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!

The simple synopsis goes: “Professor Andriy Belov moves to a small town from the capital, and from his university to a woman’s high school, so that his wife can get the treatment and air she needs. After a short time a the school, he begins to notice strange things happening to his students. The students in the fifth class don’t play with dolls, they delight in making a toy of human lives.

One day he finds a note reading ‘Save Us,’ and he begins to take action. As he investigates, his life degenerates into a nightmare, and his only hope is a lone little girl, Yulenka….. or does something evil hide behind her innocent eyes?”

This is another of those odd little films for which your Favorite Catgirl ends up spending her odd hours searching high and low for subtitles when the original DVD lacks them. Sometimes I find them right away… other times it take a while… sometime it takes an excruciatingly looonnggg time. These ones required me to delve into some fairly odd places in the former Soviet Union, but my perseverance has finally paid off, and so now…. with some fairly accurate fan-translated subtitles in hand and a copy of the Region 5 DVD…. “Yulenka” is finally mine!!

Was it worth all my silly efforts (not to mention a fair amount of Bablefish translation of Cyrillic Russian)? Guess you’ll have to “Read On” to find out!!

“Sugar and spice… and everything nice…” At  least that’s how cute little girls usually get described at that tender age, anyway. But… apparently not all of us were made using that particular recipe…. This movie is about just such a sweet lil’ girl…. and the nasty, wickedly evil things she gets up to. No hopscotch, tea parties, or barbie dolls for lil’ Yulenka… oh, no sir!!

This one starts off in a morgue…. a nasty, rat infested, dark and dank, post Soviet era sort of morgue…. (Makes me really certain I don’t ever want to end up dead in Russia…. Ewwwhhh!!) and a rumpled police inspector being shown the body of a recent  murder victim. Not your usual sort of killing… this poor guy has had his entire spine removed. It’s the sort of killing our detective hasn’t ever seen in his career and it leaves him at a loss to understand just what sort of murderer he’s looking for. Gruesome stuff… and just the sort of case any policeman dreads.

But… more on that later, because now we flash-back to our hero, Andriy Belov, his girlfriend Lera and her daughter Nastya as they cross a decrepit old ferry on the way to the exclusive private girl’s school where he’s accepted a teaching position. There’s some bit about how the air will be good for Lera… seems she’s subject to bad asthma attacks… but you get the sense that other reasons might have led to Andriy leaving the city, and his studies towards his PhD to take a lower paying, less prestigious position waaay out in the middle of nowhere. However… don’t wait around trying to find out what… they never really go anywhere with that subplot. He’s all upbeat… but as they pass a picturesque part of the river, you get the first hints that things here aren’t going to be good…. a rotting corpse hidden away unnoticed along the river’s edge. If only they’d paid more attention, they might have avoided the nasty stuff to come…

At the school, Andriy is welcomed by the Head Mistress/ Principle…. and we get another “Red Herring” as they talk about how initially suspicious they were about his application, given the step down for him that it represents… but again, ignore all that, they don’t go anywhere with it…. too bad, given that it might have spiced up a later event in the film. Despite their original reservations, he gets given a homeroom class along with Nastya, and starts right in teaching literature to the apparently innocent little schoolgirls. The girls all seemingly take to him, enjoying his lessons and acting like just like typical youngsters at that age. Then things start going wrong….

He first witnesses a vicious attack and beating on one of his girls by others in her class. When confronted about it… they go from nice little girls to stone cold thugs, freezing him out and letting him know he can do nothing to stop them from doing whatever they like. Worse…. he discovers one of the girls, Sonya, appears to have recently committed suicide by jumping out of a window at the school…. but there’s a reluctance to talk about it, and he soon comes to think it might not have been a suicide at all…. Yep, you just know this is gonna get worse….

All through this, Lera supports him, so happy to be on the verge of becoming a family, that living in a crummy apartment in the boondocks where her work as a photographer is just about useless is all worth it. Even her daughter Nastya is happy… she likes Andriy and wants so badly to be able to call him “daddy” for real… just as soon as he and her mom get married. She’s even made a new friend at school…. little Yulenka, who seems to be one of the few girls in class not part of the silent “evil conspiracy” that haunts Andriy at night as he imagines Sonya’s death over and over in his nightmares.

Yulenka is a bright young girl, intelligent far beyond her years…. serious and seemingly troubled by the loss of her father in a car accident years before. Now living alone with her mother, she seems badly in need of a “father figure” to help her cope with an isolation from her peers. Andriy becomes immersed in this, becoming more and more entangled by circumstance and the losing battle with the desire he feels towards her sexy widowed mother as well. Big… big… mistake.

Eventually he trips up and has a passionate sexual encounter with Yulenka’s mom…. all part of Yulenka’s very own psychotic scheme to create her own “family” at any and all costs. From this point on, all gloves are off. Yulenka begins an open war of wills with Andriy, telling him he’ll drop Lera and Nastya to be with her Mom and her…. or else. Naturally the stupid fool ignores her warnings. But Yulenka isn’t kidding.  Nope…. not at all. She starts off by having her “gang” of girls firebomb his apartment while they were sleeping. Yeah… now THAT”S really subtle….

For some goofy reason… this attack is never adequately investigated by the police… if you can believe it… and so he is forced to try and get evidence against Yulenka and the girls from the victim of the beating. Stupid move… Yulenka just arranges an “accident” that nearly kills the girl in a horse riding exhibition. We never see that girl again… Ok… ok… how about reasoning with Yulenka? Nope. That just ends up with her telling him the grisly little story about the last guy her mom was involved with. A sensitive traveling artist who stayed with them for a summer… only to break her Mom’s heart by planning to leave them. A simple drugging and a drowning in the river later and we now know why Sonya died. Seems Yulenka needed drugs for the killing that only Sonya’s mom had access to in her job as a surgeon. A few threats later and a frightened compliant Sonya became one of those people who “knew too much”…. Got it?

