The synopsis goes like this: “Successful at her job until she was out shined by a younger, prettier co-worker, a confident and perfectionist career woman, Hyo-jung, visits a strange yoga institute run by a mysterious ex-actress at the advice of a radically transformed school friend. There, Hyo-jung meets several other women like herself, a former popular singer who faded away into obscurity, a religious fanatic, a girl battling weight issues, and a woman beset by numerous personal misfortunes including a divorce and a failed plastic surgery procedure. All of them have something in common: a belief that somehow beauty will help them overcome the difficulties they face. At the beginning of the intensive training course, a young yoga master, Nani explains to Hyo-jung and the others that only the one person who masters the course most successfully can actually win the secret of ultimate and immortal beauty. There are five unusual rules for them to follow during the one week course:

#1. Never eat without permission.

#2. Never take showers within an hour before or after the class.

#3. Never look at themselves in a mirror.

#4. Never leave the school building.

#5. Never try to call or contact anyone until finishing the course.

As the training goes on, they soon discover that the quest for beauty, has a terrible price.Each of the girls get tempted to break those rules caused by each woman’s secret hidden craving and Hyo-jung starts to sense there is something evil about this institute and the actress who doesn’t get old…”

Neko wonders what exactly there is in the Asian psyche that makes such horror films so prevalent of late. But… no matter. I just plain like watching them as I squirm uncomfortably on the couch. Naturally, you all want to know what this one is exactly all about, so let’s get to it….

We start out this one with an introduction to our main character, Hyo-Jung (played by Eugene of the Korean pop group S.E.S.), who is a veteran spokeswoman for a shopping network who loses her lead role on air to a younger, prettier girl who’s assets allow her to outsell her rival as they hawk their stuff. Frantic and grasping at any chance to restore her fading appeal, she encounters an old school friend, once a dowdy nobody whom even Hyo-Jung eventually cruelly abandoned, but who now has transformed herself somehow into a mysteriously beautiful woman. Hyo-Jung is stunned by her new look and begs to learn her secret. (Given how terribly she treated her friend all those years ago, I can’t believe she had the nerve to seek her help now… but I guess that’s to show the sheer pinnacle of desperation Hyo-Jung had reached.) Turns out it’s all due to a “special” invitation only Yoga Class sponsored by a  famous actress, now retired and doing her best Greta Garbo imitation in seclusion. Since her career seems doomed and she’s gotten all cranky with her boyfriend, it seems she’s got nothing to lose by giving the class a try….. Silly, silly girl…..

Upon arriving at the school, she manages to bluff her way past her interview by the school’s Head Instructor and actually get accepted for the week long intensive class. Her fellow students all seem to share the same problem….. they can’t seem to shake the idea that “youth and beauty” are the solutions to all life’s worries. We get the gamut of problems from plastic surgery addiction to eating disorders and the pressures of celebrity image expectations. Many other Korean films have gone this route preying upon what seems to be a common obsession for Asian women, most notably for this lil’ Catgirl, 2006’s “Cinderella” (신데렐라), with it’s take on the whole “plastic surgery mania” as the path to perfection. We really don’t get any new ideas… and much of the story here follows the pretty standard route as each of the women is tempted by her particular flaw to violate the crazy rules of the ashram resulting in their grisly death or disappearance one by one.

None of these deaths is all that remarkable or scary… and unfortunately none of the characters…. Hyo-Jung included… were terribly sympathetic for me. I found myself caring very little for whether or not any of them would survive to be the one to gain the mystical gift of the “kundalini” from the possibly evil actress pulling the strings from behind the scenes. There are one or two good moments… one in particular involving a hallucinatory and impossibly contortionist yoga move, and another where the real contents of a binge eater’s meal are revealed that were shocking or startling in their imagery. Yet you can’t really build a whole movie on one or two neat images or ideas….

More appealing for this lil’ Catgirl was the story they didn’t explain…. (at least not enough for me to really figure it out…) and that’s told in the flashbacks that explain the tragic fall of that once famous actress, now our mysterious recluse and owner of the Yoga Academy. Mirroring the silent movie stars of the 1920’s and their struggle to cope with the introduction of sound to films, we get a look at the problems Chungmuro starlets of Korea’s film industry of the 1970s faced when many were similarly affected once live recording was first introduced to Korean movies. Here the 70’s period story is lush and quite dreamlike… and just when things get interesting, they fail to follow through and connect the story to any of what’s currently happening. Yep… we never do find out what Yoga has to do with… well… anything that’s going on in the story and why our failed actress ever turned to it in the first place. Say what? Nope…. I’m not kidding. This seems a glaring hole in the plot, and I’m wondering why it wasn’t more adequately addressed by the script.

So… does Hyo-Jung survive? Does she get to achieve “kundalini”? Is “inner beauty” really the path to solve all of life’s problems? Do we even care? Unfortunately…. the answer for this lil’ Catgirl is no. Although adequately filmed, acted, and filled with atmosphere, I’m afraid I can only give “Yoga” a barely acceptable 3 “Meows” out of 5. Carolyn liked it a bit more than I did, as it was a bit of a novelty for her, but your Favorite Catgirl’s just seen this stuff all before… and much better done too. Ah well… they can’t all be winners….

Hopefully next time out the Koreans will surprise me with a return to the type of nifty horror I usually enjoy. Till then, “Meow, meow for now….”

Trailer? Yep…. I’d never… ever….  forget that! Here ya go!

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

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

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

Guess we’ll all have to “Read On” to find out…..

This one starts out with a nifty scene of complete devastation…. fire, wreckage strewn haphazardly in all directions… and the bloody, yet ever so sexy Trixie (played by Julia Voth) asking just how such a scene could have ever have come to pass. But before we learn that, it’s into a psychedelic opening credit sequence featuring nifty clips from just about every “bad girl exploitation” film you can think of with a rocking theme to get your motor running. This alone tells you that the team of Eric Gruendemann and Rick Jacobson, the writer/directors of “Bitch Slap” know exactly what the audience for this sort of film is looking for. They waste no time letting us know we’re going to take one hell of a ride to exploitation heaven….. embracing almost every theme the genre knows.

First… we get a sweet black 63′ Thunderbird roaring down a desert road to a desolate rundown Trailer in the middle of nowhere…. In a cloud of dust, our three anti-heroines disembark in slow motion, all the better to strut their stuff, before opening the trunk to reveal the beaten and disheveled crime boss, Gage. No time for pleasantries… it’s time to beat some info outta him about the location of a hidden treasure… 200 million in diamonds to be exact. (And you know just how we girls like diamonds…) This is the centerpiece to the whole film… those diamonds… and a few other things.

You see the film has one neat little trick…. It’s actually two stories in one… The first moves forward telling all about the girls, the Trailer, and the diamonds. The second is shown throughout as a series of flashbacks… each looking further and further into the past behind this caper and each revealing more and more of the truth behind what’s really going on. It’s a clever little device that gives nice payoff for paying attention to the story as it unwinds. Even better.. each flashback was filmed with limited sets augmented by quite a bit of green screen backdrops added in. Overall, it gives these flashbacks a slightly “cartoonish” style all their own, very reminiscent of the look of “Sin City” but in gorgeous technicolor, and helps to separate the two parallel stories nicely. Also… from the standpoint of keeping one’s budget down, it means that “Bitch Slap” really only has one live location to worry about…. our crappy little Trailer in the desert. Sheer genius!

