ask: so, any good?

Here's an odd one this time out.... 1977's Japanese fantasy film, "House". I've been aware of it for over a decade or so, but it's one of those quirky lil' films that seemed stubbornly destined to never ever get subtitles or be shown anywhere near my part of the world. Thank goodness that's now at an end!! UK DVD distributor Eureka has released this one in a new Region 2 NTSC collector's edition as pert of their "Masters of Cinema" collection. Naturally I wasted no time in snapping up a copy.....

Our synopsis goes like this: "A teenage girl named Angel discovers that her widowed father has recently begun dating again. Worse, Angel's father has canceled the yearly summer vacation that he and Angel take every year together in order to stay near Ryoko, his new girlfriend, whom he intends on marrying soon. Furious at this situation, Angel invites her friends to come with her to her visit her long lost aunt at her remote country home.

Arriving, they discover Angel's aunt seems to be sick and wheelchair bound, and they all agree to help fill their time fixing up her run down estate located in the woods. However, unknown to anyone, the aunt is, in reality, a vampiric witch who feeds off the flesh of young virgin girls to sustain her youth and strength. Possessing her niece, the aunt murders the girls one by one with help from her bewitched house. In the end, the aunt takes over Angel's body so she can continue waiting for her long lost fiancee, who went M.I.A. during World War II, to finally return to her. Will any of them survive the strange horrors and escape alive?"

Wow.... now this one certainly sounds like Neko's sort of film. I've always loved the creepy weirdness of 70's Japanese ghost stories.... so I'm hoping for something along the lines of "Mansion of the Ghost Cat" or "Kuroneko". I've heard however that this one is.... well... a bit stranger than the Japanese films I'm used to. Will it live up to it's reputation and still turn out to captivate and entertain me? Guess there's only one way to find out....

Psssst!! That's your cue..... it's time to "Read On", o' Gentle Visitors!!

Math lovers all over the world will be able to confirm that after part one often a second part will follow. But rarely does this happen with the speed of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy Millennium. Having just waved the first part (Men who hate women) goodbye last autumn, we barely got time to overcome our New Year’s hangover: the second part, The girl who plays with fire, was released in January 2010. Try and see it in a hurry, unless you want to see the sequels back to back… yes, the third instalment of the trilogy will arrive in European theatres in March.

The director of Flickan som lekte med elden, the original Swedish title of the film, found himself in a position you won’t envy him for. Not only did Daniel Alfredson have to justice to some of the most popular books (me thinks it’ll be easier to name the countries where you won’t find a Larsson book in the Top 10), he also had to follow in the footsteps of Niels Arden Oplev, whose Men who hate women was so good it raised the bar for European thrillers. Rather him than us, don’t you agree?