Unable to convince him to get with the picture, Yulenka moves to eliminate the remaining obstacles to what she desires by first trying to kill Nastya… arranging for her to be in a deserted courtyard where a viscous dog nearly savages her to death. After that… to split Lera away from him she lures Andriy to a meeting in a deserted wing of the school and when he fails to go along with what she wants, plays the particularly nasty card of screaming and accusing him of child molestation. This particular idea…. while certainly a perfect way to punish him…. is actually one of the weakest elements in the film. Yulenka is portrayed as a genius with an unbelievable cunning…. and these charges, had they stuck or not, would have resulted in Andriy never being allowed within a 1000 miles of her and her Mom… hardly the way to force him into ever becoming part of their family. It would have only worked plot-wise, I think, if they had included a similar scandalous accusation as part of the reason he had to change teaching jobs earlier on…. but nope, they don’t use that idea. This particular notion is also quite unnecessary given Yulenka’s next trick….

You see, even the police don’t even buy the accusation for a moment…. and the inspector tells him they suspect something is up with the girls and their corroborating stories. Given the earlier firebomb attack, they let Andriy go… advising him to just leave the school before something worse happens….. great police work, eh? But Yulenka’s been a busy, busy little psycho…. and while he was in jail and Lera was at the hospital with Nastya, sneaks into their ruined apartment long enough to post about a jillion pictures of him and her mom having crazy wild sex for Lera to find when she gets home. Apparently Yulenka is also quite the budding little photographer as well. Oh… and there’s a gun to steal from Andriy’s manservant too….. Poor, poor Andriy…. he’s in deep shit now.

Sigh…. You just know Lera doesn’t take the photos well…. She and Nastya are both gone when he finally gets released from jail. We never see them again…. but at least they survive this film. Andriy’s manservant offers to go after them… but later we see a TV report about how a terrible accident with his car has resulted in his death. Hmmmmm? Genius… photographer…. and now auto mechanic… is there anything this lil’ girl can’t do? Well… yeah. She’s not a brilliant surgeon. But…. luckily she’s remained the only friend that Sonya’s poor insane mother still has since she went… well… a little bit crazy and tried to kill the teachers at the school over the death of her beloved dear little girl. Yulenka has been visiting her at the asylum regularly…. and when she tells Sonya’s mom that she knows just who was responsible for Sonya’s death, it’s not hard for her to escape and be convinced to perform horrible surgery on  Andriy as revenge once Yulenka gets him drugged, bound and gagged waaaay out in the lonely woods where nobody will hear his screams.

Ah!!! So it turns out he’s the guy in the morgue with the missing spine from the beginning of the film….. Yep. Oh, yeah…. and a crazy lunatic with a hatred of teachers is the perfect patsy to blame all this mayhem on if you can convince her that suicide by gun will reunite her with her daughter in Heaven. Seems all this leaves us set up nicely for “Yulenka 2: Daddy’s Little Girl”…… Yep, I can definitely see this film coming back for more. (Pssttt! Russian guys….feel free to use the title….. Neko’s feeling generous!!)

So…. what did I think of “Yulenka”? Hmmmmm…. well it’s actually a pretty good film, all little quibbles aside. The plot was a bit simple, had a few inconsistent holes, and borrowed heavily from a few earlier films… the “Bad Seed” springing to mind… but was enjoyable overall for me, given that I’m not a big fan of serial killers or psycho killers. I think that the standout had to be Darya Balabanova’s performance as Yulenka. She’s a very good little actress, and could give me serious goosepimples with a single creepy look that told you she meant business. Marat Basharov wasn’t bad as our hero Andriy, but wasn’t spectacular either being easily out-shined by his young co-star. Most of the other performances were adequate if not inspired, resulting in a very nice little thriller overall. Your favorite Catgirl liked it, as did Carolyn, and both of us could agree that it deserves a nice 3 “Meows” out of 5 with a special purr of appreciation for little Darya…. I’m going to be looking for her to turn up in future films from Russia.

The DVD? Well…. I actually saw this one on a Region 5 release, in PAL format, letterboxed and with some fansubs that I located on an obscure Russian film forum. While not perfect, I was able to fix them a bit for grammar and context enough to make them usable. You, gentle readers, all should definitely wait though, as I’m thinking this one is a natural to get either a decent Region 1 or 2 release soon with good subtitles and maybe even an English dubbing. If so, Neko says it’s a “don’t miss”.

Trailer? Yep… not a problem! Here ya go!! Enjoy!

Giant Killer pigs from down under? Yep… back in 1984 this one snuck out of the “Land down Under” and tried it’s best to convince us all that crazy man-eating wild pigs were scary. If my memory serves me right, I was a wee impressionable girl of 11 the year this one hit video, and naturally…. when it was my turn to pick a film for family movie night, one look at the cover convinced me there could really be no other choice. I can still hear Grandma now…. “Miyuki!! Giant pig movie not good!! Little girls not to watch these things! You need to pick better movie.”

But nooooo!! Lil’ Miyuki would have none of that… so we did indeed spend an evening watching Gregory Harrison save Australia from the “Giant Pig Menace”….. much to my poor Grandma’s dismay. I thought it was great…. and my dad sorta liked it too…. but Mom and Grandma took it as another sign of just how American I was growing up to be despite their best efforts to make me into a proper lil’ Japanese girl.

It’s out on DVD… and I was lucky enough to score the Region Free PAL formatted Australian release for it. So…. the only question remains, “Is Carolyn ready to share this treasured childhood memory with me?” Hehehehe…. I sure hope so, ’cause ready or not, here comes “Razorback”!!

This one is a real hoot, start to finish… and is the first film ever directed by veteran MTV music video director Russell Mulcahy who later went on to score big with “Highlander”…and was actually a Winner of two Australian Film Institute Awards for Cinematography and Film Editing. Yep…. a simple lil’ film that basically takes “Jaws” and turns it into a movie about a big pig!! Lil’ Miyuki never knew any of that…. but grown up me is all suitably impressed I can tell you. The imagery is rich and gorgeous right from the first shots straight on throughout the film. I hadn’t noticed just how beautifully this film had been shot until re-watching it all these years later.

