This time…. it’s all about a movie I’ve been trying hard to find for quite some time. You see…. every once in a while, your Favorite Catgirl manages to snag a long searched for treasure… A film that somehow resists my every effort to track down despite my sometimes obsessive (and some might say crazy) efforts to make it my own. Occasionally it’s simply finding the DVD itself… (maybe forcing me to settle for a VCD or even a brittle old VHS tape just to see it at last) and other times it’s the subtitles which vex and elude me (And we all know how cranky THAT can make me, Hehehehe!!), but then there are those rare and inexplicable times the entire film seems to just drop right off the edge of the planet itself never seeming to come to light despite my best efforts to unearth it. When I finally find one of these, it’s always a thing to celebrate, and, as luck would have it, this time out my ceaseless efforts have brought me a copy of the 2006 Malay horror film “Susuk”. At last!! Just about when I’d about given up hope of ever encountering it….

Synopsis? Well here it goes: “Beauty & Fame has a price. Soraya is a young trainee nurse who is starting to feel dissatisfied by her mediocre and unremarkable life. A chance introduction to the world of glamour piques her earlier ambition to be a star. She does not succeed at first. But then she is told the forbidden practice of Susuk can help. She has to make a choice then whether to remain the way she is or cross the line into forbidden sins to realize her dreams.”

Naturally… as soon as it arrived in my mailbox, I just had to give it a watch and share my impressions with all you here at the ol’ Litterbox, o’ Gentle Visitors. As always, such a find carries with it certain expectations…. and this time is no different. But will I luck out and score a true gem, or be disappointed by a film that just doesn’t reach for those lofty levels of horror goodness?

Only one real way to find out… and that’s right, time to give it a look, so what are you waitin’ for? It’s time to “Read On!”

So…. exactly just what the heck is “The forbidden practice of Susuk” anyway, and why is it so scary? Well… looking it up on the internet tells me that it’s some sort of Traditional Witchcraft or Sorcery practiced on the Malay peninsula… and “involves the forbidden practice of inserting and embedding foreign objects such as gold, silver, and diamonds under a person’s skin in order to increase the person’s allure”…. Mmmmm? OK then? But what’s the scary part? Apparently it’s the idea that it’s a no-no to practice Sorcery in Islamic Malaysia and you are just asking to go to Hell if you involve yourself with it at all. Well…. that and you might change into some sort of demonic monster thirsting for human blood. Yep…. now that’s starting to sound promising!!

Our movie takes that idea and runs with it, giving us a character in Soraya (played by Diana Rafar) who seems to have it all… a promising career as a student nurse, a loving boyfriend named Kamal (played by Gambit Saifullah) and good friends to keep her centered and happy. So what’s wrong with her life? Mostly a stupid longing to throw away all that for a chance at the glamorous and exciting life of a Singing Idol. Mostly our film uses it’s time to give us in the audience a Moral lesson that displays this sort of wasted desire as a hollow goal with no real value beyond the loss of one’s true self. It’s preachy…. and that usually is somewhat of a turn off for this lil’ Catgirl but at least they do it with a nice plot seasoning of murder and cannibalism to tie it all together.

I wish I could say I liked the character of Soraya…. but unfortunately she’s pretty darn shallow and far too self absorbed to be sympathetic for a main heroine. Most of the other  singing divas in our story, like Susana (Ida Nerina) , Rozana (Aleeza Kassim), and Mona (Sofia Jane) all come across as pretty and talented, but also insufferably vain and conceited, interested totally in only what rewards Fame can bring them regardless of the cost to others. Thankfully, once our story finally gets going, and Susana goes all flesh eating crazy by breaking her particular Susuk’s taboo, they don’t last very long before receiving their just deserts.

This lack of a character you can root for could all be forgiven if the story just moved along in a direction that lent itself to making some overall sense…. but unfortunately…. it doesn’t. There’s a twist ending that comes at you right out of left field just when you think you have this one figured out. I’m not telling you what it is, but it makes for a somewhat confusing and unsatisfying ending overall.

So…. what sort of rating can I give “Susuk”? Well…. after my years of searching, I must admit it didn’t turn out to be the equal of “Chermin”, my overall favorite Malay horror effort or even the workman-like yet enjoyable “Santau”either. I suppose it’s nice production values, good special effects (by Malay standards) , and competent acting are worth something, so Your Favorite Catgirl can still give it a grudging 3 “Meows” out of 5… but just barely. D’ohh!!

The Malay DVD from Dragon Jester Entertainment is satisfactory, with a wide-screen Region Free presentation and acceptable English subtitles. I managed to snag my copy at a ridiculously low price too…. although since it was this hard to find for me, you won’t necessarily be as lucky should you want to see it as well. However…. I definitely wouldn’t log the long hours hunting it down that I did…. Unfortunately, it’s just not that good a film that missing it would be unforgivable or anything. Still…. if a more readily accessible HK DVD version were ever to pop up, and you want to see a different sort of Black Magic tradition, then it might just be worth a look for an evenings movie watchin’ fun.

Trailer? Yep…. Trust me,that was waaaaay easier to find than the DVD itself, and here it goes! Enjoy!

Our synopsis for it goes like this: “Adjie (Ario Bayu) and Astrid (Sigi Wimala) will leave for Australia the very next day but before that Adjie wants to meet with his rebel sister, Ladya (Julie Estelle). Their meeting does not run smoothly in the beginning as Ladya keeps blaming Adjie for his past mistakes. After persuasion from Astrid, Ladya agrees to send Adjie off in the airport.

The next day on the way to the airport their journey are interrupted when a beautiful woman called Maya (Imelda Therinne) approached them for help as she has just been robbed and she needed their help to bring her home.

After reaching at her home they are introduced by an elegant and mysterious woman called Dara (Shareefa Daanish). And the sincere and good intentions of Dara is only the beginning of a disastrous outcome. Who is Dara actually? And…. will they be able to escape from this “House of Blood” alive?”

This one promised to be a bit more extreme than the usual Indonesian horror effort, and given that I was a little hesitant at first….. You all know what a timid and tender heart lurks inside this lil’ horror movie lovin’ Catgirl, but I told myself: “Awww…  C’mon…..It’s Indonesian for goodness sake…. How truly nasty could it really be?”

