Well, actually I’ve got “Mutants”, on the UK Region 2 DVD release of the French horror goodie just chock full of virus infested homicidal cannibal zombies… Errrrr, I mean mutants… I think. Whatever…. they look like zombies… they eat people just like zombies…. so if it quacks like a duck then, well… you know the rest.

Our synopsis goes like this: “In a world devastated by a pandemic virus that horribly transmutes human beings into primitive and bloodthirsty creatures, the last hope for survivors is the military station ‘Noe’ where scientists are researching the cure. Marco (Francis Renaud) and Sonia (Hélène De Fougerolles) set off to find the secret base to escape from the ‘mutants’. When they are attacked, Marco becomes contaminated and little by little begins to undergo the same changes as the other creatures. Sonia, pregnant with their first child, must somehow fight off the hordes and force herself to fight the man she once loved.”

Hmmmm? Sounds like a winner… but do the French know what to do with zombies? I certainly hope so, especially given the immanent arrival of another French zombie film “Le Horde”…. and you know I’m just gonna have to get that one too. (I’m just such a hopeless lil’ zombie loving doofus!!!)

You Gentle Visitors can, of course, can find out all the grisly details for yourselfs by just taking Neko’s subtle hint and continuing to “Read On!”….

After our last little foray into the bleak landscape of “Zombie Apocalypse” that overwhelmed the exotic faraway land of Turkey, my sweet Carolyn thought she was safe from another evening of fresh munching zombies for a while. (Tsk! Tsk!! What a foolish, foolish notion!!) At least she did until my latest package from Amazon.UK arrived with all the newest UK Region 2 releases, including this particular French horror goodie. Luckily… the idea of cuddling up with me for an evening on the couch (and the possibility of maybe just a wee bit of sweet canoodling) was just far toooo tempting for her to resist… zombies or not. So how did it go? Well…. the cuddling was certainly fun….. Oh, yes!! And the zombies… errr.. ahhh…. mutants… were pretty good too! Hehehehe!!

This one wastes no time getting right to things, story wise…. we start out with a confused grisly attack by the mutants on some poor group of survivors… as a badly injured woman makes her staggering getaway while the beasties chow down on her less fortunate companions. After a stumbling chase through the forest, she breaks out onto a deserted highway….. just in time to be splattered into gooey cherry jello all over the front of a speeding ambulance! Ouch!!

This ambulance, with EMT’s Sonia and Marco on board is fleeing some earlier confrontation with a pack of these nasty critters… along with two heavily armed police SWAT types, one of whom Sonia feverishly works on in the back while his nervous female partner menacingly threatens the paramedics with her sub-machine gun. Turns out her partners all covered with bites…. so it’s stop the ambulance time for our heroes while she puts several bullets in his head….. You get the idea she’d like to do the same to our blood covered (and probably contaminated) medics…. but she obviously needs them for now and there will be plenty of time for that sort of nastiness later. First she needs them to get her safely out of the Contaminated Zone and safely to the secret Military base at “Noe”….

Eventually, our group runs low on gas… necessitating a stop at a nearly destroyed station somewhere up in the mountains and an unfortunate encounter with a contaminated traumatized survivor leaves Marco wounded. Bitten by the survivor and shot by the SWAT officer, he’s in pretty sad shape once Sonia deals with their trigger happy cop….. permanently. Dragging him to the ambulance, the sound of an approaching pack of mutants convinces her it’s time to split… gas or no gas. Luckily for her…. she runs across a deserted complex waaaay up in the mountains before the ambulance conks out.

Just what this place is, we never learn…. it looks sort of like a big hospital or sanitarium…. with all these labyrinthine corridors, it’s own cafeteria, power generator, and even some sort of clinic set up. With Marco patched up as best she can, she radios the Military base for evacuation… lying to them about the two of them being uncontaminated… but getting no answer, despite the helicopters she hears flying back and forth overhead. Much of the rest of our film takes place here… first as Sonia grapples with the obvious viral changes occurring in the man she loves…. and then her struggles against the gang of motley raiders that show up having heard her distress call on their own radio. Luckily for her… by then, unable to kill him, Sonia has locked Marco away unknown to these vicious raiders.

These guys are your typical post apocalyptic thugs… scavengers, murderers, and thieves, and they want everything Sonia has… especially the keys to the ambulance. Why their leader Frank doesn’t just rape and kill her right away was surprising to me and Carolyn…. he certainly had that nasty vibe going on… but instead he and the others content themselves with using the sprawling complex as shelter while Sonia does her medic thing on one of their wounded men.

Naturally it isn’t long before they find out Sonia is naturally immune to the virus…. having been bitten weeks before, yet showing no ill effects. Also no surprise is the inevitable clash between Sonia, Frank and his men, and the roving mutants that eventually find their way to the complex as well. To further complicate things… Marco finishes his painful transformation into mutant killer, escaping just in time to join the fun.

Will Sonia escape alive? Will she find the courage to kill the man she loves, even if he is the father of her unborn child? Will the darn French Army ever get around to showing up to shoot up some mutants? Not to worry… they do get around to all that, and do it all in suitably timely fashion.

So… all in all, how did this one stack up? As a “Zombie Movie without Zombies”, this lil’ Catgirl thinks it did just fine. The “Mutants” of the title are suitably nasty things and stand in nicely for adversaries here…. and while not particularly original looking or done with startling make up effects, worked well. Our characters are simple…. mostly the usual stereotypes you expect in one of these movies. Not particularly original, but not embarrassingly bad either. Our Heroine Sonia is engaging and believable… both Neko and Carolyn were rooting for her to beat the odds and make it through this all alive…. (Although… we half expected her to survive the film only to be eaten alive from within by a Mutant Baby at the very end… somehow though, the filmmakers resisted the urge for that sort of unneeded twist ending….)

The UK Region 2 DVD is spartan…. Only a Trailer and the film itself, but it is presented with nice accurate separate English subtitles on a Letterboxed wide screen format. Neko can easily give this on a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 with one or two nice contented purrs for Hélène De Fougerolles’ spunky portrayal of Sonia and all the other good solid supporting performances. Good, strong heroines always work for this girl and this was no exception. With a nice film like this… Neko thinks this could mean her Luck will bode well when “Le Horde” finally lurches it’s Zombie butt to DVD. The French? Apparently they aren’t just all about Mimes and Flaky Croissants!! Hehehe!!

Trailer? Yep…. isn’t there always a Trailer? Of course there is… and here it goes, all chock full of zombie… ummmm?…. I mean mutant… action!!

Our synopsis goes like this: “Christmas Eve, and the residents of a quiet British cul-de-sac are suddenly plunged into a world of violence, terror and paranoia when a group of heavily armed military personnel storm their road ordering them at gunpoint to retreat inside their homes. Unsure if this is the sign of a terrorist attack, or something much worse, one local mother finds it in herself to desperately fight to save her estranged daughter stranded across the street. However, with growing dread, the residents soon discover that the threat is more monstrous than any of them could possibly imagine, and survival is no longer a guarantee.”

When I ran across this one, I was thinking it’s going to be some sort of Zombie movie…. Mmmmmm!!! Zombies are always good for an evening’s movie watchin’ entertainment and the Trailer makes me think that’s not too far from the mark, but horror movies often have a way of going differently than you think they might sometimes, and once in a while…. if it quacks like a duck it might just really turn out to be an animal of an all too different sort.

But…. as always, your Favorite Catgirl is game for about any creepy goings on and I’ll let you all in on the juicy bits if only you just “Read On”!!

This one starts out by introducing us to the quiet little neighborhood cul-de-sac you’ve all seen about a million time on British TV. In fact, this low budget horror film was actually was filmed on the old standing set from the British soap opera “Brookside”….. but I’m thinking you’d probably need to be British yourself to recognize it. (I’m more of an “Eastenders” sort of fan myself…) Early morning… a paperboy making his lonely rounds before most anybody is even awake, and having the bad luck to eavesdrop upon a rather nasty domestic argument between an East Asian doctor, Mr. Sharma, and his wife. Discovered while listening at a window, he gets chased into the nearby woods where he avoids Mr. Sharma’s wrath, but runs afoul of an nasty, unknown…. something. Scratch one paperboy…..