Gage, the guy in the trunk, (played with amazing chauvinist gusto by “Hercules” alumni Michael Hurst) is no match for our determined young women. After a particularly brutal interrogation, he eventually spills the beans (and quite a bit of blood) about the diamonds and where he buried them before shooting off his mouth one time too many to suit resident bad-ass ex con, Camero (played by America Olivo). It’s a big mistake…. and one he most definitely doesn’t live to regret. One bullet to the noggin’ later and, like all good crime caper movies… it’s just the beginning of this rather shaky alliance’s unraveling.

Hel (played by Erin Cummings of “Spartacus: Blood & Sand” fame)…. the group’s unofficial leader… has her job cut out for her. She’s got to keep mad dog Camero in line while protecting naive stripper Trixe from the ugly side of what is turning out to be a rather bloody affair completely unlike the orderly caper she had planned. What would be the only thing to make the situation more complicated? Well how about if Hel was in a sweet, romantic, and very sexy lesbian relationship with Trixe while also having been intimately involved with Camero while they were together in “the joint… the slammer.. the big house”? Oh, my goodness, yes…. We can’t very well have an exploitation film without a wee bit of spicy lesbian action to living things up. (About this time, Carolyn stopped giving me “The Look” for having tricked her into watching this one and kinda got interested in the story…. Naughty, naughty girl!!)

Naturally this leads to all sorts of jealousy and drives a further wedge between our characters. Before crazy Camero can do much though, yet another problem rears its ugly head. Out of nowhere… local Deputy Sheriff Roy Fuches (played by Ron Melendez) comes along looking to render aid and assistance our “damsels in distress”.  One bullshit story later and he leaves, never realizing how close he came to ending up like crime boss Gage. Good thing he was mostly thinking with the lil’ head and not the big one……

Yep…. Hel is one smart lady, and not exactly the person she’s represented herself as to either of her lovers and partners in crime. Neko can’t tell you who she really is without spoiling things, but trust me…. she not the only one with secrets. However…. those secrets have to wait. More uninvited guests arrive to crash the party…. this time old “friends” of Camero’s. These two, Hot wire and his lil’ Japanese psycho girlfriend Kinky (played by  William Gregory Lee and Minae Noji) want in on the fun too…. as well as a shot at grabbing the treasure for themselves. These two are a hoot!! Hotwire with his “Tourette’s Syndrome” fits is somehow actually twitchier than Camero, while Kinky and her razor bladed yo-yo gives us a perfect Psychotic Asian schoolgirl gone totally homicidal. Politically correct? Who are we kidding…. Not in this movie!!

All this leads to the eventual recovery of the treasure… as well as what Hel is actually after…. (but Neko’s not gonna tell ya what that is… So there!!) We get more fights… lots of swearing to put sailors to shame, some neat cameos from other “Hercules” and “Xena” alumni, and probably the single best knock down, ass kicking, non-martial art, no holds barred cat-fight I’ve ever seen between two women in any film… ever. Zoe Bell, the fight choreographer and stunt co-coordinator for this one has done a great job of making it all look both gritty and real, while keeping it fun and over-the-top. She get’s Neko’s top praise for her work here…. and it’s one of the reasons I ended up liking this one so much.

And like it I did. This one is low budget direct to video filmaking at it’s absolute best. The people involved went at this one with all guns blazing and an obvious love of the B movie “Bad Girls Gone Wild” genre that shows. I can believe that every penny spent on this production ends up right on screen where it belongs, and all involved gave it their all, beginning to end. The girls are sexy and strong and even as “bad” as they are, you still wanna root for them to win….. By the end of this one, even finicky Carolyn was enjoying herself, and that says a lot.

I give “Bitch Slap” an enthusiastic 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being a fun filled parody of 70’s B movies, with a great humor and gusto for the silliness of it all, and deserves a place with other cult favs in anyone’s DVD collection. Remember though, you have to like these sorts of crazy films… and luckily I do… otherwise it’s definitely not going to be your cup of tea. The DVD itself is also well done, with a marvelous 3 part “Making Of” featurette that must be watched as well as it gives you a perfect look at how such a movie could still be made even today.

So? Want a look at this one yourself? Here you go! Hurry up and get slapped silly!

Our Synopsis? “As a young child Cara has the habit of observing her grandmother, Lola Auring (Gloria Romero) at work. She is a tarot reader by profession, and her granddaughter slowly develops her talent and accurately predicted the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and the death of two of her family members; her father and grandmother. Cara’s psychic ability seems to bring bad luck to her family rather than good luck.

Concerned with her natural ability to predict future events, Cara’s mother (Susan Africa) forbids her to read tarot cards, and the cards are laid to rest with her grandmother inside the coffin. Many years later the adult Cara (Marian Rivera) has to reopen her grandmother’s coffin to seek the tarot cards’ help to locate her missing fiancé, Miguel (Dennis Trillo) when both were separated while hiking in the forest.

She eventually finds him, but mysterious deaths start to affect people around her. Cara soon learns that it was related to the curse on her grandmother during her youth days, where she was part of a cult that worshiped tarot cards. Other members committed suicide and Auring decided not to join them, and the curse spreads to his family members including Cara herself. Now Cara must find a way to stop this curse before more people becomes the victim…”

Mmmmmm. I’ve a really good feelin’ about this one, but you know as much as I do that sometimes your Favorite Catgirl gets her hopes up too quickly for these. Still…. can’t hurt to take a peek, right? Let’s all snuggle down and I’ll tell you all how this one stacked up. By all means, gentle visitor, “Read On”!!

This is one of those Philippine horror films that Film studio, Regal Entertainment, cranks out for their domestic film market. Luckily, these usually have some fairly good production values as well as a few good directors and name actors to draw on. “Tarot” stars two of them, Marion Rivera as Cara and Dennis Trillo as her love interest and boyfriend. Director Jun Lana also did “Kulam”, previously reviewed here at the ol’ Litterbox, and even though that was a simple story I did enjoy it. With all these things going for it, “Tarot” definitely sounds like it could just turn out to be a pleasant lil’ horror film experience for me full of creepy chills and exotic ghosts and folklore.

As we start our film, we get introduced to Cara as a child (played by Nikki Samonte). She’s cute, adorable, and “blessed” (or perhaps cursed) with the same innate gifts of fortunetelling as her beloved grandmother. Despite her unbelieving parents, she foretells of “snow” falling in sunny Manila…. a prediction which comes true in it’s own way during the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and the resulting ash-fall that comes along with it. Her shaken mother forbids grandma from teaching her anymore of her “superstitions” and tells her she wants only that Cara forget the cards and grow up to be just a “normal girl”. Grandmother Auring (played by Gloria Romero) tries to tell her it doesn’t work that way… that the gift will simply grow on it’s own anyway, but Cara’s mother is firm. No fortunetelling for her daughter…..