Ummmm… errrr…. well… pretty darn bloody, nasty and downright mean in a true “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meets “The Hills Have Eyes” sorta way as it turns out….. So, do ya wanna know if it’s your cup of tea as well? Then all you gotta do is “Read On!!” and find out…..

I must say…. this one most certainly redefines my understanding of the latest Indonesian Horror films being made these days. Gone are my naive assumptions that the Indonesians are just too darn squeamish overall to break out the big industrial sized drum of blood and gore for their movies and go all “Psycho” with it. Directors Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto wanted to do a shocking film to expand the ideas of their 2007 original 22 min Super 16mm short film “Dara”, and by all appearances they’ve succeed here. They’ve created a nasty violent lil’ film that is, by all standards, the equal of any made anywhere in the genre today. With a bigger budget and a longer run time it’s a weird little gore-fest that plays as very modern and yet also very Indonesian all at the same time.

An old favorite of mine, Julie Estelle of “Kuntilanak”, is back as our heroine Ladya and our story involves an ill fated trip Adjie, her brother and Astrid his expectant wife convince her to take with them on a long drive from Bandung to Jakarta where they plan to fly to Australia and start their new life. There’s some tension here… seems Ladya still blames her brother for the recent death of their parents in a tragic accident. This decision on his part to move to Australia seems like just another of his perceived “betrayals” and it takes some convincing from Astrid to get her to go along with them and their friends, Alam, Eko, and Jimmy.
This was a somewhat hasty set up, story wise…. and it doesn’t give us any insight to the personal dynamics of Ladya and Adjie’s relationship beyond that feeling of distance between them… a bit more back story would have been nice here, especially given the terrible things these two are going to experience later in the film. But hey… you can’t always have everything.

As might be expected… “It’s a dark and stormy night…” and before our lil’ group can get going, they nearly run down a wet, seemingly confused young woman named Maya. Apparently in shock, she tells them she’s been robbed and asks if they’ll give her a lift home. Naturally it’s waaaay out in the woods, but Eko, the driver wants soooo badly to score points with the beautiful and mysterious Maya that he volunteers them all for the trip. Sigh…. Guys, guys, guys…. Must Neko remind you of that old rule that in any horror movie worth it’s name…. it’s never a particularly good idea to do your thinking with your penis…. Yep.This isn’t going to end well for our lil’ group…. not at all.

Maya’s house is home to her eerily strange and absolutely creepy mom, Dara, and two sociopath brothers handsome but coldly odd Adam and quiet, overweight Arman. Just one look at these guys, and your Favorite Catgirl would have been making a beeline for the door, but not these guys. Nope. They agree to stay for dinner….. not knowing our freaky family are all immortal cannibal cultists. D’oh!! You can just sense where this is heading, right?

Thanks to the old plot idea of “drugging the dinner guests”, our little group soon finds themselves all trussed up and helpless…. except for Adjie and Astrid…. seems Dara has other plans for them and their soon-to-be-born child. As if we don’t have enough plot elements already. Unfortunately… we never get any clue as to whether the child will get raised as one of Dara’s “children” or if he’ll merely become some sacrifice to the “Powers of Evil”, or just a tasty nutritional treat for the Cult…. a real pity, as this could have made for a better ending for the film had they been a tad less coy with this promising plot thread.

Instead, our story plays out with our little group getting tied up… till they escape…. frequently split up as they run around in crazed panic…. and, naturally, killed brutally one by one by Dara and her children. It’s not at all original, but it is very well done, suiting the genre conventions we all expect in a film like this. Given that this is an Indonesian film, it’s surprisingly chilling and vicious… with as much bloody mayhem as you would think necessary. Even watching the Singapore edited DVD, I couldn’t help but be struck by the level of violence “Rumah Dara” packs into it’s 94 minute run time.

Overall the acting is good, but I’m sorry to say Julie Estelle wasn’t given much to do as our heroine this time out, being less an empowered woman forced to become a fighter, instead being reduced to more of just an ordinary lucky “survivor”. While I could root for Ladya, I can’t say she felt like a “real” person to me, being much more a stock stereotype character. Instead, our standout performance has to be by Shareefa Daanish as the super creepy Dara….. she’s got an exotic, oddly disturbing edge to her performance that easily let her steal the show in every scene she’s in. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for….. Hopefully when time comes for a sequel, (and you just know there will be…) she’ll be on hand to reprise her role…..

My goodness!! This one really delivers on the promise it made to be one nasty lil’ slice of horror movie goodness. Brutal, yes…. but also campy, bloody, and fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed it…. (Yes, yes…. Even if I did have bad dreams all that night….) Your Favorite Catgirl gives it a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 and my definite recommendation that if slashers and cannibals are your thing too, and subtitles don’t worry you, then “Rumah Dara” is certainly worth your time to track down. The Singapore DVD release is edited for content…. but in this case much less so than the official Indonesian DVD release which has all the decapitation and falling head scenes deleted due to their rather graphic nature. The Singapore Theatrical Version and DVD, does contain those scenes that were edited out of the Indonesian version, although any scenes actually showing blades making contact with flesh have been removed, replaced by reaction shots for the second or so of footage that was to be lost to the censor’s knife. Such cuts are minor and trust me… you won’t even notice the difference. The Singapore DVD release is sparse… with only a Trailer and the film itself, but it is done in 16×9 wide screen with excellent separate English subtitles and is readily available for a decent price of about 20$US or so. (Now…. all I have to do is track down the original 2007 short film….. Hehehehe!!)

Trailer? Of course there’s a Trailer…. and naturally, by now, you’re all chomping at the bit for a chance to take a peek…. so here it is!

The synopsis goes sorta like this: “Dr. Lukas Esguerra comes home to his rural hometown and finds that one of the suspects in the brutal murder of his brother and his family was caught by the police and was able to sustain multiple gunshot wounds. But then this suspect is still alive, and apparently cannot die. The police locked up this suspect in the basement section of a hospital, because of the suspect’s involvement in the recent massacre that resulted to the deaths of the family of the police chief. On the evening of Dr. Esguerra’s visit, the sinister and mysterious companions of the suspect has come knocking on the hospital doors and is bent on freeing their companion locked up inside, even if it kills everybody on the way.”

Sounds like this particular one certainly isn’t going to be a sweet romantic comedy…. even though Cristine Reyes is again on hand doing her best to be as cute and adorable a cannibal monster girl as she possibly can. But scary can be good too, and so I’m really lookin’ forward to seeing if the Aswang are as creepy and horrible as all the folklore suggests they are. Well…. only one way to find out…. and that’s to get in there, curl up on the couch with the wine coolers and popcorn and give it a watch, right?