Next we get introduced to Jodie (played by Linzey Cocker) and her father Clive (Dean Andrews) as they drive along on a road-trip so she can spend Christmas at her estranged mother Beth’s house. It’s a pleasant enough bit of father-daughter bonding over their respective tastes in music all artfully done to help Jodie avoid the subject of the destination of their trip itself and the thought of spending Christmas with the mother she abhors for having abandoned her and her father when she was a baby. Clive’s a good sort…. unable to hate his ex, mostly sad and baffled by that choice Beth made all those years ago, but determined that Jodie should at least know her mother in some fashion. Jodie? Well she’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of the rock of Gibraltar and there’s no way she’s ever going to forgive or forget the wrong she feels her mother has done to her and her father. But…. present in hand.. she gets dropped off anyway at her Mom’s doorstep and proceeds to let herself in using the key Beth keeps in a flowerpot near the front door. Not exactly a smart idea….

Beth’s not alone you see…. expecting her daughter to arrive later in the day, she’s busy shagging a one-night stand picked up at the local pub the night before. It’s not exactly the sort of way to score points with your estranged daughter to be caught in such a compromising position…. Oops!! No surprise… as Jodie goes ballistic and storms off to escape and seek solace at a neighbor’s home. Despite the scene this creates, Beth follows her, attempting to apologize to Jodie. This gets her nowhere and after getting a frosty reception from her clearly pissed off neighbors, the street is suddenly invaded by a squad of black clad commando types ordering everyone back indoors….. or else. Before anyone can react, Mr. Sharma suddenly appears from his house armed with a bloody cleaver, all covered in gore and screaming in Hindu. Without any hesitation, he is abruptly shot dead by the soldiers. Everybody gets the hint reeeeaally fast. These guys are not kidding and they mean serious business.

Here’s where the film gets going. Seems a certain mysterious shipping container washed ashore nearby during the night…. and the contents were the property of a government black ops experiment gone terribly wrong. Now this nameless thing is loose…. and the scary “boys in black” are here to stop it at all costs…. and make certain nobody survives to tell the tale of exactly what happened. D’ohh! That just can’t be good.

Basically… the remainder of the story really concerns Beth (played by Neve McIntosh)…. and her frantic attempts to make her way safely across the street to Jodie. In her way are a small army of government sanctioned killers and the thing that has even hardened veteran troops like them scared silly. All she’s got is her own wits, her determination, and Kieran (Shaun Dooley), her one-night-stand with all his crazy conspiracy theories and load of personal baggage.

Although at first a fairly dysfunctional and basically unlikeable character, Beth grows on you as you learn that she chose career over family and ultimately left Jodie with her loving father rather than have her grow up with a mother who had no time to be a proper mother for her. She’s a sad character, who having found the success she wanted, has discovered how ultimately empty it has left her life. In her own way, she shows her love for the daughter she gave up in the only way she still can, risking everything to see that Jodie will escape this mess and make it out alive.

In a low budget film, it’s good character interplay that makes up for the lack of cast, the lack of sets, and this one certainly turns all these seemingly negative realities of movie making into pluses here. The entire film has a very “closed in” and claustrophobic feeling…. The filmmakers use this to good effect, and the film gets much of it’s suspense from the sparse look of the street and it’s seemly deserted appearance. The nature of the treat is kept secret as well till much of the story has unrolled. At first you think it might be terrorists…. then maybe zombies….. until the nature of the true menace gets revealed.

Is there a resolution for Beth and Jodie? Well…. “Salvage” isn’t that sort of a “touchy feelly” film so I wouldn’t expect it to end with hearts and flowers. Let’s just say that Beth succeeds in saving Jodie and leave it at that.

Did Neko like this one? Surprisingly yes. It’s a short little film at 81 minutes, but it at no time feels slow or laggy, and although most of the character development is done in small dialog bits here and there between the bloody scary bits, it actually works quite well in evoking the very modern feeling of “disconnection” between people that modern urban life has created. “Salvage” captures the way many people these days end up never being that close to anybody like neighbors or supposed friends, or even thier own family, and even highlights that little distrust of the government everyone sometimes feels these days to boot. The special effects throughout are minimal…. and the “monster” more than a bit disappointing when it finally shows itself, but that’s more a matter of budget than story I’m thinking, and so Neko’s willing to cut the film some slack in this regard.

I can easily give “Salvage” a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5 for doing the whole “paranoid monster hunt” thing with a measure of gusto and fun. It’s not the big gore fest some might expect, but in all, it works fairly well as a character driven thriller. The UK Region 2 DVD is somewhat spartan overall, but does come with an Audio commentary with director Lawrence Gough, actor Shaun Dooley, writer Colin O’Donnell, and associate producer Alan Pattison. Throw in some cast interviews and a small “making of” featurette and it’s well worth a look see for the horror fan on a budget themselves.

There’s a Trailer… and you know I’d never end a review without giving you a tasty lil’ look at it now would I?

Our synopsis goes: “Following a bizarre accident on a desert road and an odd encounter with another boy about the same age, KK (Kristoffer Joner) returns to his hometown after a long period of estrangement. It’s a cozy yet slightly spooky place, a rural locale with a massive waterfall, surrounded by a daunting forest, and filled with unpleasant memories: the memory of the abusive mother who practically drove KK away, and who is now mercifully dead. In her will, she left KK a home in the heart of the woods; entering the house and coming face-to-face with disturbing memories conjures up torrents of evil that lurk inside of KK – malice that he suppressed for years but that now manifests itself with devastating force.”

Hmmmmm? So what the heck is going on in this one, anyway? Ghosts? Crazy maniac killer on the loose? A traumatized boy grown into psychotic manhood? I don’t know exactly what this one is all about, but I guess well all find out, won’t we? Let’s “Read On” and see…..

“Skjult” gets going right away by introducing us to our main character Kai Koss, nicknamed KK (played by Kristoffer Joner), who has returned to the small town were he was born and raised to see to the estate of his recently deceased mother. Only one problem….. she was an evil psycho mother from hell who spent her time torturing her son in a secret underground room in the cellar of her home waaaay out in the woods. Our hero escaped from her of course….. as we see in an initial flashback scene…. but that’s a problem plot wise for this lil’ Catgirl. Everybody seems to know all about KK’s terrible secret…. they feel sorry for him, especially his old friend Sara (played by Cecilie A. Mosli) now sheriff of the town…. but then how was his mother still running around free if that were the case? It’s only one of a number of basic plot problems that plague this one…. but more on those in a moment.

Kai has all the making of one of those quiet troubled loners that seem to populate horror films of this type. He’s withdrawn and friendless, despite an appearance of wealth, he seems to have no real happiness of any kind, just an empty husk of an existence. From the flashback we get an understanding of why his childhood home invokes such dread in him that the first thing he wants to do with the old place is to take two jerrycans of gasoline and burn it to the ground.

It’s certainly a creepy old house…. and director Pål Øie fills it with plenty of disturbing images…. especially the giant pile of bandaged dolls in the corner of the living room…. but despite all those neat ideas, gives us a story that doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense. I know, I know…. we are possibly seeing all this through the eyes of a very traumatized (and probably not to mentally stable) man, but some stuff just just makes no sense at all from a narrative standpoint. However, that means it’s “Spoiler Alert” time…. ’cause I can’t really dig into why these fail so badly without giving away quite a bit of the plot.

We’ve already mentioned that seemingly Kai’s mother was able to torture him till he escaped her evil clutches but somehow never got arrested or prosecuted for it….. a big point if his experiences are so well know as to have created the aura of “urban legend” that follows his return to town. There’s also the repeated image of the two boys from the night of his escape…. If Kai is the one who got away, then how was his mother able to “replace” him by kidnapping the other successfully? There’s the stupid story that the other boy fell from the area’s famous waterfall, but again, Kai saw his mother abduct him so why didn’t police bother to look in the cellar torture room to see if he was in there…. assuming Kai told the story of his captivity to… well… like ANYBODY to explain why he ran away. Nope.

Ok… Ok…. then there’s the “Guy in the Red Hoodie”. Supposedly our missing boy who was taken from the wreck site of his parents death to replace Kai. If he’s been haunting the house, lurking there for 19 years of so… or even since the mother’s death…. why have there been no other deaths or disappearances till Kai comes home? Ahhhh, you say…. there is no “Guy in the Red Hoodie”…. it’s all in Kai’s head…. So how do people die when Kai is unable to do the whole “split personality” bit…. like when he’s with Sara while one of her deputies gets killed?