But… the cards keep calling to Cara, wanting to show her the future… and not always a good future. One day, while playing hide-and-seek with her friends, Cara has the opportunity to see Grandma’s cards again. This time, they show her tragedy…. The death of two of her family members is soon at hand. In tears, Cara tries to warn Grandmother about what she’s been shown, but only moments later her prediction comes terribly true… her uncle struck by a stray bullet fired during a celebration…. and then Grandmother Auring herself falls to a heart attack brought on by this event. Cara’s mother… angry, scared, and determined to end what she sees as a curse, has her mother’s tarot deck buried with her, hoping to put those cards forever beyond little Cara’s reach. Does it succeed? Well, now…… we wouldn’t have much of a movie if it did.

We jump ahead, and Cara grows up to become a lovely young woman (now played by Marion Rivera), with a handsome boyfriend Miguel (played by Dennis Trillo) and seemingly not a trouble in the world. Well… maybe one, tiny, lil’ trouble. They’re lost you see…. on a hiking day trip, separated from their friends they end up spending an evening in an old cave waiting to be eventually found. But…. during the night, Miguel goes mysteriously missing. Her friends find a frantic Cara the next morning, but there is no sign of Miguel… it’s as if he dropped right off the face of the earth. Even the expert forest guides are at a loss to find a single trace…. leaving Cara to fall deeper and deeper into depression, unable to accept that he is just… gone.

Eventually she’s driven almost to suicide over his loss, but then decides to do the unthinkable…. despite her mother’s objections she has her grandmother exhumed so that she can retrieve her “special” tarot cards and use those to help her locate Miguel. Given her uncanny clairvoyant connection to the cards, it isn’t long before she locates him, in the hut of a mountain hermit where he’s been since he fell into a boar trap weeks before. He’s hurt, but alive, and it seems that with some medical assistance should recover just fine. Good news.. right? Ummmm…. horror movie remember?

Yep… first thing out and poor Miguel starts getting haunted by a mysterious ghostly spirit of a woman in a veil….. who obviously means him no bit of good. Seems that poor Cara didn’t know that those special Tarot cards were cursed you see…. Grandma Auring stole them from the leader of a secretive doomsday cult she was a member of years earlier, and now the spirit of those cards will seek revenge on her by killing all those close to her unless she can prevent a death from happening and thus breaking the curse. Dang…… isn’t there’s always a catch to neat supernatural powers…..?

The rest of the movie follows as old friends of her grandmother keep popping up to provide her with tantalizing hints about that cult and it’s leader, the sinister sounding “El Senior” (usually right before they get killed)… who turns out to be…… (Wait for it…)…. her grandfather!! Gasp!! Seems Grandma Auring left him after he prophesied the “End of the World” and figured he’d “save” his followers by ordering them to commit mass suicide. Wow…. no wonder she left. Ahhh… and it seems the ghosts of those cultists still haunt the very forest were she and Miguel were camping…. and they’re the ones who chased him into that ol’ boar pit.

Our “Veiled Spirit of the Death Card” meanwhile has it’s own dance card pretty full, first killing Cara’s mom Diana… then Grandmother’s old friend Lola Nena, threatening Cara’s best friend Faye (played by Roxanne Guinoo), before striking at Miguel’s sister Connie and nearly causing her to miscarry her baby. Definitely one mean ghost….. Seems like there is just no way to avoid it’s terrible revenge. So how can this all be resolved?

Ahhhh…. but that’s not all the really bad stuff to come. It’s “Spoiler Time” folks…. as Neko wouldn’t want to ruin the suspense for you. Taking a page from Indonesian films…. “Tarot” decides that poor Cara needs to find out that her beloved fiancé and her best friend have had a one time fling that has resulted in a pregnancy….. making her feel betrayed and hurt by the two people she trusts more than anyone else. Oh…. and mysterious Grandfather “El Senior”…. ummm…. well… he’s not exactly dead you see…. having chickened out at the last minute when the cult all cut their throats all those years ago. Oh yeah…. that’s gonna complicate the ending. Let’s just say Cara isn’t gonna be happy with how it turns out.

It’s not really as complicated as it sounds…. and comes to a satisfactory conclusion though. Neko liked “Tarot” overall…. and I can give it a good 3 “Meows” out of 5. While not perhaps the most original screenplay ever done, it does the job of entertaining one for an evening of scares and chills. That’s what this movie lovin’ Catgirl is lookin’ for, and in this, it delivers. I may have seen better horror films, but I can tell you, I’ve certainly seen far worse too. Like most Philippine horror movies, it’s not particularly gory or extreme, but that’s a nice thing now and again. The Region Free DVD is well produced, with a letterboxed image and excellent, accurate English subtitles. About the only problem I can report is that like most others from the Philippines, it comes with a long series of “User Prohibited” trailers and ads that have to be watched before you are allowed to access the menu and get on with the movie…. soooo annoying, but forgivable especially since I usually watch all the Trailers on a disc anyway. But… for a  15$-20$ US price-tag, you really can’t complain too much.

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

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

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

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

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

If there was ever a film that said “To hell with making sense… I just wanna tell a story!”, then this one is it. Haven’t got money for a budget? No problem…. Haven’t even got money for a good alien costume? Heck, we got us a gorilla suit, and a space helmet…. what the hell more do we need? Locations? Hell…. Bronson Canyon is free, let’s go for it! What do you mean you want the alien to use giant dinosaurs to destroy Earth? That’s what stock footage is for….. silly. Stop your complaining…. we’ve got Elmer Bernstein doing the music, and he’s good, right? And hey!! We’re gonna shoot our effects budget to heck and do this puppy right… in 3-D!!

Producer Phil Tucker’s “Robot Monster” is notorious for it’s unbelievable levels of utter cinematic garbage all somehow crammed into one 62 minute film. This lil’ Catgirl would argue that it even surpasses Ed Wood’s infamous “Plan Nine From Outer Space” to wrestle away the title of “Worst Scifi Movie Ever”. After all, what other film is reputedly credited with sending it’s producer away for “hospital confinement’? Answer me that….

There is a plot to this one of course…. and unlike many other reviewers, I can’t say it’s incomprehensible…. just really, really stupid. In fact, the narrative is actually very easy to follow… it just doesn’t make all that much sense most of the time. But, then you have to realize the premise is that this is all just the hallucinatory dream of a young boy who just smacked himself in the head… really hard. Once you realize that… it’s all smooth sailing.

Anyway…. in his dream, Johnny’s Mom is somehow married to super smart scientist guy from the cave, while his older sister is sort of sweet on his hunky assistant… when they’re not fighting over who’s smarter or in charge. Ah… young love! About the only character pretty much the same is his dull as dishwater younger sister Carla…. who just wants to play house with Johnny, hallucination or not. So… how did they survive Ro-man’s one man, errr…. monkey?… errrr….. robot?… attack on the planet Earth? I mean he’s got a Death Ray!! Not just any ol’ Death Ray… but a “Calcinator” Death Ray….. (Whatever the heck that means… Maybe it turns folk to stone, but as we don’t see a whole lot of statues everywhere I sorts doubt it..) Ooooohhh!!! Isn’t that just the height of silly 50’s super-science mumbo jumbo?