But don’t worry… Your Favorite Catgirl will let you in on all the details… all you have to do Gentle Visitor, is “Read On!!”

Our story starts with a flashback dream sequence….. seems our hero Dr. Lukas (played by Richard Gutierrez) was traumatized as a child by the unexplained horrible massacre of his whole family at the hands of a group of Aswang…. one of whom was his family’s trusted maid and Lucas’s friend, Guada (played by Cristine Reyes)…. or so he thought. Before he can even wonder why the nightmares of that time have returned to haunt him he gets a visit from a policeman from his old home town. Seems… after 20 years… the “killers” of his family have struck again, this time killing and devouring the family of an old childhood friend, now the chief of police. Astoundingly, he is told one of the killers has been captured…. Guada, his family’s maid, still looking as impossibly young and pretty as she did 20 years before. Refusing to answer police questions, she has said she will talk only to Lucas…. and so he is drawn back into the most terrible time of his life… and another brush with the supernatural.

Seems our vengeful police chief Marcus (played by Elvis Gutierrez) has his own reasons for wanting his old friend Lukas to come back home…. You see, he’s been trying to kill Guada since her capture…. over and over and over….. by shooting her, by electrocuting her, even by dousing her in kerosene and barbecuing her…. all to absolutely no effect. Seems the Aswang are immortal and seemingly able to heal any wound…. but there must be some way to kill them, and he’s hoping Lukas can learn that secret from Guada before her husband and the other members of her evil clan come to free her from captivity.

Basically… once Lukas arrives at the rural hospital where Guada is being held in solitary confinement, our story really gets going. It isn’t long before Guada’s husband and the other Aswang trap the police and hospital staff inside the nearly deserted hospital beginning a deadly siege as they try to break Guada out and devour all the humans inside. Despite his horror and revulsion, Lukas come to feel sorry for the winsome Guada, who feels true remorse for the deaths of Lukas’ family all those years ago and only wants to return to the mountains and somehow find the strength to fight her hellish need to feed on humans to survive. Cristine Reyes is getting really good at playing an Aswang…. and it isn’t long before this lil’ Catgirl found herself hoping this would somehow work out for her, although the grim circumstances of the story tell you it probably won’t.

By now, you’ve probably figured out the story here isn’t all that deep or groundbreaking. Most of the stock characters you’d expect in a survival horror are here…. The vengeance driven “Captain Ahab” figure in our police chief Marcus, his loyal (and doomed) deputy, the Head doctor and his loyal nurse, the obligatory sick little girl and her mom trapped with them in the hospital, and enough nameless police and hospital staff to make for a viable body-count once the unstoppable monsters inevitably break in. Is this a bad thing? No…. not really, but I had hoped for a more original approach to this classic old gem of a plot by Philippine director Yam Laranas after his last horror film, 2004′s “Sigaw”. Unfortunately, “Patient X” isn’t in the same league as that one, and I can’t see it inspiring a big budget Hollywood remake like his last film. Not a fatal flaw here, but a disappointment none the less.

Hmmmm? Well how about the monsters themselves? In “Patient X” we get a version of the Aswang quite a bit different from the ones I saw in “Darling Aswang”. Gone is the shape-shifting and flying found in that film, replaced here by a very humanoid creature with super strength, invulnerability, and regenerative powers that comes across as some sort of werewolf crossed with a ghoul. The makeup for them was less than inspired…. although Cristine’s look as the slowly healing, burned wretch painfully being consumed by her overwhelmingly torturous need to feed was certainly effective. Her role was perhaps the best thing in the entire film… at least for me.

Our ending….. Well, it’s not a happy one, that much I can tell you. Eventually Lukas does learn the one weakness of the Aswang from Guada…. you need to behead them you see….  and it’s monster battling fun from that point on. At least the story resists the idea of any sort of “doomed love match” between Lukas and Guada, something which would have rung somewhat wrong overall. It’s a satisfying ending…. but exactly how it turns out this lil’ Catgirl’s not going to spoil for you.

The Philippine DVD is excellent as always, being done wide screen, NTSC All Region format with almost perfect separate English subtitles. There a Trailer on board, and a small “Making of” feature (sadly un-subbed) and is well worth the 15-20$ US you’ll find it priced at most places. Neko can give it a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 with a particularly nice purr for Cristine Reyes work here…. as probably the cutest, most sympathetic, cannibalistic corpse-eating girl in all of the Philippines. “Patient X” lacks the gore and effects to make it a breakout worldwide hit, but it’s still not a bad lil’ thriller for an evening’s movie watchin’ fun.

You say you want a Trailer? Well here ya go!

Our synopsis goes like this here: “Tiara (Tamara Bleszynski) wants to get over with her traumatic past and is planning to visit Bride’s Waterfall to release her tension. She invites few of her cousins to join her in this trip. Her boyfriend, Lilo (Kieran Sidhu) and the rest seven people are joining this trip.

Upon arrival the group falls in love with its pristine beach and Tiara is delighted and looking forward to have a good time there. However, their joy does not last very long as few strange incidents occurred in the island. Finally, Lilo reveals that the inhabitants of the island have been massacred by a mysterious person.

Then a mysterious masked man starts to terrorize the island. One by one the trip members are killed with their blood being consumed. What is the motive of the murder? Will Tiara escape for safety from the masked man?”

Oh yeah…. sounds like a slasher film alright… but Neko’s hoping that they went a new direction here and at least tried to put their own mark on the genre…. It’s certainly been a good long time since I saw an original take on that old “teens gone wild, teens get dead” story idea. Will they succeed? Or will this one just remind me of the smell of over-ripe bananas gone waaaay bad?

Let’s all find out! Yep… It’s time to “Read On!!”