We start out with grizzled old hunter, Jake Cullen, (wonderfully played with genuine gusto by Bill Kerr) who is watching his grandson while his daughter is away in the quiet outback town of Gamulla. Out of nowhere one dark night, an enormous feral pig rampages through his house like a runaway freight train seizing the helpless baby, and nearly killing Jake before escaping again into the darkness. Everybody assumed the old man went crazy… killed his grandson and hid the body, since there could never be such a thing as the monster he describes to police. They put him on trial but there’s insufficient evidence to convict him of murder, so he is set free. His family and his friends all turn against him… the town shuns him…. nobody believes his story or his insistence in his innocence. So, like Captain Ahab, he grows cold and mean, distancing himself from most others,obsessed with only one remaining goal. Tracking down and killing that monster boar that carried off his grandson and ruined his life…… And this is all before the opening credits roll!

Years later, New York television journalist Beth Winters (played by Judy Morris) is assigned to travel to the town of Granulla to do an investigative expose on the kangaroo slaughter industry for animal rights groups Given that the local economy is pretty much based on this despicable practice she gets little cooperation from the locals. Her own cameraman tells her it’s pretty much a wash, but she’s determined to find out the grisly details of the business. When she visits the Pet-Pack slaughterhouse alone to get some pictures, she is spotted by the owners, crazy brothers Dicko and Benny Baker (played by Chris Haywood & David Argue respectively), who chase her down, wreck her car, and try to rape her. Before they can succeed, they get interrupted by the giant razorback, which kills Beth after they run for the hills. They keep quiet about the event and Beth gets reported missing, so her husband Carl (played by Gregory Harrison of “Trapper John; MD” fame) comes to Australia to find out what really happened to his missing wife.

From this point forward, the film goes pretty much like “Jaws”…. but with a lot more bleak “deser-ty” bits thrown in. We get the obligatory love interest in the form of Sarah Cameron (played by Arkie Whiteley), who finds our hero after he makes the mistake of trying to cozy up to the two psycho brothers in an attempt to find out what they know about his wife’s disappearance. Carl tells them he’s interested in opal mining and goes out pouching with the brothers at night and ultimately they abandon him way out in the desert figuring he’ll meet the same fate as his nosy wife. He almost does…. after staggering about in a truly freakish hallucinatory sequence before the big ol’ hog shows up. When Sarah encounters him, he’s just about dead from exhaustion and exposure, but she nurses him back to health at her farmstead and becomes a part of his investigation along with grim old Jake the vengeful hog hunter.

Like all good obsessed vengeance junkies, old Jake eventually falls prey to our killer piggy, after first getting the crap kicked out of him by the whacked out brothers for getting too close to them and their business. His death is probably the goriest moment in “Razorback”… surprising since there really isn’t that much overt bloody stuff to see throughout the film. The best moments are usually when the giant boar is shown in simple glimpses…. never all at once, including my favorite… when it pulls the entire side wall off a building and drags it into the night leaving the owner to stare unbelievably out of the huge hole in his house.

This all builds well to the final showdown at the creepy Cannery, with Carl finally facing off against the monster pig set against the gruesome mechanical maze of the factory, sort of like the finale of “Terminator”…. only this time, the Hog won’t be back…..

I liked this one!! It holds up pretty well to the way I remember it from my first viewing all those years back, and this time I was able to catch all the artful bits thrown in as well. The director, Russell Mulcahy, had already established himself by the time of “Razorback” as one of the most innovative of the original music video directors even directing the very first ever video clip ever shown for The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” back in 1981 when MTV first premiered. Here he injects “Razorback” with that same eye for bizarre and memorable images, particularly the hallucination sequence where Gregory Harrison wanders the desert seeing the most unsettling and nightmarish experiences of the film. He makes the Outback itself as much a character in this film as any of the actors…. giving it a mythic, “fanstasia” look that makes you believe that strange and terrible things might just lurk somewhere in Oz after all….

In conclusion… your Favorite Catgirl Princess gives “Razorback” a firm 4 “Meows” out of 5. It’s fun…. it’s easy on the eye….. with a plot that wont leave you lost and confused, and most importantly, it does makes you genuinely worry about being eaten alive by giant hairy pigs. Can you ask for anything better?

The Australian DVD is gorgeously done, wide screen in all Region PAL format with a nifty selection of Trailers on board for other Australian horror films, as well as an honest to goodness 70 minute behind the scenes documentary about the film as well as lots of deleted scenes and audio commentaries. Not a bad find for this lil Catgirl! Grab it yourself if you can find it, you won’t be sorry.

Yep….. can’t leave you without a Trailer, not on your life!!

Yep…. Neko-chan doesn’t have that many Region 5 goodies, so when I chanced upon this one, it took only a little bit of research to confirm that, yes… it was a horror film, and yes, it actually has English subtitles!! Could I bear to pass it up? Not on your life.

The synopsis reads like this: “They were the students of archaeology who ought to serve their academic internship. Their task was to search. Incidentally the students find the lost entrance to the pit which was a myth among the scientists. Disregarding evil omens they meet, the students decide to descend underground and discover its mystery. But they don’t know there are things one shouldn’t search…”

OK…. Well, I’ve bought movies from far away lands with less information available on them than this… So let’s dig in find out what “Shtolnya” is really all about, shall we?

Well… this one doesn’t waste any time getting right to things. Probably ’cause this one is a fairly short movie at only 80 minutes or so… We start out on a basketball court, and there’s the standard old conflict…. a harmless geek versus the “jocks”. We see just what sort of real jerks Bita and his buddy Den can be… you just know that’s gonna make us sorry for poor Shorty who seems to be the focus of their cruelty. Yep… you already know who this lil’ Catgirl is voting for the top of the body count list.

Right after the coach reprimands the boys we switch to the hallway at the college?… errrr… ummm.. high school?… ummm? Neko isn’t really sure, and neither will you be, as the movie sort of captures that limbo of existence with a bunch of characters that could be straight out of any 80′s horror film made right here in the West…. To say that they are cardboard is perhaps a bit mean, but truly accurate. We have the stereotypical Jock, Bita (played by Sergiy Stasko), his best bud Den, the club savvy guy with the car (played by Pavlo Li). “Shorty”, our geek and all around decent guy (played by Oleksiy Zabegayev). Joining them are prerequisite blonde popular girl Katya (played to perky perfection by Olga Storozhuk) along with her tag-along BFF, Viki (played by Svitlana Artamonova). Add a bearded old professor (played by Mykola Kartzev) and a trip to a dig site near the old area once the stomping ground of an ancient cult of devil worshiping pagans, and we got the basic formula for any number of films.