All of Earth’s combined military might was powerless to stop one overweight robot gorilla, but luckily our super smart scientist figured out how to shield his bombed out basement by stringing a couple of sparking electrified wires around the walls…. probably explaining why this typical American family of the 1950’s didn’t seem to have a dog. Poor little guy probably went up like a french fry the first week…!

Not that Ro-man’s secret lair… conveniently located in the same cave from earlier… is any better equipped by his robo-monkey leader the “Great Guidance”. He does possess the sweetest soap bubble machine this side of a Lawrence Welk TV episode, all the left over army surplus radio gear a monkey could want, and a sweet wooden table to put it all on. Ohhhhh!!… and his cave even gets decent TV reception, a shame he seems to have destroyed all the TV stations on Earth though, all he gets is his lame boss on the line so he can get really bitched at for failing to kill all the humans on Earth, or our little rag tag group of survivors so he can threaten them with horrible, terrible death (if he can ever find them… d’ohh!!). Hmmmm? Wait a darn second here…. I guess it still does suck being a one robo-monkey invasion force.

Worse… despite being all robotic, advanced, and supposedly emotionless, he falls big time for Alice, Johnny’s sexy older sister. This leads to his downfall of course in the end, but not before we get the good ol’ “gorilla abduction” bit naturally.

To top everything off, Great Guidance just blasts everybody to bits for annoying him at the film’s climax…. That should do the trick, but why pass up the chance to unleash dinosaurs to eat up everything still living on the planet? Sounds like a plan. (To be certain, a pretty goofy plan, but a plan nonetheless…) Luckily… this is all just a dream.

As we wrap this up… Johnny wakes up with a bandaged noggin, a little sore but no worse for wear. Everybody goes back to the picnic to get cozy and all is well. But…. waaaay deep in the cave, shrouded by flashes of electricity, Ro-man lurches forward… squeezing the last bit of 3-D goodness out of this one and leaving us mercifully happy that it’s finally over.

You might get the feeling that your Favorite Catgirl didn’t like this one…. Nothing could be farther from the truth. “Robot Monster”, for all it’s flaws is a charming lil’ film that captivated and amused me in my days as lil’ Miyuki, Magical Kitten Princess. My older self can more readily see the gaping flaws in filmaking that are so obvious that they can’t be missed. However, if there’s a child in your life that needs entertaining, they would probably love this one to pieces, flaws and all. It’ll be a memory that will stick with them till they grow up and have kids of their own. Ahhh…. and if some day, a loved one buys them the DVD as a gift, it”ll bring back those treasured youthful days for a nostalgic visit once more. Always a welcome thing.

Given this, Neko can give “Robot Monster” a reasonable 3 “Meows” out of 5, saving it from the ignominious taint of a lower rating due mostly to the charm and downright silly feelings it still awakens in me (and the loving gesture my sweetie Carolyn made in buying it especially for lil’ ol’ me….). It’s not a good film, but it’s a fun one and somehow it survives even as more worthy films are lost forever…. and that’s got to be worth something, right?

Trailer? Boy oh, boy is there a Trailer…. hold on to your hats, ’cause here comes “Robot Monster”!! Be afraid…. be very afraid!!

Recently though, the Region 1 Funimation release came along and, as expected, had an English dubbed audio track on board for the US audience that dreads foreign language films or subtitles. Since Carolyn hadn’t watched this one yet…. and because I wanted to surprise her with one of my goofy swordplay films…. “Gasp!! ….In English!!” , it wasn’t hard to talk myself into picking up a copy of it for us to share one evening. On the plus side… it gives your Favorite Catgirl Movie Reviewer the chance to do a comparison of both DVD’s all in one simple lil’ review.

Synopsis? Well it goes like this: “Blind and beautiful traveling entertainer Ichi (played by Ayase Haruka) has been wandering the country searching for her teacher, a blind masseur who taught her the way of the sword when she was a child. She reluctantly gains a traveling companion when kind-hearted samurai Toma (played by Osawa Takao) tries to save her from a group of thugs, and ends up needing to being saved himself.

After Ichi dispels the thugs with a flash of the lethal sword hidden in her walking stick, the two enter a village being terrorized by a gang led by the ruthless Banki (played by Nakamura Shido). Though Ichi isn’t interested in fighting, she soon gets pulled into the lethal battle between good and evil.”

I’ve always loved strong female roles in period swordplay films…. just that fierce il’ warrior spirit within me struggling to escape so naturally this one was a “must see”. How well did Funimation, known mostly as a releaser of anime here in the US,  treat this one? Hopefully with the respect such an iconic character deserves…. But enough of this… there’s really only one way to find out, so let’s get to it, shall we? “Read On”!!

So we start out with a tattered and obviously worn Ichi struggling to find shelter one miserably cold winter’s evening. She’s turned away time and again, only to finally find grudging shelter in the barn of a small farm. Before she can even recover her strength, the owner sneaks in to try to put the moves on what he figures is nothing more than a beggar woman who’ll sell herself easily for the asking. Big mistake…. Ichi is blind all right, but more than capable of defending herself as the stupid fool soon learns to his dismay. As Ichi says by way of warning…. “I’m blind…. so I don’t always know what I cut….” Truer words could not be said.

If you’ve watched the old movie series from the 1960s through the 80s featuring Shintaro Katsu as the legendary Zatoichi then you’ll feel very comfortable as this one unfolds. Much as in that series, our heroine is portrayed as the eternal outsider forced by prejudice and circumstance to wander the lonely roads of feudal Japan eking out a living while constantly being forced into deadly confrontations not of her own making. The story builds slowly…. punctuated by scenes of lethal combat that always seem to build to a climax wherein our blind heroine has to kill a veritable horde of thugs to bring peace to people that always seem grateful, yet somehow who remain elusively distant forcing her to take up her wandering life yet again.

Whereas Shintaro Katsu’s Ichi was shown to make his living as a masseuse, for the series to have a female protagonist a different profession was needed. So, Haruka Ayase’s Ichi is instead made a goze (瞽女), blind women, often orphans, who make a living as traveling entertainers and musicians for hire. They function as a support group for those women who would otherwise have no clan or family to aid them….. unfortunately they are also regarded by most people it seems, as wandering vagabonds and a front for prostitution. To avoid this stigma, the group has one rule. No member of their troupe is allowed to engage in sexual relations so as to not sully the reputation of the group. Annoyingly…. forcible rape by a customer is seen as no excuse if it happens to one of them. Such is poor Ichi’s fate, and she is expelled to wander alone and friendless because of such an affront.

But that isn’t Ichi’s only reason to wander…. she’s seeking the blind gambler who might be her father (and whom we come to believe might just be Zatoichi himself) that taught her the deadly sword skills she now possesses and whom left her with the Goze when it became evident that he had to travel his own road alone without risking her life in the face of old enemies that hunted for him constantly. You expect this to be the film’s conclusion…. but it wouldn’t be a swordplay melodrama if everything ended happily, so don’t expect that here either.