Our story gets going as Tiara (played by Tamara Blezynski) and her boyfriend, along with her niece Mandy and some of their friends go off for vacation to Pulau Pengantin, the “Bride Island” to see a famous landmark there, the Bridal Falls, where young lovers often pledge their eternal love before marriage as an old tradition. Unfortunately for them, the island isn’t quite as deserted as it’s supposed to be…. The guidebooks apparently forgot to include the little historical bit about a young man who wanted to marry a pretty village woman, but was denied this when the villagers found out that he was a secretly a shaman. They blocked his marriage and a mob of angry villagers burned his face, killed his bride-to-be and drove him away. In terrible revenge, he systematically hunted down and murdered the entire population of the village with his favorite pointy weapon of choice, a cruel boarding pike-like spear thingee. From that time forward, the now insane shaman has haunted the island killing all foolish enough to come there and plotting to use magic to restore his bride to life. Wow…. you’d think for certain that would be easy enough info for our little group to find before they planned their trip…. but nooooo!!! Wouldn’t have much of a movie then, would we? Hehehehe!!

Anyway…. all that implausible plot goofiness aside… it doesn’t take long for our little group to pack up their stuff and charter a couple of boats to head out to the “Deserted Island of Death”. There’s a little bit of character development…. but not much… as we find out about Tiara’s morbid phobia of being in dark places, the legacy of a car accident that nearly killed her prior to the movie, and the somewhat rocky relationship she has with her boyfriend who seems to be constantly avoiding the subject of marriage. None of this really helps us to get much of a feeling for our characters who all fit the generic cardboard stereotypes you’d expect in your standard Slasher film and that’s a pity…..

I’d sooooo hoped for something a bit more compelling and different from Rizal Mantovani, the director of  “Kuntilanak”, my all time favorite Indonesian horror film as well as the also excellent “Mati Suri”, both of which I’ve reviewed here at the Litterbox and enjoyed immensely. He did an excellent job of making both those films scary and suspenseful while keeping a very “Indonesian” feel to them at the same time. Here, he does only a simple workmanlike job at creating a pale imitation of other genre films that, thanks to Indonesian film censorship ideas, lacks most of the elements necessary to make such an effort work effectively.

He’s assembled a young, attractive cast…. and filled his film with plenty of excuses for pretty Indonesian women to act sexy and show some skin, (Knew you guys would like hearing that…. Remember though, in Indonesia, gratuitous nudity is such a no-no….) but…. there’s no real suspense to the killings that occur and very little real gore on hand here. Not exactly what one expects to find in a “Slasher” film.

Hmmmm? Well… at least Tiara and her boyfriend will finally admit their feelings for each other and be forever bonded by this terrible experience… right? Ummmm? Nope. Don’t want to spoil things for you… but the boyfriend dies pretty quickly here, and without much of a dramatic fight or struggle either. Say what? Yep…. this lil’ Catgirl couldn’t believe that story element either, but there you have it. So…. ah…. this means Tiara gets the chance to go all “Rambo” on our crazy Shaman and take revenge for the death of her friends…. right? Ahhh….. sorry…. the film’s just too short for that… But, she does manage to overcome here fear of the dark…. and that’s something, right?

I wish I could say I truly enjoyed this one, but it barely manages a 3 “Meows” out of 5 as a rating from your Favorite Catgirl. So…. I guess I’m just disappointed overall with “Air Terjun Pengantin” as a “Slasher” film…. it just finds itself too unwilling to go the extra mile to put the “exploit” in “exploitation”. A lack of “blood & boobs” can be forgiven, but one has to be extra creative with the story and cinematography to do it in this genre. Unless Indonesian films are your thing, most people who are true fans of this genre would be advised to pass on this one. However… the DVD itself is excellent, as are most recent Indonesian discs, with almost perfect separate English subtitles on board and at a price that can’t be beat here in the US. That alone gave it the push needed to get that extra crucial “Meow” outta this lil’ girl. (Pssssttt!!! Thailand…. pay attention here!! Hehehehe!!)

Ah well…. I’ve got a ton of new Indonesian horror still to watch, so who knows? Maybe one of them will restore my faith in all things scary and Indonesian… Till then, it’s “Meow, meow for now!!”

The Trailer? Yep… as always, Neko’s got ya covered!! Here we go!

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!!

What’s so darn compellingly universal about them? Seems that they manage to lurch their way into the most unexpected places…. this time out it’s the exotic land of Turkey suffering the ravages of the “Zombie Apocalypse” in the new DVD release “Ada Zombilerin Düğünü” or, as I’ve been told it translates: “The Island: Wedding of the Zombies”. This one sorta snuck up on your Favorite Movie Lovin’ Catgirl and I only recently caught wind of it during one of my quests through the Internet in search of yet another Turkish horror delight. That one managed to escape me… but I was rewarded by encountering this bit of Zombie horror goodness. One quick search later found me a copy and now it’s mine to watch and review or all of you here at the ol’ Litterbox.

Synopsis? Well… I can give you this one, translated and cleaned up a bit from the Turkish original: “Erhan, together with five long time friends, is off to the island of Büyükada’ya to attend the wedding of a distant acquaintance. To commemorate the event, he can record their happy moments with a video camera he brought along on the trip. Viewed throughout the entire film, this camera captures the horrors that unfold in a most personal fashion. All seems normal at first, yet later the wedding guests become the victims of an unexpected zombie attack, and the whole scene turns into a horrifying lake of blood.”

Looks to this lil’ Catgirl like some sort of cross between “Cloverfield” and “Blair Witch” with more than a little “Diary of the Dead” thrown in for good measure. Still…. I don’t get many Turkish Zombies in my neck of the woods, so I’m not about to turn down a chance to munch my popcorn, cuddle with my sweetie, and get my zombie movie fix, Turkish style.

Wanna know if it’s worth a look-see for yourself? Then by all means, you’d better “Read On”!

Zombies have always been the favorite fodder of every low budget horror movie maker…. and even the granddaddy of them all, “Night of the Living Dead”, owes much of it’s gritty cult phenomenon success to the nearly worldwide adoption of the Zombie into the cultural folklore of practically every country on Earth. So…. is it at all surprising to find them lurching about the landscape of Turkey? Not really… but the question remains if the Turks know what to do with this venerable horror genre.

“Ada Zombilerin Düğünü” gets it’s start in Istanbul, as our protagonists drive across town to catch the ferry to Büyükada’ya, a tourist-y sort of getaway where they are going to party it up at a wedding and reception for some distant acquaintance…. just who is never really explained… We don’t even know how our heroes got their invites or anything, it’s all sort of vague and not truly central to the plot, so we’ll let that slide. One of our characters, Erhan, comes equipped with a video camera to document the trip, and it’s from his point of view that we see the story as it unfolds…. Sound familiar? It should…. and it’s all been done before in such other horror offerings from “The Blair Witch”, through “Cloverfield” and even to Romero’s own “Diary of the Dead”. Used here, the “shaky cam” antics allow our low budget film makers to hide much of the primitive gore effects and zombie makeups withing the crazy out of focus, hard to see shots used throughout.

