Archive for March, 2010
Mmmmm….. The days are certainly getting warm again as April creeps up upon us. Daylight savings time has gone into effect and my annual bout of Seasonal Insomnia now has me prowling about the apartment late at night, full of restless energy…….
I know…. it’s been a while since your Favorite Catgirl let you all in on what she’s been up to, but February (and then March too…) just seemed to whiz right by me. I’ve a few days off from work, so I figured it was time to do another “Diary” update just to sate your insatiable curiosity regarding all things “Nekolishous”.
(I just know all you gentle visitors have been anxiously awaiting another helping of my latest personal tidbits….. So who am I to keep you in the dark? Hehehehe!!)
Have I been busy at work since last time out? Is there anything new and exciting to report? So……. has Neko been a good lil’ kitten or a naughty lil’ vixen these last couple of months? Hmmmm?
Guess there’s really only one thing for you to do if not knowing has kept you awake nights too…. and you all know by now that’s to “Read On!!” and find out.
Ooooh! This time out, it’s off to exotic Malaysia for your Favorite Catgirl and a tale of envy, evil, and the wicked curse of Black Sorcery that is “Santau”.
It’s been a while since I got anything from Malaysia…. most of my horror goodies from that part of the world come out of Indonesia, but every now and again the Malays surprise me with something homegrown in the way of creepy movies.
“Chermin” remains one of my favorites, and “Congkak” wasn’t too bad at all, so will “Santau” deliver the scares for me as well? The Trailer certainly looked promising…. enough that when I finally sniffed out a copy of this one and it’s “oh so nice” English subtitles, it wasn’t too hard to twist my lil’ arm into ordering it up for my very own.
Our synopsis for it reads like this: “Halim (Esma Daniel) and Nina (Putri Mardiana) live together with their daughter Tuti (Farisha Fatin) in a modern Malay village. Halim is successful in his career and leads a harmonious life with his family. Their neighbor is also a married couple; Usin (Riezman Khuzaimi) and Ana (Lis Dawati), while the other neighbor’s home is empty and waiting for new tenants to move in.
After a new neighbor moves in, Halim’s family begin to experience strange and horror incidents inside their home. Tuti starts to witness various mysterious events while Nina often experiences strange incidents that have never happened before. The strangest part is it all happens when Halim is away and he only comes home late at night.
Nina begins to gradually change from a good and hardworking wife to a lazy and bad-tempered wife. Each day there are things that happen that can wreck the family relationships. As a successful person, Halim does not believe of paranormal stories when Tuti complains about it.
One day Nina begins experiencing abdominal pain and Halim brings her to clinic for medical checkup. The doctor confirms gastric existence inside Nina’s stomach. However Tuti suspects his mother has been possessed by spirits.
One night, Halim returns home after Tuti informs him that Nina has been possessed and keep screaming at home. Halim finally brings Nina to see a shaman. The shaman confirms Nina has been possessed due to jealousy of Halim’s successful career and having a happy family.
Halim feels surprised by this revelation. How can Halim handle his family problem? Who is actually the mastermind behind this problem?”
Well….. it most certainly sounds like we might just have been down this story plot a few times before. A bad thing? Hmmmmm? The jury is still out on that one, and surely the only way to know for certain is to “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitor and find out!
This time out your Favorite Catgirl Movie Reviewer is off to Korea for another slice of atmospheric Asian flavored horror, “Yoga”. Creepy goings on in an evil ashram, where the quest for physical perfection takes a terrible, terrible wrong turn are the theme of the day. Seems we’re in for another look at the problems of Asian women and their self-image issues with the customary horror twist that the Koreans love to add.
The synopsis goes like this: “Successful at her job until she was out shined by a younger, prettier co-worker, a confident and perfectionist career woman, Hyo-jung, visits a strange yoga institute run by a mysterious ex-actress at the advice of a radically transformed school friend. There, Hyo-jung meets several other women like herself, a former popular singer who faded away into obscurity, a religious fanatic, a girl battling weight issues, and a woman beset by numerous personal misfortunes including a divorce and a failed plastic surgery procedure. All of them have something in common: a belief that somehow beauty will help them overcome the difficulties they face. At the beginning of the intensive training course, a young yoga master, Nani explains to Hyo-jung and the others that only the one person who masters the course most successfully can actually win the secret of ultimate and immortal beauty. There are five unusual rules for them to follow during the one week course:
#1. Never eat without permission.
#2. Never take showers within an hour before or after the class.
#3. Never look at themselves in a mirror.
#4. Never leave the school building.
#5. Never try to call or contact anyone until finishing the course.
As the training goes on, they soon discover that the quest for beauty, has a terrible price.Each of the girls get tempted to break those rules caused by each woman’s secret hidden craving and Hyo-jung starts to sense there is something evil about this institute and the actress who doesn’t get old…”
Neko wonders what exactly there is in the Asian psyche that makes such horror films so prevalent of late. But… no matter. I just plain like watching them as I squirm uncomfortably on the couch. Naturally, you all want to know what this one is exactly all about, so let’s get to it….
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…..
It’s been a while since I’ve seen one, but here we are again with another lil’ horror goodie from the Philippines, “Tarot”. Fortune telling…. ghosts…. weird doomsday cults… evil curses… and romance, sigh. Yep, certainly sounds like a “Nekolishous” film alright.
Our Synopsis? “As a young child Cara has the habit of observing her grandmother, Lola Auring (Gloria Romero) at work. She is a tarot reader by profession, and her granddaughter slowly develops her talent and accurately predicted the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and the death of two of her family members; her father and grandmother. Cara’s psychic ability seems to bring bad luck to her family rather than good luck.
Concerned with her natural ability to predict future events, Cara’s mother (Susan Africa) forbids her to read tarot cards, and the cards are laid to rest with her grandmother inside the coffin. Many years later the adult Cara (Marian Rivera) has to reopen her grandmother’s coffin to seek the tarot cards’ help to locate her missing fiancé, Miguel (Dennis Trillo) when both were separated while hiking in the forest.
She eventually finds him, but mysterious deaths start to affect people around her. Cara soon learns that it was related to the curse on her grandmother during her youth days, where she was part of a cult that worshiped tarot cards. Other members committed suicide and Auring decided not to join them, and the curse spreads to his family members including Cara herself. Now Cara must find a way to stop this curse before more people becomes the victim…”
Mmmmmm. I’ve a really good feelin’ about this one, but you know as much as I do that sometimes your Favorite Catgirl gets her hopes up too quickly for these. Still…. can’t hurt to take a peek, right? Let’s all snuggle down and I’ll tell you all how this one stacked up. By all means, gentle visitor, “Read On”!!
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!!