There’s a love story of course…. the old Zatoichi stories were full of them, doomed thought they always were. On the road she encounters ronin swordsman Toma Fujihira (played by Takao Osawa) a seemingly cowardly warrior unable even to draw his sword to save her or himself from a bunch of thugs. Naturally Ichi is more than able to kill their assailants with her lethal swordcane, a mistake that ends up giving Toma a reputation as a skilled duelist, thus drawing him into a vendetta in the nearby town. No matter how she struggles to keep her distance from the conflict, she keeps getting pulled in, eventually learning the tragic reason behind Toma’s failure as a swordsman. Seems Toma is actually quite an expert with the blade…. but a terrible accident as a child in which he blinded his mother now means he finds himself unable to draw a sword against another human being. They circle each other like wary opponents… each afraid of becoming entangled with another person and bringing their own problems to someone they love.

So how does it end? Well…. Neko wouldn’t want to spoil it for you, but remember, most Japanese stories like this tend to end tragically and leave one feeling somewhat sad. I’ll just remark that the window has been left open for Haruka Ayase to continue in this role…. something that would be welcome indeed if this movie is any example of what can be done with such an old character in a new way.

Overall, both Carolyn and I liked this one. It’s not the constant bloodbath that some swordplay films can be, but at the same time the violence does reach the levels needed. Rather it’s nice to see the type of old melodrama I remember from the Shintaro Katsu series return…. even if this one wasn’t the instant classic that those old films were. Neko gives “Ichi” 4 well deserved “Meows” out of 5 with several purrs of contentment for the overall effect that was achieved in it.

The DVD’s? The Malay one, released by Ikano Fielm, features an excellent Anamorphic Widescreen image in Region 0 NTSC format (presumably directly from the Japanese Region 2 release). It comes with both a Japanese Dolby 5.1 as well as a Dolby stereo audio track. It’s subtitled into both Chinese as well as excellent English. It appears to be uncut, uncensored and complete. Not bad…. and certainly worth the roughly 6-10$ price-tag you’ll find it listed for most places. Just be wary…. there are more than a few shoddy bootlegs of this floating around with far less stellar features.

Funimation’s Region 1 release is also Anamorphic Widescreen in NTSC (of course) and features the Japanese Dolby 5.1 audio track as well as an excellently done English audio dub (One of the advantages of having their experience with anime is having a great stable of voice actors available who are more than up for the job…). They also have English subs if you should like. It also seems to be complete, unaltered and unedited from the original release…. thank goodness. At around 13-20$ US it’s certainly a welcome choice for those looking for a nice edition for their collection.

Well then… my need for swordplay drama fulfilled at last, I look next for that elusive Asian horror film that will have my sweet Carolyn actually looking forward to “movie nite” together….. So, till next time gentle visitors, “Meow, meow for now!”

Oh!…..Yes, there’s a Trailer of course, and here it goes!

Our quick synopsis goes like this: “A young gentleman called Putra (played by Restu Sinaga) marries Amira (played by Indah Kalalo) and would like to give the best honeymoon experience for his wife in his privately owned island. However, strange ghostly incidents are haunting them as a newly wed couple.

From an exotic bedroom to a swimming pool filled with excitement to their romantic bathroom and in every corner of the island, a female ghost dressed in a wedding gown is seeking blood debt from the couple.

A dark secret is waiting to be revealed, changing their romantic night into a scary encounter with the ghost. Who is the ghost and why is she terrorizing them?”

Yep…. this sounds pretty much like your standard Indonesian horror effort. It’s been a while since one really wowed me…. is this one gonna be one of those amazing hidden gems your Favorite Cargirl occasionally encounters? Maybe yes…. maybe no. Am I still gonna watch the goofy thing? Yeah….

Guess you’ll just have to stick with me and see how this one stacks up. (C’mon!!…. it’s not like you don’t wanna!! Neko knows you all too well. Hehehehe!!)

So surrender to your secret needs and “Read On”!!

Alrighty then…. This one starts out promisingly enough. A dark and stormy night…. a honeymoon couple enjoying a sexy romantic interlude by candlelight. What could possibly go wrong here? Well… this is an Indonesian ghost story after all….. so, of course, just about everything. After the sweaty intimacies, our happy bride lingers in bed toying with her necklace, obviously a token of love from her dear husband. Hubby, meanwhile, goes off to the bathroom and then only a panicked scream and the sound of breaking glass later, our poor girl is off running for her life clad only in a silky sheet, pursued by an terrible unknown something through the rain until finally it catches her and causes her to fall into a muddy pit to her death, impaled upon a big ol’ stake….. Ouch!!

There you go. Simple and to the point. If only the rest of our movie followed this formula…. Instead, unfortunately, much of this film’s short run time is taken up with a superfluous comedy subplot filler to at least let it be 70 minutes long or so. Worse even… the subplot is… well…. downright repulsive to boot. But more on that in a moment…..

First off we meet newlyweds Amira and her rich husband Putra on his speedboat off for a romantic honeymoon getaway to his private island. Yep… the same island where we just witnessed that horrible opening scene. They are both wealthy… attractive… and seemingly perfect for one another in both a personal as well as business fashion. Their two companies are on the verge of a merger… just as soon as the honeymoon is over and it’s back to business and the real world for them both. For now… it’s time for fun in the sun and all the naughty bedroom fun they can cram into their holiday. Everything seems perfect.. right? Well… it’s still a horror movie… don’t forget that.

Once there, we get introduced to Putra’s household staff…. his tough, capable right hand man Yogi, his shy and suspiciously scared looking son, and the two slimy guys I mentioned earlier… his cook and head of security. These two waste much of the next 40 minutes or so in a prolonged contest to see which of them will be able to peep on their boss’s sexy new wife and masturbate. Yep…. sometimes both at the same time… sometimes all by themselves with a stolen picture of her in a bikini…. Ewwwwhhh!!! The first time is merely annoying… but the constant repeat of this idea become pretty sickening…. Thank goodness the ghost shows up and kills them both around the end of the first hour. (After that, either Carolyn or I would probably have begged for the chance to waste them ourselves.) I’m not really a prude or anything, but I found this subplot fairly tasteless and especially surprising given the ridiculous “Mosaic blurring” done to obscure slightly risky bits on near nudity at times throughout the film. It struck both of us as odd that blunt humor about two repulsive guys masturbating constantly would be allowed, while the view of a woman’s nipples barely seen through wet cloth for a split second or so would be troublesome. But I guess that’s Indonesian sensibilities for you…..

All that filler leaves very little time for the actual plot to get going. Eventually we learn that the woman we saw in the beginning was Putra’s first wife Lydia… and that she died tragically on their honeymoon after the ghost of her grandmother attacked them for reasons unknown. Amira spends her time dodging the wedding dress-wearing spirit as well…. is it angry with her for marrying Putra? Or is their some other problem yet to be revealed? Is it the Grandmother…. or is it Lydia herself?