Where Romero’s “Diary” tried to use this style to achieve a gritty realism while exploring the societal dynamics of the modern world disintegrating under the macabre disaster unfolding before the character’s eyes, “Ada” has a much less lofty approach and merely fills it’s story with the very personal interplay between a few stock character archetypes caught up in the events portrayed. There’s Erhan, of course, whom we rarely see throughout the film not surprisingly, given that he’s always manning the trusty video camera…. that appears to be his only role here in the story and his part could be done by… well… just about any interchangeable person in the cast…. and he makes no impression upon the viewer at all. (Not even getting credited at the film’s end credits!). There’s the token yuppie couple, Ekin and Deniz (played by Gülüm Baltacigil and Kaan Keskin respectively) waiting to take the plunge and get married themselves, all the while sniping and fighting with one another over stupid things. Aloof and cynical Murat (played by Ozan Ayhan), openly critical of his friends and still smarting from the breakup he just had with his girlfriend Gamze (played by Esra Rusan)…. who just has to show up at the wedding too just to complicate things. Ah…. and last but not least, cheapskate hanger-on Omer with a hangup over one of Ekin’s girl friends Betul (played by Canan Güven). You know the sort of hang-up we’re talking about here…. the creepy awkward “stalker” kind of hang-up. Yep… that’s our little group in a nutshell.

The zombie action unfolds much as one might expect… there are small things to give the smart ones some warning, like the ambulance that is hauling a stricken zombifying victim off a ferry just as our little group arrives at the port for their own trip to the island. Do they take the hint that this might not just be the fun place to go? Nope…. but then nobody ever takes these hints in a movie like this do they? The wedding goes off as expected, the bride and groom exchanging vows, collecting all the gifts and the dancing and partying going pretty much as one might expect…. until the first wave of flesh eating corpses crash the scene.

Although this is where the action truly begins, there’s nothing particularly novel or unique about it. We get the usual mindless running in terror…. confused shots by the hand held camera which don’t let you see all that much, and the obligatory bit where our little group gets all split up in the resulting chaos. We get to see some policemen overrun by zombies and eaten… lots of party guests being gnawed on by small clumps of cannibal zombies… and naturally after some running and hiding some time for our group to get back to the silly interpersonal arguing they were up to before the world descended into the “Zombie Apocalypse”. All the standard rules are obeyed: get bitten by a Zombie and you’ll soon become one, kill the living dead by shooting or smashing them upside the head, and it’s everybody for themselves… don’t expect help from “the Authorities”.

Basically…. that’s the major flaw of “Ada Zombilerin Düğünü”… it respects the “rules” of zombie cinema but doesn’t really put it’s own “Turkish” stamp on things. Other odd lil’ zombie films from other parts of the world all manage to do just that…. Greece’s “To Kako” for instance, or Pakistan’s “Hell’s Ground” really took the zombie and gave it back to us through their own particular cultural interpretation filter… making them somehow new and different, while still letting us recognize the source material…. the “Zombie” itself. Sadly… that’s not the case here.

So…. although this one does try like a trooper to deliver the goods, and comes from what seems to be an enthusiastic bunch of film-makers in love with the genre, Neko can really only give “Ada” a barely deserved 3 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a nice try… but discerning zombie fans would want something more original and with a bit more meat on it’s bones to truly get excited. The Turkish DVD is nicely done… in All Region PAL wide-screen format, but with the most weirdly done spotty English Subtitles this lil’ Catgirl has ever seen. They are accurate enough to allow watching the film, but come with lots of simple omissions in which whole sections of dialog are simply not translated at all… leaving one scratching your head going.. “Huh? What did he say?”But… at about 12-15$ US, the price is nice, and if you are a true Zombie fan, like me, you’ll probably want a copy for yourself…. if for no other reason than to say you’ve seen Turkey’s first ever Zombie movie.

Trailer? You betcha! Here you are… fresh from Turkey!

Synopsis? Do you really need one with a title like this? Well… OK, here’s how it goes: “Life after death of a fetus inside a woman’s body exists as a Womb Ghost. Unnatural termination of such life will turn the baby into the evilest and most vicious kind of spirit.

A mental hospital is haunted by spirits, the mysterious miscarriage of a young and beautiful inmate causes authorities to investigate. Only one answer can be given to the existence of such an ungodly creature… Womb Ghost.”

Sounds trashy? Well I certainly hope so…. Your Favorite Catgirl could use some gooey nasty horror to make me squirm just a wee bit….. and it’s been a while since the Chinese managed to reach the level of some of the over-the-top gore fests of the old Shaw studios, like “Black Magic”, or “Bewitched”. Of late it’s been Thailand to which I’ve turned when I want to be grossed out in that “so bad, it’s good” way. Just why I like that sort of thing sometimes seems to escape those who love and know me well, but I like to think it’s all part of my whimsical undefinable charm….. (And it certainly sounds better than being known as “that creepy Asian girl who likes THOSE nasty sorts of movies….” Hehehehe!!)

But you, o’ Gentle Visitors, know deep in your hearts, that you too like those naughty, gory movies as much as I do…. and so you’ll definitely want to “Read On” and see if “Womb Ghosts” is up to the task of both delighting and grossing you out as well.

“Womb Ghosts” is the latest film by HK film producer, screenwriter and director Dennis Law, who also gave us 2007′s gorefest throwback to the old Shaw Brothers days, “Gong Tau: An Oriental Black Magic”. While not perhaps the most talented Director at work in HK these days, he none the less truly seems to enjoy the genre as only a real fan can and always seems to be able to make the sort of cheesy exploitation films very few people bother with these days. To that, Neko says “Good for you, Dennis!!”. But then of course… enthusiastic film making doesn’t always translate into good film making….. So exactly what’s “Womb Ghost” gonna bring us….. Hmmmmm?

Our story basically revolves around the eerie events surrounding a sordid love triangle involving two women, Winnie (played by Koni Lui), a club hostess who keeps suffering from repeated traumatic miscarriages, and Zoe (played by model turned actress Chrissie Chau), a student nurse and the current mistress of Winnie’s philandering doctor husband Joseph (played by Chris Lai). Zoe… our main character is shown at the beginning of the film as the sad, hopelessly insane patient of a mental hospital who has become the subject of a curious police investigation.