These questions just don’t seem to go away, no matter how much you think about them and no amount of atmosphere or imagery can make them seem like they were planned either. Other elements are just annoying. Like the entire idea that the locals all seem to hate Kai. For what reason? None that I can see…. and none that is ever explained…. with the exception of one local thug who might possibly see tortured Kai as a rival for Sara’s affections. (Something which never becomes an issue anyway….. so why include it?)

Want more inexplicable plot items? How about the local hotel decorated by the cast of “Twin Peaks”…. and the strange brunette at the reception desk who might or might not want to get all slutty with Kai. Just what in heck is her role in this story? Neither Carolyn or I could figure it out…… The ending? Well… we finally get to see the “Guy in the Red Hoodie” at last (But no clue if he’s real or imaginary)…. and there’s a small nod to Norman Bates and “Psycho” as KK is driven away in handcuffs which was nice, but ever so unsatisfying overall….

Sigh…. All in all it’s a shame, cause this one really does have some fairly pretty visuals with quite a bit of striking imagery. The whole idea of the psychological horror that Kai went through has possibilities too. Unfortunately just too much of “Skjult” just doesn’t hang together in a way that makes you see this as a terrible hallucination hidden within a tragic reality….. It’s a well made film just not a well told one.

Given this, “Skjult” gets barely a rating of 3 “Meows” out of 5 from this lil’ Catgirl…. saved only by those aforementioned gorgeous visual elements and some competent acting, especially on the part of Kristoffer Joner. I would say it’s worth a watch… but for true horror fans, it’s more a rental than a must buy. Thank goodness I waited till Region 1 for this one, I’d have felt a bit cheated to have imported it myself from Region 2. Still… Norway has done good by Neko with the likes of “Fritt Vilt”, so I’m willing to forgive them for the occasional letdown. I guess it’s “Better luck next time”, for this lil’ Catgirl…..

Of course there’s a Trailer…. isn’t there always a Trailer? Enjoy!!

The synopsis for it reads: “At an exclusive university dead bodies are turning up with alarming frequency, all believed to be victims of the notorious Campus Killer. The police are stumped as to who the killer might be and, of course, nobody suspects innocent looking med student Barbara. A superficial fashion queen whose childhood dream was to grow up to become the living embodiment of her favorite doll, Cindy Superstar, all Barbara needs now is to find herself a real-life equivalent of Cindy’s plastic partner, Glenn. But behind the mask of her perfectly applied make-up is a deadly cross between Paris Hilton and American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, a female serial killer for whom ruthlessly slaughtering people isn’t so much a question of why as one of why not?

Barbara’s grisly trail of murder fortuitously leads her into the arms of Tomas, a fellow student assigned to the campus morgue who is experimenting with a machine designed to translate thoughts and brainwaves into images. What he later discovers, though, is that with a little tinkering (and the addition of a healthy dose of Ecstasy to his subjects) the machine is able to reanimate the dead. Not surprisingly, this proves to be bad news for Barbara as Tomas begins reviving the Campus Killer’s victims in the hope that at least one of them will be able to identify their murderer. Of course, what he hadn’t bargained for was their insatiable hunger for both revenge and for human flesh. Soon, Tomas finds himself the innocent bystander in a bloody and explosive serial killer versus zombies showdown.”

Hmmm… now this one certainly sounds downright goofy. (And you know how Neko sooo likes goofy!!) So forgoing my usual popcorn and wine coolers, we opt for a movie night of spicy nachos and sangria, hoping the movie fairies will bless Carolyn and I with a delightfully grisly laugh fest to remember!! Think you might just like it too? Then you better “Read On” and find out more!

This one starts out with a scene right out of “Scream”… a girl’s locker room, plenty of sexy young co-eds with all the gratuitous nudity one needs in an exploitation film to set just the right ambiance. Oh, yes…. and a creepy masked killer with a big ol’ machete who stalks poor lone Barbara after all the other girls are off to class… but just who here is the predator and who is the prey? We find out pretty quickly who is who… as does the poor doofus who thought dressing up as a masked killer was a good way to peep on naked girls.

Barbara (played to psycho perfection by Macarena Gómez) is the sexy psychotic anti-heroine of director Miguel Martí’s black comedy and quite effortlessly steals every scene in “Sexy Killer” with her perky Barbie doll approach to sociopathy. She’s equal parts sexy co-ed and serial killer with the arsenal of “Kill Bill” , and  the violent combat skills of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”… minus, of course, any annoying moral conscience and regard for the sanctity of human life. More fun… the film allows Barbara to be an amoral “Ferris Bueller” constantly chatting with the audience about the things in her life that make her tick. Mind you… those are some pretty sick things… but hey… sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to make all her dreams come true. So… so wrong…. but you end up actually liking this character and it isn’t long before you start hoping she’ll find true love and happiness…. even if it ends up killing everybody else in the film.

And really…. Barbara’s goals are quite simple…. she just wants the life of Barbie doll clone Cindy Superstar. (I guess Mattel wasn’t really keen on associating with this particular young woman’s world view… go figure.. Hehehehe!!) She wants the colorful dream house, the 2.5 kids, the dog and a wonderful, successful, plastic surgeon husband like Glenn who’ll treat her like the Princess she knows herself to be. So what’s so wrong with that? If only everybody would just stop getting in her way…..

It’s just that our perky lil’ killer can’t seem to resist killing all those people that make her life difficult. It doesn’t help that she also finds the bloody slaughter immensely fun and just soooo, soooo sexy and arousing. She just needs to find the right guy who understands all that… a “kindred spirit” to make all her dreams come true. Barbara’s grisly trail of bloody mayhem fortuitously ends up bringing her and Tomas, a fellow student assigned to the campus morgue to help in the investigation of the “Campus Killer”, together and for each of them it’s both love (and lust…) at first sight.

Tomas and his best bud Alex are working with the police to help track down the killer, thanks to the official coroner having been killed accidentally by Barbara during one of her earlier murders. They’re both smart and have also been experimenting with a machine designed to translate thoughts and brainwaves into images. Just the sort of thing to help therapists see and understand the thoughts of the mentally ill…. Not only that… but it can also be used to see the thoughts of the recently dead, reading the fading electrical activity of their brains. It doesn’t take long before they figure out it could be used to give them a view of the mysterious killer… if only they could get a fresh enough body. And even though this invention could possibly end the Campus Killer’s murderous spree, it might just put an end to Tomas’ chances with Barbara. If only he knew…..

But… despite the fact that Barbara freely admits to being the killer numerous times… and despite a very funny dinner sequence in which she murders a woman for a sexy red dress she wants while on a date with him, poor Tomas never figures it out. Worse, Barbara mistakenly believes he’s a soulless killer too… responsible for the death of the coroner he replaced to move up the ranks and steal his job as well as the guy who lends him his tuxedo to help him score with her. Eventually…. Tomas’ friend Alex gets in her way… and so it’s “Bye-Bye Alex”, gutted and hung up to bleed out in the morgue like a side of beef. Then the film hangs a left…..

What’s more fun that a movie about a cute, sexy serial killer? How about a movie where that serial killer’s victims return from the dead as flesh eating zombies to seek vengeance against her for their murders? Oh yeah…. seems that Alex and Tomas’ brain machine has a side effect you see… it doesn’t just let you see the thoughts of the recently deceased, it also reanimates them…. Yep. They start out being pretty normal… if a wee bit grisly looking… but soon decay sets in and they quickly degenerate into the fun loving, instinct driven, flesh-eaters we all know and love. Unfortunately… by the time Tomas figures this out he’s already reanimated the 30 odd victims Barbara has already put in the morgue… whoops!!

Now the film turns into a kinetic zombie fest… Tomas rushes to the campus memorial party to save Barbara and the others from the vengeance of the living dead, only to finally figure out it’s Barbara they are after… that she really is the killer after all… She figures out that Tomas isn’t the stone cold killer she thought he was… But it’s too late, they can’t deny the love that binds them together and so they go all “Resident Evil” on their opponents zombie butts, blowing up the party and killing all the undead fiends and students alike in an over the top ending.

Does this mean that our Hero and Heroine will live all happily ever after and walk off into the moonlight? Will they get the fantasy Barbara has always wanted for her very own? Well… it’s best to remember the old parable of the Scorpion and the Frog….. (as Barbara reminds us at the end of this one…)… and know that a scorpion will always be a scorpion just because that’s what it truly is.