With less than 20 minutes of film to go, they can’t really waste a lot of time on character development or plot, so lets just say that the spirit isn’t out to hurt Amira… far from it. The ghost of poor Lydia is actually trying it’s best to protect her… first from those two bozos….. and then from her dear devoted husband. Yep, this one turns out to be one of those movies where the evil husband marries then kills his new bride all to steal her wealth for himself. He did it with Lydia, and now he’s out to increase his holdings by absorbing Amira’s company and then letting her “disappear” like his poor first wife.

Eventually we get a repeat of the beginning sequence… but this time, thanks to the intervention of the shy young son of evil manservant Yogi and the angry spirit of Lydia, it’s ends up being Putra who ultimately ends up on the wrong end of the pointy stake. Good riddance!!

So… how do I rate this one? Well… Indah Kalalo does a decent job as our heroine. She’s pretty, vulnerable, and believable as Amira with good chemistry with her leading man. The story itself is nothing special…. having the feel of an old english gothic novel….. but that whole repulsive comedy subplot just about sinks this one for me. Maybe it’s just because I’m a woman, but I was really turned off by the whole thing. It might have been meant to be risque and funny but it fails miserably. Let’s have more potty jokes next time…. those are soooo much better.

Neko can only give this one 2 pathetic “Meows” out of 5….. It’s just not a good film, and is dragged waaay down by that subplot. Hopefully I’ll have better luck next time an Indonesian film slips into the ol’ DVD player….. At least I can hope so…

Trailer? Naturally there’s a Trailer… and as always I leave you with a quick look for yourselves!!

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

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

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

Psssst!! That’s your cue….. it’s time to “Read On”, o’ Gentle Visitors!!

As this one starts out we meet Angel, a simple everyday Japanese schoolgirl preparing for School Break. Her friends are all excited about a camping trip they have planned together with one of their hunky teachers as chaperon but she’s just happy to be taking a vacation excursion with her dad…. an annual tradition they’ve done every year since well before her Mom died. At least that’s what she thought she’d be doing….. Little does she expect that this time out things are to be different… her widowed dad has a new girlfriend. Even more annoyingly… her Dad wants her to come along on this year’s outing so Angel can get acquainted with her before the marriage…. Not exactly what daddy’s little girl want to hear.

All upset, she decides instead to visit her estranged aunt who lives alone waaay out in the boondocks at the family mansion there. Since her friends end up losing the chance to go camping, she invites them along to keep her company. Sounds simple and relaxing, eh? That’s always the warning sign isn’t it?

By now…. this film had really got me worried. It’s certainly different alright, with a trippy 70’s funky style that makes you fairly certain director Nobuhiko Obayashi might just have been dropping a lil’ acid in his saki when he did this one. The colors are vibrant…. too vibrant to be real and scenes that shift rapidly from slapstick comedy nonsense to cartoonish fantasy dream sequences at the drop of a hat. Sets are deliberately fake at times…. with a constant reliance on painted backdrops and matte painting to give the whole movie a very strange look unlike anything I’ve seen from old Japanese films. There wasn’t anything else like this going on in Japanese films at that time….. and I’m thinking it was probably quite a surprise to audiences then.

Our heroines are all cardboard stock characters right out of a manga story too. The film gives them all nicknames to easily identify them based on each of their main character traits. We get the beautiful Angel of course, the human eating machine known as Mac (short, we are told, for “Stomach”… Seriously!! I just can’t tell you how many girls wanted that nickname when I was a young schoolgirl!!)), the serious glasses-wearing Prof and her wealth of knowledge, the musically talented Melody, naive and timid Sweetie, the dreamer of the group, Fantasy with her wild imagination, and karate expert called Kung Fu. There’s one more companion…. one who we all are immediately suspicious of, and that’s Snowy, the mysterious stray cat Angel finds one day and who seems uncannily able to follow her anywhere…. even the train that takes them away from Tokyo on the first leg of the trip to the countryside.

Once they arrive, they find Angel’s auntie is friendly enough, but frail and seemingly confined to her wheelchair and allergic to even the dimmest sunlight…. but not cats! Snowy takes to her immediately… as if they’ve know each other for years. Apparently none of the girls had ever seen “Mansion of the Ghost Cat”….. or maybe they would have know something was up…. big mistake. Oh well….  Being a bunch of nice girl-next-door types, they pitch in to try to bring some joy to the lonely woman. Strange eerie things start to happen to the girls almost immediately and despite thinking that Angel is our main heroine, she’s actually not. Turns out it’s Fantasy who is the only one start to realize almost at once that something bad is going on even if nobody believes her. The girls start dropping like flies….. first Mac gets ambushed at the old well retrieving a yummy melon from the cold water. Fantasy encounters her severed head in a funny sequence not to be believed where her head flies around before biting Fantasy firmly on the butt!!

Nobody believes her weird story (I guess our lil’ Fantasy must have had a history of some serious opium addiction or something….) and this prevents them from taking any precautions till it’s far too late to do any good. More and more girls get killed…. Sweetie is eaten by some futons and turns up inside a crazy grandfather clock. Melody gets her fingers eaten off before being devoured by Auntie’s piano….. Prof. is drowned in a room full of Cat’s blood…. Kung Fu gets herself eaten by a lamp… yes, that’s right… a lamp!! But worse….. just when you think Angel is going to figure out what her evil aunt is up to, she gets consumed by her own reflection, her body possessed by Auntie… D’ohh!!! Ok…Ok, so this means our hero here is really our hunky teacher who’s on his way to rescue our young maidens in his funky dune buggy, right? Ummmm? Nope. He’s well meaning (and the secret crush of innocent Fantasy), but destined to end up as nothing more than a pile of bananas in his abandoned buggy by the side of the road.

So? Does anybody survive this one? Well…. you all know how most Asian ghost stories go. Let’s just say I wouldn’t get fond of any of our spunky young ladies and leave it at that.

My goodness!! Where to begin…. This film is just plain crazy. If director Obayashi wanted to do something different with his first commercial big budget film for a major studio, he most certainly did that! I’ve seen plenty of old Japanese films in my time, but this one stands out as probably the most unusual one ever. It’s a horror film alright….. but it’s also simultaneously a comedy, a cartoon, a karate film, and has all the jarring art house film elements you’d ever need (or want)…. all crammed into 88 minutes. Many images…. while being completely nuts… are even surprisingly effective scares. I’ll never get the picture of Auntie with the eyeball in her mouth out of my head… ever.

Eureka has done a good job with this one too. It’s presented in an anamorphic original aspect ratio of 1.55:1, with the original Japanese stereo soundtrack intact. The newly translated subtitles are good, and there are over 90 minutes of bonus interviews  available with Director Nobuhiko Obayashi, his daughter Chigumi, actress Kumiko Oba who played the character of Fantasy, and Toho promotional executive Shoho Tomiyama. Add a generous booklet of production stills and promotional material on the film, and there’s a lot to like here. If you’ve been waiting for this one to come out, you could do far worse than to add it to your collection.

So…. weird it is, but it’s still definitely worth a look. Neko gives this one 4 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a nice fantasy film… but it’s also just a wee bit too strange to be on my list of all time favorites. I guess I’m just too simple a girl to enjoy really deep and artistic stuff….. sigh. However… there’s absolutely no denying that it’s certainly a unique vision of a film… and I can certainly appreciate the effort made to realize that vision and to make it so unusual.