This, I think is both the strength and the weakness of the film….. Seriously. If it weren’t for the cast all speaking Ukrainian, these guys would all be easily mistaken for the kids in any Slasher film made 20 years ago. Almost nothing about it gives you a feeling for the Ukrainian setting at all. On the other hand, this also makes the film readily accessible to those who might otherwise be intimidated by having to read subtitles as well as figure out the unfamiliar customs of the locals. I watched this one with Carolyn, and she felt immediately comfortable with it, not needing any of my usual explanations as to what the heck might be going on.

Anyway…. the kids all pile into Den’s car for the long drive out to the dig site after Katya sticks up for Shorty and tells the two neanderthals to cut out their crap and get with the program. We have a few moments of character development on the drive…. long enough to see how badly Shorty pines for Katya… and long enough to heave a brief minute of fear as a bird does the whole kamikaze thing right into the windshield of the car. It’s the bloodiest moment of the film, and probably the one real scare to happen.

At the site, they meet up with the professor who tells them about the evil cult. How they got suppressed by the church, their members scattered and their idol taken for the museum of Kiev. But wait!! It seems the Nazi’s manage to find their way into this story….. during the war they overran this part of the old Soviet Union and so the idol and all the treasures from the museum were secretly hidden away in a maze of tunnels that honeycomb the entire region. Unfortunately, nobody knows just where they ended up, and it’s the professors dream to find the idol and return it to the museum. The kids find the entrance to the old tunnels… but they are locked up and Bita and Den are dead set against letting the professor steal all the glory of the find.

That night, something prowls around their campsite and the girls and Shorty get coerced into not telling the professor about the tunnels…. you know where this is going. Next day…. the professor is nowhere to be found, but strangely enough the lock to the gate on the tunnels is broken, and Bita convinces them the professor has abandoned them to grab the treasures for himself!! With that, it’s into the tunnels to search for him, doing the whole “breadcrumbs and mapping” thing to keep from getting lost. But you know it’s doomed to failure… because they aren’t alone at all.

From this point forward it’s the standard plot…. lots of bumbling through dark tunnels after they get lost (of course..), as one by one our kids are knocked off. One by booby trap…. one by killer rats…. and so forth. Neko isn’t gonna tell you who dies and how, but you can pretty much figure out, it’s gonna be a much smaller group that crawls outta here. The best part had to be when our heroes try to yell for help through an old ventilation pipe to the surface and manage to have a guy less than 5 feet from the pipe…. but wearing ear protectors and running a generator and chainsaw…. boy, does that suck.

Eventually… the survivors all get to find that the ancient cult still exists… even though it’s just one guy… and he’s got the idol in some creepy underground temple, and he needs a perky cute human sacrifice for his god. Naturally perky Katya fits the bill just fine. Will she get saved from this terrible fate? Will she and Shorty hook up and make it out alive? Remember… this one uses an old, old plot. so there really isn’t any other way to go.

So… how do I rate this one? Well… it’s got a trusty plot that has been around the block more than a time or two, but it didn’t get that way because it doesn’t work. The acting is nothing special… but then, it’s not terrible either. Carolyn herself asked me why this one hadn’t shown up over in the US on DVD… it seems like a natural, requiring no editing or translation at all to make it work… just a good english audio dub. She liked it well enough… and I found it a nice lil’ popcorn cruncher worth an evenings watch. I give it a middle of the road 3 “Meows” out of 5 for doing it’s job, if nothing else extra.

The Ukrainian DVD is Region 5, PAL formatted, with letterboxed image and decent subtitles in both English and Russian. There’s a “Making of” feature, a ridiculous number of Trailers on board for other films…(one of which is some nifty Russian Submarine war movie I just gotta find…) and a small stills gallery and character bios.

Trailer? Yep… there’s a Trailer available, but it took some looking to find it. (It didn’t help that while researching this one I kept bumping into a Ukrainian Urban music group with the same name as this film…. D’ohhh!!) Still…. Neko is anything if not persistent, so here it is…. enjoy!!

However, be that as it may,… it actually is a pretty good place to get Russian or European films with English subtitles that somehow missed receiving them in their own country.

My latest such acquisition is the Russian Sword & Sorcery epic “Wolfhound”. I watched it just the other evening, and so now it’s time to wade in with my review….

Our synopsis reads: “The last remaining member of a slaughtered tribe escapes his enslavement and grows up to become a fearless warrior. As he pursues revenge against all odds for his family’s murder, his quest intertwines with a princess’s larger war against a brutal tyrant who would destroy everyone in his path.”

Hmmmmm? It sounds all “Conan-ish” alright, but do the Russians know didddly about that whole barbarian ethos thingee? Will we get sufficient sword swinging testosterone fueled vengeance to satisfy our need for bloody and vicarious thrills? I guess it’s up to your Favorite Catgirl Princess to find out!

So… whatcha waitin’ for? “Read On”, o’ gentle reader!!

This one starts out pretty much just like that “other movie with our favorite Cimmerian savage”…… A peaceful village, a little boy and his father the village blacksmith…. a loving mom…… and a vicious raid by psychotic killers bent on slaughtering everyone in sight. (Gotta get that whole revenge vibe going quick….) Naturally our young hero survives… Somebody needs some killing, and it’s up to him to grow up all big and strong to get it done.

We jump ahead here after the Titles roll….. as an ominous, scarred, fuzzy guy and his pet bat…. (yep..pet bat!!) are sneaking up on the dark mountaintop fortress of the raiders and their warlord, the Maneater. It’s our hero, of course, all ready to begin his terrible, savage, “barbarian-y” vengeance thing…. and he doesn’t waste any time getting right to it. Pretty much his plan seems to be a simple one…. sneak into the fortress, killing anybody unlucky enough to cross his path and look for the Maneater…. the guy with the wolf head tattoo who killed his dad … and then go all hack and slash on the mysterious warlord who controls them all….. Zhardoba!!