Neko really… really… liked this one… (and you know “slasher” films really aren’t usually my “thing”…) It’s smart, and funny, yet viciously gruesome all at the same time with great zest and style that gives it a hallucinogenic bliss all it’s own. The director Miguel Martí’ and writer Paco Cabezas obviously love the horror genre and the film is peppered with great moments inspired by all those films we’ve all seen, from Wes Craven’s “Scream”, to George R. Romero’s zombie epics, “Friday the 13th”, and “The Silence of the Lambs”, even managing to throw in lots of neat lil’ references to films from other genres including “Titanic” and “Taxi Driver” sure to give movie buffs years of fun catching them all. The cinematography, effects, and editing are sharp and the acting good… particularly Macarena Gomez, who absolutely nails the crucial role of Barbara, a character that could have come across as far less appealing and fun in the hands of less talented actress.

All in all… I can most definitely recommend this one to people looking for something… well… just a wee bit different… from your average horror move. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess gives it 4 “Meows” out of 5 with more than a few contented purrs for the lil’ touches that make me know I’ll be watching it again and again in the years to come. If you like your scares mixed with more than a few laughs or if you ever wondered what “Legally Blonde” meets “Halloween” just might be like… then you’ll probably want to see it too.

The Region 2 PAL formatted DVD is certainly a spartan one… with only the movie itself and a couple of Trailers…. presented 16:9 widescreen in Spanish with excellent English subtitles. It’s sufficient I suppose, but I would have really liked a “Making of Featurette” to watch as well… The nicest thing is probably the price… only 7$ or so US, so you can’t go wrong if you hunt it down.

As always… there’s a Trailer and here it is to whet your appetites!

Our synopsis? Well it goes something like this:“About 100 years ago, three students at the Hellestads Boarding School were brutally slaughtered, the murderer drowned himself in a lake nearby and his body was never found. The story has become a school legend for generations of students as well as a yearly festivity. Sara, a student, is writing an essay based on the legend and uncovers new facts from the event that will cast dark shadows on the family name of one of the school’s main beneficiaries. On the night of the hundredth anniversary, the festivities go awry, students disappear and something dark and unknown is moving through the schools corridors…is the curse of the “Drowning Ghost” true…. and who will fall victim next?”

Yep… sounds like a winner. But then I’ve been cruelly fooled before, so naturally I’ll just have to cuddle up on the couch with my popcorn and wine coolers and see if Sweden knows how to make those scary movies I like!! So let’s all “Read On” and find out what it’s all about.

This one looked like a ghost story…. at least that’s what this lil’ Catgirl expected. I haven’t seen all that many Swedish films, but after Norway impressed me with “Fritt Vilt”, I just had to give the other Scandinavian countries a quick “look see”. What sorts of film goodies could be hiding there? “Strandvaskaren”, despite it’s title, really isn’t a ghost story at all though… it’s a slasher film from the late 1980′s as seen through the ol’ Swedish “Cultural Filter”. Is that a problem? Not really… it’s interesting sometimes to see familiar themes reflected back at you and flavored by a different language and culture.

Our story concerns a private college in Sweden, Hellestad Academy, and an old scandalous murder that occurred there a century earlier. As with all such things, there’s the grisly tradition that the crazed murderer’s ghost still haunts the school on the anniversary of the crime… prowling about with his snazzy burlap sack mask and his sharp, pointy farm implement of choice in search of fresh victims. Ahh! Old School traditions… don’t ya just love them? He’s the “Drowned Ghost” of the title, and although our killer borrows on his reputation to spread fear and terror, there’s really no ghost to be found here. So what do we have then? Well… how about a deranged psycho killer who escapes from the asylum where he’s been committed since he murdered his wife to take revenge for his daughter’s suicide on the anniversary of the murders a year earlier? Hey!! That could work!

But…. nope! That’s not what’s going on either… (Say what?…. I know, this one wriggles about more than a centipede dipped in bacon grease. It’s one hard one to pin down, not really certain where it wants to go, but fairly certain it wants to bite someone once it finally gets there…. Hehehehe!) Yep… our psycho does a stand up job of killing an orderly and making his way to the school, but gets whacked by the real killer moments after arriving. Huh? But… but..?

Alright then… maybe our film’s heroine, Sara (played by Rebecka Hemse) knows what’s really going on. She’s not the most popular girl here at Hellestad, having managed to alienate the snobbish “In” crowd led by Måns (played by Daniel Larsson) and his sycophantic cronies. You know the types…. Old money, old connections, and somehow utterly contemptuous of those outside their social circle. Making her less popular is her decision to write an essay on the old murders… and discovering some scandalous truths behind what actually happened all those years ago. Seems maybe the old farmer wasn’t nuts… that maybe some of the students raped and killed the man’s beloved daughter and then got what they deserved in revenge. All that was covered up at the time…. seems the young men were the sons of important school alumni with influence that still reaches through time till today…. The headmistress isn’t about to let Sara ruin the school’s reputation (or risk the wrath of these important people) so she makes it plain to Sara’s professor that such investigations should be left alone. So… does that mean the murderer is a distant relative still seeking to right the wrong committed a century earlier? Ummm…. Nope….

Grrrr!!! Well… how about the girl’s suicide last year? Is it relevant, or is it nothing more than another “Red Herring” to distract us? Well… the girl Rebecka (played by Sasa Bjurling) was apparently the victim of the cruel taunts and endless torment of Måns and his friends… till it drove her to commit suicide by throwing herself from the roof of the school during the big celebration held every year to commemorate the school’s founding. Oh, yes…. and turns out she’s the only surviving relative of our escaped lunatic… That’s gotta mean something, right? Well… maybe so. But then… should we be concerned at all with the two exchange students who’ve just shown up here at Hellestad…. that sort of plot element never turns out to be a coincidence, right?

By now… you are probably pretty confused… right? Carolyn certainly was, but luckily she had me to help figure out what the heck was actually going on. It isn’t all that hard, actually. The overall plot recycles nearly every cliche you might remember from such horror classics as “Halloween”, “Friday the 13th” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer”…. (including a finale on the lake lifted almost directly from “Friday the 13th”) which might seem to be a bit disappointing at first glance. Even the theme music reminds you of the old “Halloween” theme. Still, in retrospect, I’ve come to think it’s done more to give the film a slick commercial look and improve it’s general audience appeal than as a deliberate rip-off. To me it seemed more of a homage to those old films… and with an English dubbed audio track, you probably would never guess this one was a Swedish film at all. About the only thing that gives it away is the more restrained way the violence is handled. There’s quite a bit going on, but it’s remarkably bloodless overall, with many of the actual murders occurring off-screen, the bodies simply being discovered later for their shock value. In all… the ultimate conclusion is easy to figure out before the “surprise” twist actually occurs, but doesn’t really ruin the overall story.

While this one didn’t exactly wow me, it wasn’t all that bad either. The production values were good, the story somewhat congested and confused but easy enough to follow if you paid attention. I wish the heroine had been… well… more interesting, but hey, not every horror heroine can be as spunky and endearing as you’d like. Her prerequisite flaky blond BFF, Therese (played by Jenny Ulving) was more interesting, but as with “Fritt Vilt” it’s best not to get fond of secondary characters here… they don’t usually survive long. Overall, it’s good enough to get 3 “Meows” out of 5 from this girl, but not too much more. The Swedish Region 2 PAL DVD is topnotch, presented widescreen, with excellent English subtitles (as well as subtitles in just about every other Nordic language you could want) and the Trailers and “making of” featurette are nice additions. Not bad if you get a chance to rent it, but probably not a DVD you’ll need to buy unless you are as wacky a film fanatic as this lil’ Catgirl.

Trailer…. you want a Trailer? Sure Neko’s got ya a Trailer…. and here we go!

Well… not exactly ice…. but lots and lots of snow. After “Fritt Vilt” and it’s sequel I’m beginning to get a very chilly picture of Norway and this one, “Dead Snow”, now available on Region 2 PAL DVD from the UK gives me no reason to believe it’s ever warm there…. Hehehehe!! What’s next? Killer Snowmen or a cool movie with a rampaging rabid Polar Bear? (Wait a minute…. that actually sounds like a cool idea for a movie….. So remember you heard it here first!!)

Our quickie synopsis reads: “A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies!”

That sums it up pretty well… and so all the classic bits are comfortably in place for some bloody, crazy nazisploitation zombie mayhem. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess says it’s time to break out your chainsaw, your machete, and all your other favorite pointy implements of death and let’s get ready to rumble, shall we?