What’s up with her? Well…. despite being locked away in a high security asylum, she keeps getting mysteriously pregnant…. over and over again… which always ends in a miscarriage. The police are baffled since none of the male staff or visitors could be responsible…. being ruled out by DNA testing that shows the child couldn’t possibly be theirs. Strangely though, the fetuses always have exactly the same DNA profile as each other, a medical impossibility…. unless that means the fetuses are the same person. How is this possible?

We jump back a bit in time….. To the story of Zoe and Joseph’s affair at the hospital. Zoe is the stereotypical mistress in this tale; young, pretty and full of ambition to hook herself a doctor for a husband… even if she has to separate him from the wife he already has. I wish I could have worked up some sympathy for the character, but Zoe isn’t all that likable…. being fairly mercenary and selfish, even to the point of playing on the sympathies of her fellow nurses to glean illicit placentas, supposedly for herself to eat as part of some gross traditional Chinese medicine notion (Ewwwwwhhh… Ick!!), but in reality to sell to her repulsive spiritualist father (played by Lam Suet) to feed the “baby ghost” he has enslaved to run his fortunetelling scams.

As much as I disliked our main character, I really felt sympathy for Dr. Joseph’s poor wife Winnie. She’s a classy, sexy, stand up gall who not only put her jerk of a hubby through medical school, but who just keeps being made miserable by the recurring terrible luck she’s been having with her series of failed pregnancies. At the beginning of the story she’s at the hospital… getting some medication to help keep her latest child from ending up like all her previous pregnancies…. ending in a terrible heart wrenching miscarriage. But it seems it all for nothing… soon she’s in emergency surgery to remove the dead fetus hemorrhaging within her. It’s enough to finally convince her to leave Joseph and move away to San Francisco to start her life anew… away from him, his indifference to her and his constant philandering.

You’d think this would clear the way for Zoe to move right in and stake her claim to the good doctor… but you’d be wrong. He’s no more interested in a permanent relationship with Zoe than he was with his wife Winnie…. Grrrr!!! Men!!! Some of you can just be such jerks!! So how come the evil lil’ ghost doesn’t chase him around I wondered? If anybody deserved it he does… but nope. Our little spectre keeps following Zoe around… looking for every chance to sneak inside her womb, like she’s picking out an new apartment or something. A “Womb with a view”…. Hehehehe. Zoe’s dad tries to intervene… but he’s no match for this particular ghost… and lasts about as long as it takes for the ghost to casually rip out his lung just for spite.

We get all the usual haunting stuff…. weird dreams, hallucinations where you think you ate worms, finding little fetuses inside your breakfast eggs, and all the other paranormal experiences you might expect from a story like this. While all well done, none are particularly shocking or memorable and I supposes that’s the main problem with “Womb Ghosts”. It doesn’t really fail as a movie, but it doesn’t give you anything new either…. it’s all just sort of… well… blah. Dennis Law is certainly enthusiastic as a director, but he’s got some work to do to hone his craft and it shows here.

Our story eventually moves to it’s Twist Ending…. but you’ll be well ahead of the curve by the time it come around and have it all figured out. Neko’s not going to spoil things for you, but I can tell you it does adequately explain Zoe’s haunting and gives you even more reason to dislike her all at the same time….. Not a good thing if you want to have an audience feel sorry for the victim of your supernatural goings on. Do the police ever figure this all out? Do you really think it matters? Nope… not really. All in all the whole “placenta eating” thingee creeped me and Carolyn out more than any of the “scary stuff” going on here…. I can tell you that particular idea had my sweetie nearly green with nausea and she’s usually pretty unflappable when it comes to some of the nasty goings on in my film selections.

Overall…. Neko’s gonna have to give “Womb Ghosts” a barely acceptable 3 “Meows” out of 5…. and only because the effects and production values were pretty good overall. It has only a “by-the-numbers” story, filled with characters you mostly won’t feel any connection to and an unsatisfying ending without any real resolution or closure. I’m not going to beat up Dennis Law’s efforts as Director as I can see he’s truly a fan of the Asian horror genre, and these days we can use all the fans we can get. The DVD is simple…. Region Free and NTSC formatted in letterboxed widescreen goodness with excellent subtitles… even including the making of feature which was very interesting overall. At about 15$ US, it’s certainly worth considering if you are an Asian horror movie fan, but not really worth it to the casual Asian cinema viewer. Ah well…. maybe he’ll knock one out of the park movie wise-next time.

Trailer? Oh yes, we’ve got a Trailer in all it’s gooey placenta filled glory…. enjoy!!

Our synopsis goes like this: “Bangkok based Crime reporter Dao (Susie-Susira Angelina Nanna) has to uncover strange and unexplainable incidents in the next 24 hours. She received news from the hospital that her father (Yodchai Meksuwan) has been miraculously resurrected from the death after being dead for more than 15 consecutive years since the departure of her mother.

She experiences few incidents that are related to death such as feeling wanting to die and is determined to find out the truth about it. Joining her is an old-time police friend, Wut (Jason Young) who is interested to discover the truth about her father’s resurrection story. Both are battling the power of death and she may as well become the next victim…”

Yep…. this one most certainly sounds like one of those films your Favorite Catgirl can’t get enough of…. Weird supernatural hauntings… the dead refusing to stay dead…. babies refusing to be born…. old family secrets that lurk in the closet like skeletons….. Naturally I’m all for snugglin’ in to make a night of movie watchin’ bliss. Not to worry though, I’ll tell ya all about it.

Psssst!! That means it’s time to “Read On”, you silly lil’ doofus!!

Our story starts with intrepid photo journalist Dao on the prowl in some ruined building on the trail of a juicy story…. but while this is going on, her father is setting fire to his study and preparing for what appears to be a rather messy bit of suicide by gun. At exactly the same time as this, Dao gets a bit more than she bargained for when the meeting between a crooked businessman and his hired gun goes so, so wrong and ends in a violent murder. Worse… the killer spots her and tries to kill her, shooting her in the chest at point blank range just as her father puts a bullet in his head on the other side of the city. Somehow… miraculously she survives without a scratch…. But then, things in a horror movie are never that easy are they?