As with all such plans, it doesn’t go quite that easy (and they never.. ever do)…. our hero finds the guy who killed his dad alright, but ends up setting the whole fortress ablaze and getting stuck with a slave girl he saves from a “fate worse than death”. They both almost die in the resulting inferno, but luckily they happen across the wise old wizard that built the place and who knows the secret passages like the back of his hand. (Good thing too… even if he is blinder than Wolfhound’s bat!) After the prerequisite battle with the Maneater’s vicious minions, and some dangerous running about on the maze of flaming scaffolds and rope bridges that seem to make up the bulk of the evil lair, they escape and Wolfhound decides he must travel to the city of Galirad if he’s ever to find the Warlord Zhadoba and sate his need for revenge.

Well… first he’s gonna have to find someplace to unload the slave girl Niilit and the wizard Tilorn… Not that he doesn’t like them mind you, it’s just cramping his whole “bloody road of vengeance” thingee he’s got going on…. He thinks his got just the ticket when he finds a merchant caravan headed their way, but… d’oh!! They don’t want to be saddled with them either! Sigh… What’s a brutal, yet caring barbarian to do? The only thing he knows how to do well. Yep…. buy them passage by getting himself signed on as a caravan guard… but first he’s gotta whip all the other guards in some hand to hand action.

It isn’t long before trouble catches up with them…. Yep, Zhadoba and his raiders swoop in and start killing everybody as they frantically look for someone… Seems there’s more going on with this caravan than meets the eye…. Wolfhound saves the day, and even manages to chop off Zhadoba’s hand…. all without recognizing him from the massacre at his village all those years ago. (Strange considering Zhadoba wears the funkiest skull helmet outside of a Heavy Metal band…)

What our hero doesn’t know is that the Princess Elin of Galirad is traveling incognito with the caravan, doing the whole “dress as a boy” thing. You know…. that trick that always works in these movies, even if you end up looking like the absolutely cutest “boy” around…. Anyway, Wolfhound gets all disappointed at having been soooo, soooo close to his Mortal Enemy, but there’s no point ditching his new friends now, especially since they assure him that the best way to run into Zhadoba again is to continue to Galirad… seems Zhadoba wants something.. or someone… there very, very badly.

Galirad itself is a truly nifty looking place… a cursed city under an eternal dark cloud that keeps it frozen even in the middle of the summer. Gotta love that! Its grungy and dark and ever so Russian!! Lots of strange slavic style buildings and the like…. so much different from the usual “faux medieval” look you usually get in Sword & Sorcery films… Neko loved these sets, and so will you… they truly captured the feel of a mysterious Russian legend. Big thumbs up for these!

After an abortive attempt to assassinate Princess Elin is thwarted by Wolfhound and desperate to save the town from its curse and prevent Zhadoba from sacking it, the King of Galirad pledges the hand of his daughter Elen to Vinitar, the warrior son of the Maneater and Zhadoba’s deadly rival. Facing a long journey to the fortress of her future husband, she asks Wolfhound to be her bodyguard on this dangerous trek. His friends decide to take another route, looking to open the way beyond a mountainous legend called Heaven’s Gate. But…. realizing it is the princess that Zhadoba seeks, he agrees to guard the princess on her perilous journey, but finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of treachery and mysterious events that reveal the true aim of this trip… a battle to save all humanity from the reawakening of the Goddess of Murder, imprisoned beyond the same mystical Heaven’s Gate. Guess who is the key to that prison? Yep….

Of course… on the way our Princess falls for our brooding, scarred, and ever so hunky hero…. But he’s an honorable guy, you see. (And as an ex-slave, feels himself unworthy of her love… Ahhh! So tragic!! Sniff, sniff!!) Through dangerous lands… up against hostile tribesmen… and even in the face of ghosts and evil spirits summoned by the devotee’s of the Goddess of Murder, Wolfhound just keeps kicking all kinds of serious butt – barbarian style. Finally though, he is drugged by a treacherous villain within their own ranks, and the princess is taken!! OMG!!!

I can’t really tell you who the bad guy in their party is, not without spoilin’ things for you, but let’s just say everybody is gonna meet up at Heaven’s Gate. Then we get the big special effects laden battle to end all all battles between good ol’ Wolfhound and the Goddess. Luckily, the God of Thunderstorms seems to back our hero, and uses his lighting to power up Wolfhound’s sword for the job. BANG!! KRACKLE!!! ZAAAAP!! ARRRRGHHH!!!

Will Wolfhound win this momentous battle? Will he use his chosen “Pointy Weapon of Death” to go all crazy ass barbarian on the evil Zhadoba? Will he get the hand of the lovely Princess? Heck…. will we ever find out what is soooo cool about having your own pet bat? Yes… yes, yes, all that and more. But to know how exactly it all goes down, Neko thinks you are going to want to see this one for yourself.

The Thai DVD for this one…. Sigh. I wish I could say it was a bargain and well worth budget conscious types grabbing for themselves. Unfortunately, even though it does indeed have those English subtitles… and they ARE accurate and timed properly… there is a peculiar problem with this disc. It’s supposed to be a 16:9 Wide screen format, but instead, it isn’t….. it’s a weird 4:3 format. Everybody ends up looking all squooshed…. D’oh!! WAAAAHHHH!!! Squooshed all badddd!! Neko no like!! This lil’ Catgirl was able to fix that… (thank goodness for my Korean Malata DVD player and it’s wonderful X-Y scaling feature)….. but most of you will be serious ticked off by this. My suggestion is to instead wait till this August for the promised Region 1 release, assuming you haven’t already grabbed the Region 2 German release. Sorry Thailand…. you really messed this one up…

As for the movie itself…. Well, Neko liked “Wolfhound” overall… it had enough action, swordplay, magic and romance for any two movies….. and it was definitely a class act from a budgetary standpoint looking very polished and professional. So, I give this one 4 “Meows” out of 5 with only a slight hiss of annoyance for the disc itself. Yep…. if Wolfhound finds himself needing to venture forth again sometime and lay the savage beatdown on some more medieval Slavic menaces in the future, Neko-chan is gonna want to be there for it.