So… first up, I’m happy to say that unlike my last UK DVD release of a Norwegian film, “Fritt Vilt 2″, this one actually has nice separate English subtitles on board for me to enjoy….. I can’t tell you just how much having burned in subtitles on a DVD reeeeaallly ticks me off…. so if any of you out there reading this are DVD producers or distributors, please… cut that out!!!

Our film starts out promisingly…. it’s night, and a frantic woman flees through the rough terrain of the frozen mountains with flashes of her pursuers seen here and there. She runs…. she stumbles…. she even falls down a rocky slope bouncing off every rock and tree possible, but you just know how it’s gonna end…. Yep. Zombie food. But you don’t get to see the particulars of that…. our film plays a bit coy about getting right down to things.

We jump to a couple of cars zooming along those endless deserted snowy roads that seem to be all over the place in Norway in these movies going…. well…. nowhere it seems. Inside are a group of medical students off to the mountains for their Easter Holiday. It seems one of them has…. (or by now you know “had a girlfriend” is more accurate) a girlfriend who has a cabin waaaay up in the mountains where they can kick back and party like there’s no tomorrow. They discuss each other…. the guys in one car and the girls in the other…. and it’s here that you get a strange odor about the film… and it’s not from the Nazi Zombies…. Nope…. problem is, unlike the group in “Fritt Vilt”, the protagonists here are just not very appealing. In fact they are all the self absorbed, nasty sort of  20 somethings that just make this lil’ Catgirl cringe. Sometimes that’s OK… it makes it easier when the carnage starts to enjoy the demise of the more annoying characters while rooting for the rest to somehow survive. Unfortunately… nobody invited the sympathetic characters along for this movie….. Instead we get our intrepid snowmobiling stud, Vegard (played by Lasse Valdal), and his fairly unremarkable friends. There’s forgettable blonde bimbo Hanna (Charlotte Frogner), Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen), no nonsense Liv (Evy Kasseth Røsten), squeamish bloodshy Martin (Vegar Hoel), slutty Chris (Jenny Skavlan) and film trivia fanatic Erlend (Jeppe Laursen). You’ll be amazed just how quickly you’ll start wanting the zombie to just show up and kill them all. But you’ll have a loooong wait.

Yep… outside of having already killed Sarah, Vegard’s girlfriend who insisted upon skiing in to the cabin rather than riding up with her friends, we don’t get a Zombie for nearly 45 minutes of the movie. SAY WHAT??? We do get a creepy guy ( played by Bjørn Sundquist) who shows up to bitch at them about their coffee brewing skills and to tell the kids the story of the horrible atrocities committed by the Nazi soldiers that occupied the area back during the war and who ultimately escaped into these very mountains ahead of the angry populace only to presumably disappear and die somewhere in the mountains around these parts. Ominous creepy guy then departs…. and promptly becomes the first victim of the Zombies out in his lonely tent…. Who this guy is and what the heck he’s doing up in the mountains is never really explained, he’s apparently just hanging around to relate the “legend” so we can get on with things.

Next it’s loud annoying music and lots of drinking and Twister… (yes… Twister!!) before Erland goes out to the outhouse to relieve himself. Naturally that’s the perfect excuse for Chris to go into slut mode and follow him out for some sex…. and we all know that’s just gonna summon some Zombies to come eat somebody….. and it does. YAY!!! Bye- Bye, Chris!!

Erland, meanwhile, has gone back to the cabin where he finds the box hidden in the cold storage space under the floor…. and it’s filled with all sorts of shiny gold stuff…. obviously the loot taken by those evil Nazi bastards back during the war. Supposedly… this is what gets the Zombie Nazi’s all ticked off… (but it really doesn’t explain why they killed all the other people earlier….) and they’ll wipe out anyone trying to steal the goodies. After ogling the gold for a while they finally notice Chris is missing and decide to stumble about outside looking for her… armed with a shotgun and absolutely no common sense that is…. They don’t find her, but they do find Sarah’s backpack…. evidence she had reached the cabin after all.

Yoo-hoo!! Zombies!! That’s your cue… Yep, finally the zombie Nazis get around to attacking the cabin. You know the drill…. lots of frantic scrambling around doing the barricading thing while trying to avoid those zombies grabbing at you through smashed in windows. Erland gets his here… pulled out a window and his head torn open so his brain can splat on the floor in a cool gory bit just designed to gross you out in a neat way. You can’t say they skimped on the makeup and practical effects here….. these are top notch.

Surviving the night, the guys and girls decide to split up…. the guys acting as bait to draw the Zombies after them and giving the girls the chance to make a dash through the woods to find the car and get help. (Note to self…. never leave your car 45 minutes away from the place you are staying when venturing out into the wilderness…. especially if you are going to let the only idiot who knows the way back to it run off to find his lost girlfriend…..) Yes…. Vegerd takes the snow mobile and goes off on a quest to find Sarah…. that’s just not gonna go well….

Hanna and Liv get lost… of course… and soon Liv is all alone, Hanna having blown herself to bits along with the two zombie stormtroopers that were eating her alive. Martin and Roy manage to burn down the cabin and have to resort to some pretty brutal hand to hand with the zombies just barely holding their own….. Only Vegerd has much luck, if you can call it that, when he stumbles upon the snowcave where the Nazi’s hid all their equipment… and Sarah’s severed head. Eeeewwwhhh!!

You’d think that after getting into his own knock down, drag out, fight to the death with the zombies there that he would load up the snowmobile with every MP-40, panzerfaust, and potato masher grenade he could carry and we’d get a neat climax of WW2 Zombie combat action for our ending…. (Sort of a grisly “Slaying Private Hans”) You’d think that…. and for goodness sake, we zombie fans sure like it when things go boom and bits of zombie go flying about the snowscape like crimson confetti… but nope. Vegerd ain’t gonna do something THAT cool. Darn…. He does strap a belt fed M-42 machine gun to the sled before sewing up his half severed throat with a fish hook and some duct tape… so I’ll forgive him that much….

Anyway…. he arrives back in time to help the remaining survivors lay waste to what looks like the final Nazi attack before getting killed by the leader of the horde, Oberst Hertzog… the coolest Zombie of the bunch. Seemingly defeated, Hertzog raises his arms to the sky and screams an order that raises still more Nazi Undead from everywhere…. Will our heroes survive? Don’t make this lil’ Catgirl laugh……

So…. all in all, did I enjoy this latest Norwegian horror romp? Hmmmm? Well…. it did have some real potential, but unfortunately in the end “Dead Snow” just sort of fails to live up to that promise. The protagonists didn’t catch my sympathy…. I was annoyed by the lack of any explanation as to why the Nazi’s became zombies…. (No radioactive isotopes from Telemark… no experimental germ warfare or poison gas canisters…. not even some reeeaally lost Haitian Voodoo guy…) and a perfect missed opportunity to see what sort of fun can be had with a stockpile of WW2 surplus ordinance. Also…. if your movie is only 88 minutes long in the first place…. don’t wait 45 minutes before getting the zombies into action……. Sigh…. and I was so hoping for something to top the only other Nazi Zombie film I know of… 1977′s “Shock Waves”…. Oh well. I hear “Zombie Self Defense Force” is coming out next month…. maybe the Japanese know how to have army guys fight zombies….

Neko gives “Dead Snow” an anemic 2 “Meows” out of 5 for trying like heck, but ultimately blowing it just when I needed some seriously fun and messy zombie action. Norway tried to pull it off but I guess it’s just not their thing…..

Yep…. there’ a Trailer, and here it is!! Enjoy!!

Our synopsis goes something as follows: “The Belles of St. Trinian’s” was the first of several British comedies originally inspired by the fearsome girl’s school created by cartoonist Ronald Searle. In this one, Clarence Fritton, bookie brother of the headmistress Millicent , of St Trinian’s School for Girls, sneaks his daughter into the sixth form to pick up racing tips from the daughter of an Arabic Sheik, the Princess Fatima of Makyad, who’s come to stay at the school. His horse, “Arab Boy”, is due to run in the Gold Cup and is secretly being backed by the fourth form girls, Miss Fritton, and the school funds to win a fortune in the race. Cockney spiv Flash Harry is also on hand to make a profit from the girl’s alcohol producing venture, while to further complicate matters, the Barchester police have planted sergeant Ruby Gates undercover at the school as a teacher, and the Ministry of Education are sending a third inspector down after the previous two disappeared without trace. The racehorse is kidnapped by the sixth form, but rescued and wins – saving St Trinian’s from bankruptcy and closure.“

I originally watched this one on our local Public Broadcasting station way back when…. definitely where you wanted to go when I was a kid to watch all those wonderful British imports….. and this one positively had me in stitches as a lil’ girl…. just the thought of what these wicked little hellions were doing at their school had me wondering just what sort of mischief I might get up to!! PBS…. you almost set me on the path to a crazy life of crime with this one!!