Dao figures she just got lucky… the flash of her camera must have thrown the killer’s aim off at the crucial moment, right? Her watch is shattered… maybe it deflected the bullet and saved her… that could explain it. That or he just plain missed her. Either way… with the photos of the murder, she’s got one hot scoop for her editor and a shot at making quite a name for herself. But… before she can celebrate, she gets the bad news about her dad. In shock, she hurries to the hospital where her father’s body lays in the morgue as cold and dead as anybody can be. …..Or is he? Only moments after her arrival, he’s up and moving and very much alive…. fairly well messed up, the way only a bullet in the ol’ noggin’ is likely to leave you, but despite all sensible logic, alive.

Here’s where our film starts to build it’s tension and suspense. Seems Dao and her professor father haven’t spoken in years…. ever since he killed Dao’s mother by unhooking her from a respirator when she was a little girl. To an outsider… this was an act of mercy, ending the suffering of someone he loved, but to Dao it was a betrayal she’s never been able to get past. Unknown to her, her father had become obsessed with death itself….. and specifically the idea that one could use mathematics to unravel the universe’s secrets to finally know the exact moment of any person’s date of death. His rooms are filled with all sorts of creepy news clippings and the cryptic scribblings of either a genius or a madman…. culminating in his seemingly inexplicable suicide attempt. Doubly strange given the discovery of the calculations showing his own death to be some 15 years away.

In some way, and for reasons he’s now unable to explain… Dao’s father has managed to disrupt something in the very fabric of the universe. The Buddhist cycle of birth, death, and rebirth has been thrown completely out of whack by his actions. Now… it seems… no one can die, and no one can be born either. So what’s the problem with that you ask? Well…. not dying doesn’t mean that you can’t get terribly, horribly messed up by accidents, or spend the remainder of your existence trapped in utter agony. Oh yeah…. and that really sucks just as much as it sounds…..

In true “Final Destination” fashion, “Death Happens” doesn’t leave it at that either. Seems some dark force is now following Dao… who by now we understand was supposed to have died by the hand of that killer on that fateful night, but who was spared by her father’s sacrifice for the little girl he still loves more than his own life itself even if she still hates him. Yep…. Death, or Karma, or the Universe wants things back to normal and it’s gonna do that by trying to finish off Dao to put things back on track. We get several hallucinatory episodes as Dao is killed… over and over in various ways, yet somehow surviving those events as if they never happened at all.

So… basically the Universe is screwed. Dao is slow to figure this all out of course, and much of the movie revolves around her and Inspector Wut as they go about encountering these bizarre “non-deaths” and “non-births” while piecing together what her father had been up to all those years they were estranged. Ahhh…. and naturally, the murderer she photographed is on her trail too. He wants her photos and to eliminate any witnesses to his crime…. but darn it, Dao is just one tough lady to kill these days…..

Eventually, it gets revealed that all this stuff her father was up to was to discover not his own death date, but hers… the exact moment her watch was broken… and to save her the only way possible, by substituting himself for her in the cosmic calculations of life and death. Unfortunately he didn’t understand what saving her would mean to the “Big Picture”. So what’s the ultimate resolution here? Hmmmm? Well Neko’s certainly not gonna tell you…. you’ll probably want to find out for yourself. Let’s just say this… the Universe can certainly be one mean uncaring bitch when it comes to rules and regulations….

So… to wrap things up, Neko can give “6:66 Death Happens” a reasonable 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a competent lil’ thriller, but I wish it had been just a wee bit more original. The effects are good…. and you’ll get more messed up nearly dead guys than any movie really needs here, along with one truly creepy scene where a baby pops out of a pregnant woman for a look-see before being sucked back in… painfully, I might add…. The acting is acceptable if not inspired, and our heroine Dao appealing enough to hold your sympathy as you figure out the world of shit she’s stuck in. All in all a nice film, but not a groundbreaking one. The original Thai  Region 3 PAL disc is nothing special…. but it is up to their usual competent standards. Sigh…. yes, no English subtitles… yet again (Booooo!!!)…. but the fansubs available for this one are timed properly and more than adequate for you viewing pleasure. Still… I expect this one will pop up in HK eventually, so unless you speak Thai… (or are a hopeless Thai movie junkie like a certain lil’ Catgirl) you could wait a bit to catch this one when it becomes available there with subtitles in place.

Yep… there’s a subtitled Trailer available… and here it goes just for you!

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?

Surprisingly…. for an American made horror film that’s nearly 2 years old, your Favorite Catgirl only managed to run across this on on it’s Region 2 UK DVD release just a week or so ago. I’ve been unable to confirm it was even ever released here in the good ol’ US of A… but it’s certainly found it’s way everywhere else lately, from Germany, the UK, and even in a Region 3 release in Thailand.

Our synopsis goes like this: “When rugged country boy John takes his city raised friends on a weekend trip back to his deceased uncle’s remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical “guys getaway with guns” – despite the presence of John’s sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the marijuana filled hills of Northern California, they find a wilderness laced with rednecks, lots of high powered weaponry, and a killer cult of machete toting hippie beauties, only to learn the awful truth about his late uncle’s death and the truth behind the local legend of “The Ripper” — a murderous 3000 pound man-eating wild boar!”

Now Neko’s seen killer Aussie piggies….. killer Korean pork on a rampage….. so am I ready for some good ol’ American “Pig-foot” action? More importantly…. is Carolyn? (Hehehehe!! At least this one is in English….)

Since all you gentle visitors here at the Litterbox probably are “Killer Pig movie” fans too, you best not waste any more time them. Let’s “Read On”, shall we?

Killer pigs….. Ever since “Razorback” waaaay back in 1984, people have known that the humble pig was definitely a serious contender in the exploitation genre of “When Animals Attack”…. so it should come as no surprise that there’s another deadly oinker out there creating yet more bloody mayhem. I seem to have missed this one somehow back when it was first made, but thanks to the recent Region 2 UK release, I’m all set now. Ordinarily… when a movie like this skips theatrical release and then turns up on overseas DVD release first, it’s a sure sign of major “craptastic” film making at it’s best… or would that be at it’s worst? In any event… this lil’ Catgirl has never let that stand in the way of getting my vicarious “Bad movie” fix before, so why start now?