Trailer? Silly people…. Your Favorite Catgirl would never leave you without a wee lil’ something to get you in the mood for one of these weird lil’ films…… So here ya go!!

You all know the story, but here’s a quick synopsis for those of you still woefully ignorant of the legend: “When a band of assassins invade the home of their target Hei Tai they find only his lovely, innocent, bride-to-be, Nami and force upon her a cruel dilemma: either she kills her fiancee’s sister or they kill her fiancee. Trapped, and unable to confide in the person she loves most, Nami kills her fiancee’s sister and is sent to prison where she survives only by becoming as ruthless as those around her. Trained to fight by a fellow inmate, Nami develops the skills and strength to escape and sets out on a quest for revenge. After killing two of the assassins she’s reunited with Hei Tai who’s still unaware she killed his sister. As their love is rekindled Nami decides to abandon her crusade of vengeance when the remaining assassin finds them and tells Hei Tai what Nami did. Nami realizes she can never rest until she finds and defeats the assassins’ employer, but now her beloved’s torn between helping her and his own personal desire for revenge.”

So… will this one equal the classic, or fall miserably on it’s butt? It’s got all the necessary prerequisites to succeed…. Women in prison…. brutal unrelenting violence and torture… a beautiful woman pushed to her extreme and honed into a lethal killing machine…. and, as the poster promises, “Lots of Girl-on Girl violence” all leading our Heroine to a well deserved vengeance by the film’s end. How can it fail? (But… as Neko well knows…. that somehow, some way, they can still mess it all up once in a while… so I’m keepin’ my lil’ paws crossed for luck!!)

Your Favorite Catgirl knows you like these unabashedly exploitative silly films too, so let’s all “Read On” and find out for ourselves!!

The first thing that I found surprising about this one was that, although it’s a re-make of the famous Japanese film, this one’s not a Japanese film at all. This film is actually a Chinese one…. complete with a Chinese Mandarin soundtrack. A bit jarring to me, expecting the familiar sounds of spoken Japanese to come from a character like Nami. I had to check the DVD just to be sure… but nope, no Japanese audio option at all.

As this one starts out, we get introduced to the character of Nami (played by Japanese actress and stunt woman Miki Mizuno from “Hard Revenge Milly”) hanging by her wrists in the courtyard of a nameless prison…. slowly dying of exposure. Then we flash back…. and find out this is a far cry from her former life as a simple ordinary woman with a loving boyfriend (played by Taiwanese singer & actor Dylan Kuo) who is an honest hard working policeman. Seemingly they have that almost fairytale perfect life most couples never seems to really have until, that is… evil invades their domestic paradise. A gang of vicious killers break into their home one evening taking poor Nami hostage as part of a plan to kill her boyfriend’s father once he arrives for a visit. Here the film sets it’s tone immediately as being far more bloody and grim than the original ever though of being.

Seems the mysterious woman in charge of this group of thugs, Sen Sou (played with stylish psychopathy by Emme Wong), finds Nami’s perfect love too much to accept. She gives Nami a choice….. stab her boyfriend’s sister to death or watch him die instead, a bullet in the back of his head. (This is actually the weakest part of the plot…. since Nami realistically would probably rather die together with her boyfriend rather than cause him the pain of watching her murder his sister….. At this point in the plot, she really lacks any ability to kill.) I’m a bit fuzzy as to how this all ends up with her going to jail… I mean, obviously she didn’t shoot her boyfriend’s father in the head with a gun she didn’t have, and if she told her story to any cops with an ounce of mental acumen she would have probably been given a far less grueling punishment for having been forced to choose who lived and who died on that horrible evening. However… apparently the police couldn’t be bothered to actually investigate the crimes… Oh well…..

But all this logic is getting in the way of the story…. So it’s off to the nameless bleak woman’s prison where Nami gets her first rude awakening as to the Hell in which she’s been committed to. Strangely enough, for an exploitation film like this… there are no evil Lesbians here (or if there are, they stay hidden pretty darn well)… just vicious lady pit-bulls who like to pound the fudge out of those weaker than themselves in a mud filled arena for the amusement of the warden and a select clientele of gamblers. Naturally… the leader of this bunch takes an immediate hatred towards poor innocent Nami. That leads to the first of her brutal beatings…. with the implied idea that there will be many, many more to come. The violence is hard…. and in any real world situation, would have actually resulted in a slow disfiguring death…. but not in the fantasy world of woman’s revenge cinema. No… there, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you tougher… meaner… and ultimately hardens you in body and soul till you are ready to bring the payback to those who have hurt you the most. It was really hard to watch some of this stuff…. and Carolyn let me know it was a bit much for her as well…. but I told her to hang in with me and things would turn around eventually for Nami. It’s just that kind of film….

Eventually Nami has to face off against Dieyou (played by Nana Natsume) and her gang of thugs… a particularly vicious battle in a dirty shower room that was possibly the meanest girl fight I’ve ever seen. We get multiple opponents going after Nami with a sledghammer, several boards studded with nails, and all the dirty street fighting moves this side of pro-wrestling. We see her fend them off taking the kind of punishment you’d never believe a woman could take…. including a drowning that lets her trick Dieyou into dropping her guard long enough to let Nami slice open her throat with a piece of another woman’s skull. Ouch!! (And Ewwwwhhhh, gross!!)

I almost lost Carolyn at this point…. the fight was just a wee bit toooo graphic for her, but she stuck it out with me…. (Something tells me I owe her a light romantic comedy next “movie nite”….) However real revenge movie junkies…. like your Favorite Catgirl…. just know this means the big finale is sooooo gonna kick some serious butt. Right after they kill Nami of course… Say what?

Yep, we’re at that point where the warden figures Nami is just toooo dangerous and crazy to keep around anymore. So it’s off to the courtyard and the sequence in the beginning where she’s been left to hang till she dies…. A cold lonely death that ends with the guards bagging her up in some tattered old tarp and dumping her in the woods away from the prison to be forgotten and unremembered. However…. we wouldn’t have much of a movie if everything ended there now would we?

At this point the movie changes gears…. and Nami gets found by the enigmatic character called “The Corpse Collector” (played by Simon Yam) who finds that she not… quite… dead yet. He’s got this notion that only someone who has already died can get really good at kung-fu…. and sets out to heal Nami and teach her everything he knows about fighting. Cue that crazy training montage!!

There’s some kickboxing…. with hanging corpses standing in for heavy bags… and a nifty playground version of the shaolin wooden man….. a little psychological insight into the nature of one’s opponent….. and most especially some deadly swordfighting to round it all out. Next…. it’s time to dig those two graves and hit the bloody road to vengeance. You go girl!!