So, gentle readers….. you’ve never heard of St Trinian’s? Well it’s definitely time we fix that!! So… by all means.. “Read On”!!

Directed by Frank Launder and written by him and Sidney Gilliat, this was only the first of a series of four films made about the fictional St Trinian’s School for Girls staring many veteran British actors of the time such as Alastair Sim playing both the character of school headmistress Miss Fritton (in drag… Shades of Milton Berle!!…) and also her nere-do-well brother Clarence Fritton, George Cole played cockney spiv “Flash Harry”, and Joyce Grenfell starred as Policewoman Ruby Gates. Other members of the staff were played by Hermione Baddeley, Renee Houston, Beryl Reid, Irene Handl, Mary Merrall and Joan Sims.

This one, while most definitely very “British” in feel and also very definitely dated by modern standards, still holds up reasonably well even today. The girls are wickedly delightful in their hijinx… sowing both fear and horror among the adults of the film as they roll along like a rampaging band of marauding mongols. I love the arrival scene as the train pulls into Barchester station, all the locals scrambling for cover as if they were about to be attacked by an enemy army!! They aren’t half wrong in that assessment either…. Hehehehe!!

Throughout the enitire film series, St Trinian’s itself is depicted as an extremely unorthodox boarding school where all the younger girls of the Fourth Form are all portrayed as dangerous, uncivilized hooligans and the much older girls of the Sixth Form are all sexy femme fatales, who express their blossoming femininity by turning their schoolgirl uniforms into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the 1950′s , with short skirts that teasingly reveal the tops of the dark stockings that the all the girls wear, and with tight uniform tunics and shirts that accentuate their silhouette, creating the hourglass figure and long legs of the classic 50′s sex symbols, all the better to use their womanly wiles to manipulate the foolish men of the films. In general… the girls of St Trinian’s epitomize the classic view of the naughty schoolgirl that has become such a stereotype even today.

Carolyn had never seen one of these films, and we had a fun time watching my newly acquired DVD of the first of the series. This initial outing is a great little comedy that you can enjoy even if you are a bit lost on some of the “British” elements of the plot. If you’ve ever watched any of the “Carry On” films or old “Benny Hill” episodes… you’ll probably feel right at home. Neko gives it 4 “Meows” out of 5 for it’s fun… it’s exuberance and it’s definite “take no prisoners” role model for young girls….. it’s a “G rated” bit of naughty fun that still tickles the funny bone and brings a smile to your lips just thinking about the antics that ensue when the girls go wild even today.

Trailer? Nope… not a Trailer in sight this time out…. but I’ll keep my lil’ eyes peeled for one and when I do I’ll certainly add it in!

Our synopsis reads like this: “Award winning comedy duo James Corden and Mathew Horne (of Gavin & Stacey fame) decide to escape their problems and head to Wales for a weekend of debauchery.

Things don’t go quite according to plan and they find themselves stuck in a village where all the local women have been enslaved by the curse of the legendary lesbian vampire queen, Carmilla. As night unfolds the boys have to put all their fears (and dreams!) behind them in order to rise to the challenge of becoming Lesbian Vampire Killers.”

Hmmmm? Certainly sounds trashy and silly alright. But will it be a fun lil’ movie to watch with my sweet Carolyn on Movie Nite (or will it just utterly offend her and get me trouble?) This will be the first mainstream “Lesbian” themed movie (well…sort of… Hehehehe!!) we’ve ever watched together since we started our love affair…. but she knows all about my lowbrow film tastes and usually just shakes her head and rolls her eyes when it’s my turn to select a film for us. Oh well…. she’s really a good sport, so I guess I’ll find out.

The main question to answer though, as always, is: “Will it really live up to all the hype and promise of it’s silly title or fall flat on it’s face?” Neko’s been disappointed by movies before, (and probably will be again in future….) but let’s all “Read On” and find out how this one fares, shall we?

So…. first up, I must confess to having absolutely no clue who the two main stars of this one, James Corden and Mathew Horne, are…. and I’ve no idea what “Gavin & Stacey” is all about either. That’s either going to have me missing a whole lot of those “in jokes” that often fill a movie like this, or it’s going to allow me to watch without the added encumbrance of preconceptions about what I’m going to get. Carolyn had never heard of them either (and thankfully wasn’t touchy about what was probably going to be a Lesbian Vampire movie made basically for a target audience of horny young men and not lesbian women…. but then my sweet Carolyn does love me deeply in spite of my horrific movie choices) so the stage was set for a fresh look.

Well….. we start off with a properly mythological prologue right out of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, explaining the basic history behind the “Curse of Carmilla”, a “Vampire Queen” who was basically seducing the beautiful young daughters of the village of Cragwich and turning them into lascivious lesbian bloodsuckers….. (exactly why, we’re never told…. but it’s that sort of movie so just roll with it) and eventually she makes the mistake of turning her attention to the wife of local Knight off on the Crusades. He’s just a wee bit ticked off to find his wife has succumbed to temptation and become the willing sex toy of Carmilla, and so he uses a magic sword to lop off her head. Unfortunately not before Carmilla utters her dread curse that whenever a girl in Cragwich reaches her 18th birthday, she immediately transforms into a seductive lesbian vampire who will wreak Carmilla’s vengeance upon all men until Carmilla herself is resurrected. The only way to break the curse is for the last descendant of that same brave knight to return to Cragwich and slay Carmilla again with the magic sword of “Dialdo” (more on that silly weapon in a moment…) thus ending the curse once and for all. OK…. so with that out of the way, we move to present day London and meet our two bumbling heroes….

This would be the duo of Jimmy (played by Matthew Horne) and Fletch (played by James Corden) as best friends who have both experienced the absolute worst streak of bad luck two young men might ever have. Jimmy has been serially dumped for the seventh time by his flaky bitch of a two timing girlfriend Judy and Fletch has gotten himself fired from the latest in a long line of menial and demeaning jobs. Finding themselves low on cash, Jimmy convinces Fletch that a hiking holiday in the Welsh countryside is the remedy for their doldrums. Fletch thinks it’s a lame, stupid idea, but without any money of his own, it’s off to the countryside!

The boys are your standard good natured completely hapless guys from any number of other movies, looking for “beer and boobs” and immediately you get the sense that we’re headed for “Porky’s” territory here… but you’d be wrong. It isn’t long before the two get to the odd village of Cragwich… who’s inhabitants have that crazy “villagers from a Hammer film” look about them. The local Vicar mistakes Jimmy right away for the descendant of the famous Knight…. so there’s no real secret to discover later in the film. They direct the boys to the deserted Mircalla Estate (Hmmmm? Now THAT name sounds familiar…) at the edge of the village for free lodging…. Yep, can you say “vampire food”….. Sigh….. A plus though… it seems a VW full of hot female Swedish exchange students are also headed there for the night.

Once there, it isn’t long before night falls, the group gets to partying like there no tomorrow, and then the Lesbian Vampires make their appearance. From then on it’s a vaguely amusing, but generally tame bit of “Scooby Doo” running around the woods. You’d think there would be exceeding lots and lots of scantily clad vampire girls getting naked and making out at the drop of a hat from this point forward, but…. er… ummm… no, there really isn’t. In fact, outside of a few slow motion shots of gorgeous vampire girls kissing, and even a shower scene, there isn’t that much nudity to be seen here at all…. (Sorry, guys, Neko knows you were looking forward to that… you naughty, naughty boys…) You get the usual vampire hijinx, of course, and the effects are well done as our heroes behead, slice and dice the vampire girls who explode, not into fiery ash, but into what looks disturbing like…. er…. ah…. semen. Yep…. I’m not kidding you. Most of the humor is in that direction…. including the mystical “Sword of Dialdo” (Come on… say it reeeaally slowly….) with it’s penis shaped pommel. Carolyn and I got worried just exactly they were planning to do to Carmilla with THAT particular widget…. but no,no, no…  it’s just for slicing and dicing… thank goodness.