Yes… and as always, I hunted down a Trailer for ya all…(no review is really complete with a good Trailer after all….Hehehehe!!)

But…., apparently, although the Region 2 PAL release makes no mention of them on the packaging, they are indeed there, and so naturally this goofy lil’ Catgirl wasted no time in snatching herself up a copy once I’d been assured of this through intensive Internet research.

The synopsis goes like this: “Suat (Burak Özcivit) and Nurcan (Bigkem Karavus) are two young people born and grown up in the same village and they passionately love each other. They decide to get married. But, when they take this decision, they find themselves “haunted” by a great trouble. A creature from other world causes unfathomable events around them and affects the entire life of this couple. Now, neither their life nor love is as before. The dark incidents affecting them and their environment develop in an inexplicable manner.”

Hmmmm… Well it sounds like Neko’s kinda film, but there’s only one way to find out if my guess is right. Yep… it’s time to “Read On”….. Betcha saw that one coming.

So this one is a bit tricky. It seems to be, at first glance, a straightforward demonic possession flick judging from the Trailer, but, noooooo!! It is so much more than that. It’s actually two movies in one…. yep, sorta like watching two different horror films at the same time. I’ll explain more in a bit, but let’s take a look at our hero first.

Suat is a nice guy. He’s brooding and swarthy and handsome in that dark and Turkish way, and boy, oh boy, is he one unhappy guy. When we first see him he’s dead. Yep. Right at the beginning of the film…. as dead as a doornail and being hauled about in a truck by his best friend and some old guy who plan to bury him in his native village. Before something bad happens.

Ummm? Huh? Bad? Like worse than, say, already being dead?!? Neko is soooo confused….

So it’s flashback time to 9 months earlier, and we find brooding and angst ridden Suat as a factory worker in Germany, earning money to bring his new wife and mother to live with him here in the EU. He’s alone…. well almost, he’s got one friend from the old village who’s also here in Germany working with him at the factory. They hang out…. drink beers…. and do all the things best buddies do. But it’s just not enough. Suat feels something is wrong. And there is.

He’s being haunted…. at first I was thinking it was by the spirit of Nurcan, his pretty new wife…… you just know something traumatic happened to her and that’s why Suat has escaped to Germany right? Nope….. Wrong idea. Especially since all he keeps doing is trying to either phone home to his mother or buy tickets back to Turkey to get there any way he can. Somehow an invisible thing keeps screwing with him, thwarting his efforts and driving him slowly but surely completely crazy. The thing seems able to masquerade as Nurcan, his friend, even a doppelganger of himself in it’s cruel scheme to trick him into staying put in Germany. Finally he can’t stand it anymore… he physically collapses and after 9 months of Hell convinces his friend to take him back to Turkey. Once there, they seek the help of a Wise man and mystic to figure out what’s going on.

This is where most of the creepy stuff starts…. Including a truly bizarre occult ceremony where the Wise man’s grandson gets to stand in a tin basin full of water wearing nothing but his underwear to have visions of the past. Very, very weird…. and not really all that useful. The Wise man starts trying to puzzle out the meaning of stuff, giving Suat a mystic charm to shield him while he tries to figure stuff out. That just ticks off the Spirit/ Demon/ Whatever so that it kills poor Suat and we’re back to the beginning of the film and our midnight burial.

Then we jump back 9 months again…. for part 2 of this “Two films in one” story. Suat is at his marriage with Nurcan and they head off for the honeymoon bed. But wait…. Nurcan is sickly… always has been, but worse, she’s a very reluctant virgin. Poor, poor Suat…. no “consummating” for him. Still… he a decent guy, willing to wait a month till Nurcan gets comfy with the idea of…er… well… Pssst!! You know. They actually make love without causing her to have a seizure… a major plus. But all is not well……

Seems Nurcan doesn’t have a good pregnancy. It’s hard and painful, and she becomes moody and at odds with Suat’s mother. Worse… Suat is acting strange… disappearing at odd times with no explanation of why or where. There are strange phone calls…. and by now, most of you are probably saying, “Huh? What the heck? Ummm? But Neko-chan? Isn’t Suat off in Germany about this time?”

Here’s where Neko has to give you her “Spoiler Alert“…. because I can’t realy go much further without giving away the whole enchilada. Consider yourself warned!!

The answer is yes…. yes he is. Seems the “Suat” here isn’t the real one. This one is some extra dimensional otherworldly shape shifting demon thing that has been watching Nurcan since she was a girl, and who has always had the uber possessive hots for her. When Suat goes to Germany, it shows up, pretending to be him and simultaneously keeps the real Suat from coming back home. Just so it can have Nurcan all to itself. Got it? Unfortunately, when poor Nurcan dies trying to give birth to the demon spawn son of this thing, all that goes to heck in a hand basket.

About this time, it kills the real Suat out of pure rage, and then whacks the Wise Man’s son and his wife for having messed around with him and his plans. We get the whole back story, complete with comparisons to explain the crossovers between the two tales, but by now everything’s all out in the open. All that’s left is a stern voice over warning from our Wise man about how “love between two worlds” is sooo sooo wrong. There’s an ominous bit about being prepared in future, but we never actually find out why poor Suat needed to be buried back home. Worse… the demon just seems to disappear at the end of the story. Never a good thing. Guess we’ll have to wait until “Musallat 2″….

This one is very well filmed… and it has some extremely suspenseful moments, but I have to say it left poor Neko just a wee bit confused. Consequently I, personally, can only give “Musallat” 3 “Meows” out of 5 for making a nice, if somewhat confusing attempt to scare me. The acting is good…. the cinematography is topnotch, the subtitles were well done. Even the DVD itself was well produced, but still, I felt that it could have been better. Of the two Turkish films I saw this week, I have to say I enjoyed “Semum” a bit more, thanks to it’s easier to understand plot. Maybe I just need to watch a few more of these until my “Turkish Cultural Filter” kicks in….. But, maybe Gentle Visitor, it’s more your cup of tea…. it certainly is indeed worth a look if the disc comes your way.