This one starts out as former hick and “good ol’ boy” John Hickman (played by Travis Aaron Wade) is preparing to leave for a weekend hunting trip with his city bred buddies Ben, Wayne and Quincy (played by Howard Johnson, Jr, Rajiv Shah, and Trevor Bullock respectively). So it’s off to the wilds of Northern California where he grew up in his deceased uncle’s old cabin….. definitely your typical drunken male bonding… with guns… except for one small item he forgot to tell the guys. His girlfriend Brooks (played by Tina Huang) isn’t too keen on him going unless she can go along too. Needless to say…. the guys aren’t happy about that at all.

Yep… sounds like a pretty familiar plot so far, and it’s got all the usual standard elements you’d expect… with one major difference. Usually our male lead in a story like this is hunky and brooding… with some sort of tragic past that makes him a sympathetic character despite his somewhat questionable tastes in best friends. Unfortunately for “Pig Hunt”, our hero John just isn’t that appealing…. in fact I took a rather quick dislike to him almost immediately. Strangely enough… his girlfriend Brooks is the character I became interested in. She’s a pretty, smart, tough, resilient Asian girl who’s waaaay out of her jerk of a boyfriend’s league. If she’s got any flaw, it’s the fact that she’s in love with a total tool like John’s character at all…… Sigh. But it’s true that some girls do fall for those superficially attractive “bad boys”, and that’s how this relationship comes across to me anyway.

Once we leave the city, it isn’t long before our lil’ group manages to find their way to the incredibly rural wilderness where the majority of our story takes place. One stop later at a quaint little country store and our city boobs know the local story of “The Ripper”… the biggest baddest 3000 pound pig to ever roam the forest in search of hunters stupid enough to intrude on his domain. Oh…. and they find out all about John’s late alcoholic uncle too… and his Moby Dick sized obsession with the Ripper, an obsession that just might have led to his grisly death…. if he didn’t shoot himself in a drunken fit as John has always believed. Given this cute story… our boys stock up on beer and plan to bag themselves some big pig for a trophy.

But…. before they leave, they meet Cimi (played by Cimi Ahluwalia), the leader of a cult-like hippie commune and a couple of the veritable horde of drugged out white women that follow him. He’s one voodoo priest lookin’ scary guy with a big ol’ kukri and nearly ends up getting in a dust up with John and the guys after teasing Brooks with a rattlesnake. You just know we’re gonna see him and the girls again….

At last they make it to John’s uncle’s cabin…. a crazy abandoned place that looks like it was decorated in early “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meets “Hannibal Lecter”. Neko hasn’t seen that many animal bits used as  home decor in many a year I’ll tell ya… It’s soooo bad, our heroes don’t even stay in the cabin, opting instead to pitch tents in the front yard. Next day… a couple of John’s old local “friends”, Jake and Ricky show up. Talk about vicious inbred redneck hicks…. these two make the hillbilly cast of “Deliverance” look like Harvard alumni. Somehow they manage to get our boys to let them guide the group on their hunt even though Brooks is starting to get the idea they should all just high tail it back to LA.

But we wouldn’t have much of a movie if we let that happen now would we?
Our little group sets out for the “Big Wallow”…. which is just the sort of place it sounds like…. and the wild boar said to inhabit that neck of the woods. Here’s where our little camping trip goes soooo sooo bad. Along with the hogs, there a gigantic secret crop of marijuana and the inevitable accidental shooting occurs….. (Well.. OK… maybe not so accidental a shooting……) leaving one of our dumb-ass crazy homicidal country boys dead as a doorknob. Seen “Deliverance”? Then you know what’s just gotta follow…. Yep, an all out war between our little group and the deadly rednecks (Who apparently are big fans of the “Road Warrior” too…. Never seen quite that many goofy lookin’ hillbillies riding dune buggies and motorcycles in my life!!). Of particular note here is my personal favorite vicious dumb redneck who just can’t set out in hot pursuit of vengeance without first donning his gas mask before riding off on his motorcycle….. He had me laughing sooooo hard I almost choked on my popcorn. Here the story gets violent, bloody and oh so personal. But…. still no real “Giant Piggy” action!!

Yep…. up to now our film has been teasing us. There’s been a couple of tense moments, a hunter getting gobbled up in the very beginning, and a horse being beheaded by a gigantic “something” but no real “Razorback” style moments of horror. Thank goodness Ben gets shot and wounded by the rednecks…. it lets him stumble his way to the hippy commune where the harem of fanatic hippy chicks can take care of his wounds with a little TLC right before setting him up as a sacrifice to their God of the Wilderness, the Ripper!!

Not much movie left to go, (and by now not a whole lot of cast either) so it’s really not all that surprising when the war between our cityfolk and rednecks spills over into the insanity of Cimi and his crazy cult of pig worshiping hippy girls…. There’s plenty of body-count as the three groups start killing each other off in lots of terribly violent ways. Eventually it’s down to just John, Brooks, and Cimi….. Oh, yeah…. and one big mutant hog from Hell. Think you know how it ends? Well…. Ok…. you’d be right. No surprise, our girl Brooks and her boyfriend make it…. (Although Neko was sorta hoping he’d end up Pig Food giving Brooks the opening she needed to waste the Ripper at the climax… Oh well. Can’t have everything.) Roll those credits!!

How does this one stack up? Surprisingly well, actually. Despite the problem of having a basically unlikeable group of protagonists, the overall story has all the right elements to make for a simple evening of crazy bloody fun. Luckily I really did like Tina Huang as Brooks…. without her to root for, “Pig Hunt” probably wouldn’t have been worth watching as there is actually very little “Pig-zilla” fun and games. The effects, stunt work and action sequences are all well done, making it at least work on the level of a simple action film. As a horror film though, it’s a bit of a let down, with no real suspenseful moments to remember overall and a lack of screen time for our giant hog. Like the Aussie “Razorback”, our big piggy in this one is actually giant robot critter, but here it gives the film an “old school” horror movie charm that the recent overabundance of CGI films have somehow forgotten.

Neko ended up enjoying “Pig Hunt” 0verall despite these few quibbles and I give it 3 “Meows” out of 5 for doing most of the exploitation elements of the genre justice and giving me a decent heroine to root for even if I soooo wished her love interest dead. The UK Region 2 PAL disc is spartan, but acceptable. Hopefully it’ll pop up on Region 1 as well, giving US fans a chance to see it without having to import it from overseas.

Is there a Trailer? Do giant killer pigs poop in the woods? Hehehehe!!