Then our fearless Vampire Hunting Vicar arrives to help the boys, and Lotte, the only Swedish girl left, well, “unvampirized”…. to prepare for Carmilla’s return. How will this be accomplished? Well, it seems the vampires need both the descendant of the brave Knight and the blood of a virgin girl to perform the ritual that reconstitutes her. Lotte? Yep, you guessed it. Yep…. just had to see it coming.

Sigh…. I wish I could say this was going to result in an amazing battle to the death between Carmilla and our heroes, but sadly “Lesbian Vampire Killers” is just not up to the task of pulling it off. Don’t get me wrong…. they got most of the vampire stuff just about right for a horror comedy. The girls are… well… just plain gorgeous in that Neo-Gothic Lolita “Undead Sirens of the Night” way, with lots of drifting through foggy forests in diaphanous costumes that the Brides of Dracula themselves would envy, and would have probably been right at home in a Hammer film of the seventies. It’s just that the whole thing is…. bland. A film such as this needs to abandon it’s shyness and just plain “go for it”…. If you are going to fill your movie with a bevy of predatory “Lipstick Lesbian” vampire girls then they better be getting all naughty or else you’ve blown it…… it’s what “exploitation” is all about. That’s why the low budget effort “Werewolf in a Women’s Prison” succeeded for me where this one doesn’t. If you are going to make a tacky, risque, tasteless film, then by all means, just go nuts….. anything else is just bound to fail. From a comedy standpoint, it’s a mixed bag too, with good chemistry between our two heroes but little connection with the other characters in any meaningful way. A couple of funny bits here and there can’t save the film though, which is a shame because the simple premise could have worked and worked well had the movie just had the nerve to go after it’s story with more gusto.

Unlike many reviews for it I’ve read while preparing my thoughts on it, (including a particularly scathing one by a Lesbian movie reviewer), I wasn’t offended by “Lesbian Vampire Killers” and neither was my sweet Carolyn. It’s just…. well…. a fairly forgettable and basically disappointing movie overall. As such, I can only give it 2 “Meows” out of 5, with a single purr for the vampire girls themselves, particularly Vera Filatova (whom Carolyn thought was particularly “yummy” and could try to bite her on the neck anytime……. Grrrr! I’m sooo jealous!!) who did indeed play her part extremely well. However, it looks as if I’m going to be looking further for the next great horror comedy to rival “Shawn of the Dead” or “Army of Darkness”…. Better luck next time, I guess….

Trailer? OMG…. of course there’s a Trailer. It’s probably better than the entire film itself and here it is!

Back too for the action is actress Ingrid Bolsø Berdal as spunky Norse heroine, Jannicke. With the recent announcement that a 3rd film is in the works, it looks like I’d better get watching this one to catch up.

Our quick synopsis reads as follows: “Jannicke, the lone survivor from the previous film’s slayings is discovered wandering cold and traumatized, covered with blood and carrying a pick axe along a deserted, snow-covered mountain road. Taken to a nearby hospital for observation and treatment, she tells the police of her terrible ordeal. As the authorities head into the mountains to investigate the her story, the hospital staff members and their patients quickly learn the shocking truth for themselves as the institution’s wards and corridors become the new hunting ground for the unstoppable killer.”

Sounds good… but will it sustain the thrills and suspense of the first film? I guess you’ll just need to “Read On” to find out!!

But…. but… didn’t evil creepy Parka Guy die at the end of the first one? Jannicke got all spunky and handed him his ass but good then knocked him down a crevasse, didn’t she? Of course she did… but since when has that ever stopped a crazy psycho on the rampage? It never does…. They ALWAYS come back for more…. (that’s why we have sequels, silly… Hehehehe!!)

This one starts out in a remote Norwegian hospital, which is apparently scheduled to close soon. It’s nestled in a tiny remote mountain village. (Probably the one Eirik thought he’d be able to ski to for help in the last movie….) Only a skeleton staff remain on duty to tend patients still being treated. Camilla (played by Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik) is one of the two doctors still there. Her boyfriend, Ole (played by Kim Wifladt), is a paramedic and some sort of Mountain Rescue guy working with the local police. They have the same problem as Jannicke and Eirik… they are two people, obviously in love, whose lives are going in two different directions. Called out to investigate a snowed-in automobile, he finds Eirik’s car abandoned where they left it. Then, while driving back to the hospital, Ole nearly hits a somebody in the road holding a pick axe. It’s our spunky heroine, Jannicke, the sole survivor from the first film. Suffering from exposure, traumatized by her experiences and exhausted he takes her back to the hospital for treatment. There, she tells the police all about the murders of her friends and Parka Guy. The Sheriff and his men investigate the hotel and crevasse with Ole’s help, confirming the truth of her almost unbelievable story. Recovering the corpses of Jannicke’s friends and Parka Guy, they bring them back to the hospital morgue where it soon goes all terribly, horribly wrong.

This movie moves along much faster than the first one did… much of the suspense is sacrificed along the way, but that’s OK. After all, we already know who the killer is…. the film is more of a survival gore fest that a suspense film. The hospital stands in nicely for the deserted, dark, labyrinthine ski lodge. There is a slightly larger cast on hand to allow for a bigger body count as might be expected…. and Parka Guy moves from the role of deranged territorial loner with revenge in mind to unstoppable, possibly supernatural force of evil that lives only to kill.

This shift in plot gears works… (it always does) and thank goodness the police don’t waste all their efforts thinking it was Jannicke who killed all her friends… that always wastes sooo much time in a film like this. Instead they know that it’s all Parka Guy immediately, and only try to to sedate and restrain Jannicke for her own good…. she’s been through so much you see… With the larger cast and the bigger hospital environment to play with, soon you are trying hard to figure out who is going to make it and who is going to die… horribly. We’ve got quite the choices this time out. Camilla and Ole, I’ve mentioned… but we also have young and pretty nurse Audhild (played by Johanna Morck), our other doctor, Herman (played by Fridtjov Såheim), the local Sherriff Einar and his men, as well as two patients, a little boy, Daniel, and a dotty old lady with a bad case of Alzheimers. Yep… gonna be a big ol’ stack of dead people when this one winds down.

Now…. I’m not going to ruin things for you by telling you how things unwind, but let’s just say Jannicke does her best Jaimie Lee Curtis imitation as you get a very large case of deja vu here. “Halloween 2″ was here first… a long, long time ago, but as with most things old, sometimes they can be new again if you handle them right. The story keeps the momentum fast, and it’s best if you don’t get toooo attached to characters…. they probably aren’t going to end up so well.

So…. how does it end? Nope…. Not gonna tell you!! Trust me you’ll want to watch this one yourself… (but let me say that since they just announced “Fritt Vilt 3″, you can be certain somebody makes it through alive.) If the level of thrills stay constant, this lil’ Catgirl’s gonna want to see that one too.

Neko gives this one a solid 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a reasonably entertaining effort with a good nod to an old favorite, but again, I wish that the film had taken a few chances with the genre and moved someplace to call it’s own…. The next one is suppossed to be a prequel, so maybe we’ll see that then. If slasher films are your idea of an evenings fun, you can definitely do far worse than this. It does entertain…. and that’s what we want, right?

As for the disc…. now there was a disappointment. I saw this one on the UK Region 2 PAL release…. and was expecting at least as class an act as the Anchor Bay release for the first film. But no…. We get a letterboxed, uncut release…. but strangely enough, with burned in English subtitles…. Who in heck does that anymore? Given the ease with producing a disc with separate ones, it’s a let down for certain and a major annoyance considering those subs are pushed up into the image rather than being positioned down in the black bar of the botten edge. Also… unlike the US realease of the first film, there was no English audio dub either. Not a problem for me, but I had planned an evening with this film as a way of sharing “Movie Time”with Carolyn and she’s not all that comfortable with subtitles…. D’ohhh!!!

Trailer you ask? Hehehehe… there’s always a Trailer… somewhere’s out there and here it is…

The synopsis for it goes like this: “A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and her only friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.”

Yep…. sounds like a revenge driven violence fest to me…. Those usually leave me all disgusted and repelled by the ultra realistic violence and torture. Word is that this one pushes to whole idea of “extreme violence” to a revolting new level. Yeah, yeah, yeah…. we’ve ALL heard that one before. Sigh….. I suppose only one real question remains to be asked of it….. Is it scary?

Naturally there is only one real way we’re ever going to know for certain if the claims are true. Yep, you’re gonna have to “Read On” to find out.