And, yes, there’s a Trailer….. as if I wouldn’t include a Trailer for ya! Hehehehe….

So… anyway… “Semum” is the new horror film from “D@bbe” director Hasan Karacadag. Neko managed to catch that one, and although I’d heard about this new film, it sorta slipped past me on it’s way to DVD.

Then I heard it was out but… gasp… there would be NO English subtitles available for it. That sorta put it on the back burner for me, as I knew I’d find some subtitles for it eventually if an english friendly release didn’t come along first. But it seems the rumors were wrong…. “Semum” is available on Region 2 PAL formatted DVD and the ever so nifty English subtitles are along for the ride too. Yay!!!!

The synopsis I could find for it goes as follows: “Twenty-seven-year-old Canan and her husband Volkan have just moved into a large, new house. Life seems to continue on its routine track in the young couple’s new house until one day, when Canan starts feeling that strange things are happening to her although she cannot understand what and why. Canan gradually starts turning into an evil creature as a mysterious and malicious being takes control of her body and actions day after day. Semum, the most loyal servant of the devil, has taken control of Canan, leading her toward hell.”

So, you might ask.. “Neko-chan,  what the heck is a Semum anyway?” Well, having watched this one, I’m sorta guessing it’s some type of primordial demon thingee from the dawn of time. But then again, it might also be Hell itself….. or maybe it’s Turkish for Black magic….. If you watch “Semum” you get the feeling it’s a catch-all word for a lot of Evil stuff. But don’t worry, you wont need a Turkish Language lesson to understand what’s goin’ on here. If you’ve seen “The Exorcist”….(or “Phoonk”…Hehehehe…) then you should be able to get a pretty good handle on the story.

Basically, Canan our heroine is the main victim here, seems the new dream house her doting hubby just bought has a few weeeeee problems. Firstly, there’s a pretty darn creepy gardener that lurks around making your skin crawl as he runs around burying things everywhere…. things in black plastic bags, if you get my drift…. But he’s relatively benign compared to the guy in the house next door. The one who might or might not have murdered his pretty young wife who is mysteriously nowhere to be found. The her husband kills her beloved pet cat, accidentally with his car. Squoosh!! Naturally he doesn’t tell Canan about it… he just lets her poor kitty’s absence drive his wife nuts. Oh….. and there’s a demon lurking around…. just to make things complete.

We get all the expected stuff here…. Canan sees weird stuff…. she hears weird stuff….. she has a couple of run-ins with the neighbor guy. Luckily the cops don’t get involved….. but one wonders why they don’t, it’s fairly lame and obvious that they should, especially when possessed Canan starts roaming about with butcher knives and assaulting folk. But they don’t…. Hmmmm? Must be a Turkish thing….?

There IS a psychiatrist….. (there’s always a psychiatrist in these sorts of films…) although he’s waaaay out of his depth and Canan does get some support from her best girlfriend Banu, but of course nothing really helps and stuff just keeps getting worse and worse. Then Volkan’s best friend Ali comes up with the idea of getting some serious assistance from a Muslim Mystic who can take care of crazy stuff like this. That’s way towards the end, though, and then the CGI and other effects really ramp it up for an ending that takes us for a teeny weeny peek at Hell itself. Yep. No skimping on locations here….. Hehehehe!!

The plot gets a bit complicated…. and Red Herrings abound… but I can’t really go into those without spoiling things for you. Let’s just say, not everybody is on Canan’s side and leave it at that. So was “Semum” a good time for your Favorite Catgirl Princess while she was bedridden and recovering from her bout of the sniffles?

Well, Neko gives this one a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5 for doing a really decent job of taking an old premise that’s been done to death and giving it a nice Turkish inspired overhaul. You wont be surprised at all…. and there is relatively little gore…. outside of poor kitty that is…. to be had. Still, the suspense was good, the acting well done, and it’s been a looonnng time since any Turkish film made it my way so I’m inclined to be happy with what I got from the evening’s viewing. Enough to get me looking for more newer Turkish horror films, anyway…. and that’s never a bad thing.

Naturally… there’s a Trailer to be watched…. so let’s get to it! “The Power of The Almighty One commands you!!” Hehehehe!!

Would your Favorite Catgirl movie geek miss this one? Nope…. not a chance…. Will she wait for August to get her lil’ paws on the Region 1 release? Nope…. not when it’s already out in Australia on Region 4, you silly people!!

This one appears to be the big budget answer to last years lil’ sleeper hit “Black Water” which also deals with the very scary… and very real menace, to be experienced when dealing with the local wildlife of Australia’s Northern Territory.

Neko-chan picked up that one, and was scared silly by it, despite it’s low budget and small cast. Can Greg McLean, who made a splash among horror fans in 2005 with his ultra gory debut film, “Wolf Creek” pull off another hit with “Rogue”?

Let’s “Read On” and find out!!

So… the synopsis for this one reads: “A handful of tourists looking for adventure get more than they bargained for when they cross paths with a massive man-eating beast in this thriller. Pete McKell (Michael Vartan) is a writer for an American travel magazine who has been assigned to write a story about vacationing in rugged Northern Australia. Pete signs up for a cruise along a river that’s home to a large crocodile population, with tough but pretty Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell) serving as guide.

Pete soon finds he’s roughing it in the Aussie wilds with an eclectic variety of travelers, including Russell (John Jarratt), who is dealing with the death of his wife; Simon (Stephen Curry), a tactless amateur photographer; and Allen (Geoff Morrell), a member of the British upper crust making the trip with his ailing spouse (Heather Mitchell) and their rambunctious daughter (Mia Wasikowska). While Kate’s former husband, who also works on the river, makes a pest of himself in the early stages of the voyage, the travelers soon find they have more to worry about when their craft is attacked by a massive 25-foot crocodile, who is just clever enough to know how to trap its prey before enjoying them for dinner.”

Sounds like a winner to me! I just love those “When Animals Attack” films… “Jaws”, “Grizzly”, “The Birds”……you know the ones I mean. Mother Nature can be one ruthless bitch when it comes to shattering the illusion of Human Supremacy over the dominions of the Earth. Nothing takes us down a peg or two like showing just how physically inadequate we are in the face of the more primitive denizens of the far corners of the world. (And apparently…. we’re pretty darn tasty too….)