Well, it’s films like this one that tell me I’m ever so happy I don’t live in France, (the home of the Flaky Croissant, the Eiffel Tower, jaunty Berets, and those annoying mimes….) and it quite graphically illustrates the recent changes to my movie viewing habits since Carolyn moved in with me.

She’s not exactly a fan of the usually Asian flavored horror and action films this Catgirl normally likes…. and subtitles just bore her to sleep. But…. my sweetie aches to share my hobbies and make movie night into something we both can enjoy together. With this in mind, I was actually sort of happy when she brought this one home one day from the video store….

“Look!!”, she said. “I found a French horror film at the store! You like those, right? And it’s got English dubbed audio too! This is just perfect…. we can watch it tonight and spend a nice evening on the couch.”

Somehow…. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

We start this one as an obviously tortured and abused young Eurasian girl stumbles and runs through some sort of deserted and decaying industrial warehouse area. You don’t see what’s chasing her, but the way she struggles and runs with all her strength tells you it must be utterly horrible. Eventually she manages to escape her unseen pursuer and then gets sent to an orphanage where the police try to figure out just what the nature of the terror she has escaped from truly is. They have no luck, and poor little Lucie is so traumatized that she’s unable, or perhaps unwilling, to tell them anything useful. The case goes cold…. Withdrawn and terrified of most people she remains alone until another young orphan, Anna, also a victim of abuse, becomes her only friend. The police enlist her help… but Anna knows only that Lucie has so blocked away much of what happened that even she isn’t sure what really happened to her. Then there’s the nightmares…. or are they nightmares?

In them…. something angry and terrible pursues Lucie and whenever it catches her, it hurts her….. hurts her badly. Nobody ever sees the Thing… not even Anna… but the wounds are very real and so is Lucie’s fear. At this point, you get to thinking “Ghost Story”…. but don’t get comfy with that idea… “Martyrs” likes to change gears pretty fast just when you think you know what’s going on.

15 years pass…. and then we get introduced to the typical French middle class family…. a Dad and a Mom, a smart talented daughter and their college age son who’s still struggling to “find himself”… They seem like a nice, normal bunch. Not a problem in sight…. That is until the doorbell rings. Dad goes to answer it and gets blown to bloody bits by a shotgun wielded by an older, yet still recognizable Lucie (now played by Myléne Jampanoi). Without pausing, Lucie calmly walks through the house, blasting Mom…. ambushing the son and then cruelly hunting the poor daughter like an animal, showing her no mercy at all. Then Lucie completely falls apart…. crying and going slightly hysterical even as she calls Anna (played by Morjana Alaoui) for help….. (Ummmmm? So maybe this movie is gonna be a vengeance driven Road Movie with a crazy “Thelma & Louise” go all spree killer crazy theme? …….Or maybe not….)

This is where the squirming starts…. Neko is ever so comfortable with ghosts and monsters, but slashers, psychos and extreme brutal violence just for the sake of shock usually makes me somewhat queasy. “Martyrs” is, unfortunately all about the violence. Lots and lots of it…. Big honking, bloody, bucket loads of it….. Even Carolyn sensed my growing distaste by this point, but when she said we could pass on the rest of it, I told her I never like to NOT finish a movie once I’ve started watching it… no matter what. And there was still the promise of the crazy ghost…. which shows up and attacks Lucie almost immediately after the murders while she waits for Anna to come and clean up her bloody mess. It absolutely savages Lucie…. smashing her around like a rag doll, and slicing her back to gory ribbons with a straight razor. Only Anna’s arrival saves Lucie… but Anna is horrified to see what her friend has done. Lucie swears that the parents were the ones who held her captive all those years ago…. that she’s absolutely sure of it… that she had to kill them all…. to finally end it. It’s what that angry spirit has always wanted….. payback for Lucie leaving her behind to a terrible fate when she escaped from the torture chamber as a child. So, then….. why is the spirit still angry?

Anna, meanwhile, has the unenviable task of trying to hold it all together. She’s got to keep Lucie from falling apart while figuring out what to do about the bodies… and the grisly crime scene has to be cleaned up if they are to avoid the police connecting them to the murders. Ok… Ok…. that all sounds reasonable…. but get ready…. “Martyrs” likes to hang crazy left turns on you, remember?

It’s “Spoiler Alert” time….. and I can’t really finish this review without spilling some of the surprises so be warned. Seems that one of the corpses isn’t dead…… the Mother survives her wounds and it’s up to Anna to try to get her safely away from her crazy friend. That doesn’t work of course…. Lucie finds out that Anna has betrayed her and finishes the job… bludgeoning the mother to death with a small sledgehammer. She goes over the deep end…. feeling that Anna has never believed her all these years…… But before anything can happen, there’s the “ghost” to consider….. Well, it attacks again, only this time while Anna is with Lucie….. and it turns out, that there is really no ghost. Just the delusions of a poor traumatized girl all damaged beyond saving. Lucie has been hurting herself all along…. punishing herself for her failure to save the other girl when she was a child. Before Anna’s eyes, the poor deluded Lucie finally pays for this the only way she can…. slicing her own throat with a razor and dying in Anna’s arms. Ahhhh? Say what? But there’s still 40 minutes or so left to go? Huh?

Time for “Martyrs” to do it again….. Now, out of nowhere, strange noises lure Anna to a cupboard where she finds a secret staircase to a locked and hidden basement….. a basement with lots of crazy medical supplies, a shower, and a gallery of unbelievably grisly torture pictures…. and worse…. another victim, chained in a dark room just the way Lucie was all those years ago. Guess Lucie wasn’t so deluded when she said these people were the monsters from her childhood…… Anna frees the victim…. does what she can for her, but the young woman is so badly damaged, both physically and mentally, that it’s a blessing when more strangers arrive and blow her head off. Huh?…… Say what?….

Now we move into as close an explanation of what the heck is really happening as we’re gonna get…. Seems that behind all of this is some secret cult…. a bunch of religious fanatics hung up on the idea of Martyrdom…. They’ve been capturing young girls for decades and sequestering them away for the sole purpose of systematically brutalizing and torturing them, just to drive them to the point of death hoping that their terrible suffering will allow them to glimpse beyond the veil of life itself….. And guess what? It’s Anna’s turn to become a “Martyr”…..

I wish I could say the next 30 minutes would result in Anna being made so hard and inured to suffering that she’s able to turn the tables on these people and end this by killing them all in the most gruesome means possible taking revenge for herself and poor Lucie. I really, really wish I could say that…. but I can’t. We get instead 20 minutes of sick, repulsive, and gratuitous torture…. just about everything in the book including Anna being skinned alive. She sees beyond the veil alright…. but we never get told what the point was….. At the very end the film just cops out and hands us the suicide of the Sect’s Matron, who may or may not even understand whatever Anna told her. Neko felt so…..so…. utterly dirty and foul by this point that any idea of searching for meaning was not appealing at all.

Brrrrrr…. This was a complete letdown for me. There are certain things that can help make horror of this type pass as entertainment occasionally for this lil’ Catgirl and that’s the idea that evil eventually gets served it’s just revenge. There’s absolutely none of that here…. It only leaves the viewer feeling just sickened and depressed. For all it’s brutality, at least “Frontier(s)” didn’t forget that unwritten rule…. and this one did. I slept terribly that evening, waking up from an awful nightmare screaming at around 2 in the morning and scaring poor Carolyn nearly to death. Not a pleasant experience at all…..

So…. what sort of score can I give it? It’s a mixed bag really….. the film had a promising set up, and both actresses were excellent, invoking a real sympathy for their situation…. I even liked the way it constantly challenged the viewer’s perceptions of the story by switching gears so much to keep you guessing. But the ending….. and the way the ceaseless violence is kept ramming itself down your throat….. for no good, apparent storyline payoff. I suppose I should have expected what I was in for when the film started by having the director, Pascal Laugier, do an intro in which he practically apologizes for having even made the movie……..

Remembering that I’m not really a fan of such fare, I suppose it’s reasonable to give this one a grudging 3 “Meows” out of 5….. as it is well made for the most part, but that comes with a cautious warning that it’s most definitely not for everyone. If extreme torture, realistic violence, and brutality are your cup of tea, this might be up your alley. Me… I’m planning on renting “Amélie” next time Carolyn wants to watch a French film…..

There’s a Trailer…. and here it is in all it’s repulsively gory detail……