This one is skipping a theatrical release here in the US and going direct to DVD, normally a bad sign, but Neko couldn’t wait for August so she snapped up a Region 4 PAL release as soon a it was possible. The disc itself has the following features:

DVD FEATURES

All very nicely done, but it feels less like a disc intended for Australian audiences, and more like Dimension Films got lazy and did a disc that they’ll just port over for NTSC conversion. Outside of the obligatory anti-piracy warnings asking Australians to help preserve their limited film industry, all the documentaries act like the viewer hasn’t got a clue about Australia at all. Kind of insulting to an Australian viewer I would think…. The cover is, well, simply boring…I like the Region 1 poster better….but that’s a minor quibble.

Having given it a watch… it’s an OK film. If I were you, I wouldn’t rush out to grab it till it makes it’s way to your neck of the woods and whatever regional release is your normal flavor….

It’s well made, well acted, and the setting is gorgeously filmed. The story is simple, but adequate. I was more impressed with the suspense of it’s closest competitor in this genre “Black Water”, which does everything this film does, with but a fraction of the budget, and only 5 total cast members……

I have to say, after “Wolf Creek”, I had expected a much more visceral and unique film from writer/ director Greg McLean, but then that film was a hard act to top. Not a bad try… just not a great one.

Neko gives “Rogue” a basic 3 “Meows” out of 5 for not screwing things up, for getting most things in the genre right, and for giving it the ol’ college try. Better Luck next time though……..

Naturally, there a Trailer, and here it is:

Remember….. if a film’s got zombies in it… this lil’ Catgirl has trouble NOT watching it. Will zombies actually improve a Spagetti Western? Let’s find out, shall we?

(C’mon… you know by now you reeeeallly wanna “Read On”…. admit it!!)

Ok….. now this one starts out by giving us a quicky lil’ voiceover explaining how a less than Holy Preacher in the town of Amnesty had this affair with a whore, Mary Black (Janet Barr). Naturally it goes all to pieces as such tawdry things will and the resulting breakup causes the whore to go absolutely bug-shit crazy. Naturally she then convinces all her other whore friends to avenge her slight. Of course this translates to the whores deciding to kill the whole town. Yep….. everybody…. and their lil’ dogs too…… The preacher, Mobius (Andres Bagg) gets captured…. his wife gets tortured, his unborn child killed….. and then he gets whacked. Naturally he gets to make a deal with the devil to live on as a ghost in Amnesty to get his vengeance otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole lotta story would there? Only one problem….. .the whores all vamoose for parts unknown and our ghostly spirit of vengeance can’t leave the town to follow them….. (D’ohhhh!!!)

Lets jump ahead 15 years…… we find ourselves following Clementine Templeton, a tough, mean, and downright vicious gun slinging girl bounty hunter hot on the trail of Blake, a man wanted for rape. She is one ruthless and determined chick and will let nothing stand in the way of her mission to find Blake. But she is not alone. Also in pursuit is the same motley group of whores, now crazy female religious fanatics. They also want Blake. He’s managed to get one of their brethren pregnant, despite their hatred of all things male. They aim to catch Blake and either force him into marriage with the girl or, if he refuses, brutally kill him. Of course these groups just have to join forces……. and guess where Blake has run to hide? Amnesty.

Yep…… looks like Mobius is going to get his chance at revenge after all. This one was described as being “Saw meets High Plains Drifter”….and that’s just about right. It’s gloriously violent…… with just about every vicious notion of rape, torture and insanity thrown in for good measure. Victoria Maurette as Clementine is a perfect anti-heroine….. and nails this one dead on. Andres Bagg does a very credible job as Mobius….. unfortunately the acting goodness sorta ends there. Albert Pyun shot this entirely in Argentina using a dominantly Argentinean cast, so we’re talking a bit of low budget talent like some of his other 80′s and 90′s work in eastern europe here………

Still….. Neko liked the weird, almost insane approach to this one. It’s different….. waaaay different. It’s definitely worth a watch, and I hope it inspires some other forays into the mix of Western and Horror Genres by someone with a bigger budget. There’s some real potential here…. (Neko’s thinkin’ Indian Zombie massacres….. oh yeah!!!)

I give this one 4 “Meows” out of 5 for coming at this idea with energy and drive to spare……. even if the acting, plot and special effects were a bit weak…..( but then I actually LIKE trashy B-movies….) Others may want to wait till it shows up on HBO or Cinemax….. (or whatever passes for that in your neck of the woods…)

Naturally, I’d never leave you without the requisite Trailer…. courtesy of our Youtube thingee!!

The plot for this one is easy…… “Young, idealistic Dr. Deniz has just started working at an old mental institution waaaaay out in the mountains in the proverbial middle of nowhere which is being closed down shortly. Why? Because her mother suffers from a mental illness so she wants to help others who are in the same state of condition. Unfortunately, there might not be many patients left to treat when a serial killer shows up and starts offing the patients one by one. The police manage to show up in the form of an overweight Police inspector and his young assistant, but then the roads are cut by an landslide, trapping them without phone or assistance while the masked killer prowls the hospital grounds killing patients and staff at will. Is it one of the weird, creepy staff….. or is it the mysterious, and admittedly homicidal patient in supposedly in secure confinement in the padded cell in a wing of the hospital isolated from the rest of the patients?”

Ooooh!! Sounds like we might just have a winner here! Let’s “Read On” shall we?

This one is a nifty lil’ thriller, that ends up relying on a couple of twist plot elements to work….. one I figured out immediately….. the other threw me for a loop….. but they both work extremely well. I liked the claustrophobic atmosphere generated by the isolated locale…. and the cast was spot on for their roles…. all in all a good little thriller from a land more often known for their terrible rip-off movies.

Neko-chan gives this surprisingly good little chiller 4 “Meows” out of 5 and recommends it without reservation to anyone wanting a nice film from Turkey that isn’t…well….a complete “turkey”.

While not a new idea, it stands head and shoulders above “Turkish Exorcist”…….. here’s the Trailer, so you can decide for yourself….