From here on, we leave the desolate confines of the prison and the ruins near it, and Nami becomes a veritable leather clad demoness…. stalking the night scene in a nameless city, looking for some sign of the gang that invaded her home and caused all this pain so many years earlier. They skip all the boring stuff that such investigations always get bogged down with and jump right to her suddenly knowing exactly what was behind it all. (This confused the bejeebits outta Carolyn and if you don’t pay attention, it’s likely to leave you scratching your head too….) Seems after all this is said and done, it had nothing whatsoever to do with her boyfriend’s police job…. Instead it seems that his dad stood in the way of some evil scientist’s desire to get funding for his unethical experiments involving transplant surgery. Seems his daughter… errr, ummm? “trophy wife”?….. No.. wait a minute…errrr, ahhh, weird girlfriend, maybe? Heck I don’t really know who she is, but she’s the one that sent those bad guys over to Nami’s house to kill her boyfriend’s dad. A simple call to her gets those killers looking for Nami, and solves her problem of finding them.

To complicate matters… her boyfriend is back too. But he’s had his memory erased…. all the nasty images of his beloved Nami killing his sister gone, so naturally he finds himself falling for her all over again. You just know that relationship is doomed, especially since our villains are the ones who kindly did the hypnotherapy he needed. Nice coincidence that…..

All that goofy plot stuff aside, we get several nice set piece battles as Nami faces off against the gang, killing them one by one in some fairly bloody, creative ways. Lots and lots of anime inspired wire-fu… but fun nevertheless. If realistic fights are your thing… you probably won’t enjoy this part of the film, but I sorta did. It’s silly…. cartoonish….. yet satisfying in a visceral way. How does it all wrap up? Well… this one is a short film at 88 minutes in length, and is more about neat fight scenes than character development, but we all know how these usually go, right? The villains all get killed… in as nasty a manner as our Heroine can manage… love will elude her again, so empty and alone you know she’ll be forced to continue living with her pain simply because she’s just too tough to die. Time to walk off into the sunrise….. Roll those credits.

So…. all in all, how did “Sasori” stack up? As a remake of the classic film…. well… there’s no comparison. The Meiko Kaji film of the 70’s is so superior in most ways, with far better music, cinematography, story and all the trimmings. It’s probably why this one went it’s own direction, re-imagining the ideas behind the original and going with all the strong violence and brutal HK inspired action. Seen in that light, it’s an OK film, but flawed from the standpoint of having an overly simple story that has glaring plot holes a viewer needs to ignore if they want to enjoy it. Perhaps the best element was the role of Nami as portrayed by Miki Mizuno… She’s a very accomplished actress who easily appeals as both innocent Nami and the cold, deadly “Scorpion” as well. She’s not afraid of the action either, as “Hard Revenge Milly” showed us, and is a natural here in this very physical role. The other actors also do a credible job, but can’t really lift this one above it’s level of simple actioner.

I give this one an acceptable 3 “Meows” out of 5…. mostly on the strength of the action and fight choreography. Also… for all it’s violence, particularly against women, it doesn’t forget “Neko’s Cardinal Rule on Violence & Torture”….. a very welcome thing. But in general, I wouldn’t recommend this one to any but the most die-hard fans of the genre. The Region 2 PAL DVD is certainly acceptable, being both letterbox formatted and well subtitled, but nothing special. So in wrap-up, I’ll definitely be wanting to see more of Miki Mizuno in the future, if not a sequel to this particular one any time soon.

Trailer? OMG…. could I ever leave you without one? You know this lil’ Catgirl better than that…. Hehehehe!!

In that vein comes this one…. “Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge”. Even better… Well Go USA have just announced they are going to be releasing this one on R1 DVD this March 30th.

They give us this synopsis to pique our interest… “One night in modern day Tokyo, Yosuke encounters Eri a beautiful girl in her school uniform and suddenly a surprising battle begins. Pitted against a seemingly immortal giant who brandishes a vicious chainsaw, Eri and Yosuke must come together and understand why this chainsaw wielding ghost continues to appear. Is he determined to end their life or simply communicate a dark message and the truth about Eri?”

Ghosts? Schoolgirls with crazy mad ninja skills?…. and Chainsaws? Oh.. yeah, Neko’s gonna have to see this one….. There’s even a Trailer available for it…. but if you wanna see that, then you’re gonna have to “Read On”…..

Oooohhh!! Here ya go!! (Sorry… but this stubborn one just didn’t want to embed itself… so you’ll have to watch it at Nipponcinema….just follow the Linkie!!)

CHAINSAW TRAILER!!

Well now…. we just can’t have that, and as I know some of you ache to know all the details of my boring lil’ life it seemed like the proper time to let you all in on what exactly has been happenin’ since Christmas and the New Year for your Favorite Catgirl Princess!!

Well…. for one thing, January brings me another birthday….. So…. did I get all sorts of nice presents from family and friends?

Guess you’ll just have to “Read On” to find out!!

Yep…. another birthday, another year older….. just HOW old remains my secret… Hehehehe!!! Let’s just say I’m sliding  graciously into my late 30’s and leave it at that shall we.

After the festivities of both Christmas and New Years, it’s always so anti-climactic when my birthday rolls around. My family always remembers, and Mom and Dad always send me something… but I don’t usually make a big deal out of it. Normally I just make certain to take the day off from work and spend a lazy day around the apartment. This year was nicer, having Carolyn to spend it with… and as my “girlfriend” (Gee… despite everything, it still feels strange using that phrase for her….) she felt obligated to go all out and make the day special for lil’ ol’ me.

I must say she’s been especially affectionate anyway since we got home from Christmas at her sister’s place… I don’t really think she’s even aware she’s been doing it, but I’ve certainly noticed all the little things she’s started treating me to. Soft touches as she passes by me in the kitchen or as we hurry to leave for work in the morning. Extra close cuddling on the couch in the evenings…. complete with gentle soothing backrubs while we chat about the day. A kiss or a hug from her now lingers just that tiny extra length of time to let me know she wishes it would never end. Seems that she’s just completely unable to pass up any chance to touch or be intimately close to me lately. Ahhh, yes… and her need to finally decide upon a “pet name” for me…..

That has been something she’s worked on unconsciously since we became lovers. I started out as “sweetheart”… became “sweetie” for a brief while… even “honey” and “babe” had their turns. However none really stuck, and it was only recently that she seems to have settled on “Miyu”…. as a diminutive lil’ shorthand for my name…. which she’s always liked. (I was even “Miyu-chan” for a very brief period, but she’s dropped that one thank goodness!! It never really suited me coming from her…) If happiness were a tangible physical thing, I’m almost certain it would be bubbling out of her ears in all it’s frothy pink exuberance. And you can never wash that out of the carpet… Hehehehe!!

It came as no surprise then, that she’d do something crazy and romantic for my birthday…. even going as far as roping in Samantha and some of the girls from the restaurant to help out. They all got to sneak into the apartment and set things up while we were off at Dance class that evening…. and when we got back they surprised me with cupcakes and gifts and we had a nice little party together. Carolyn was surprised too… because even though she’d been in on the plan, the girls neglected to tell her they’d pooled their cash and booked us a romantic evening at a nice hotel for this Valentine’s Day as their gift for me…. Soooo nice of them all!! And to think I’d been so worried about “coming out” at work…

Hmmmmm? So what else did I get for gifts? Well…. Carolyn got me a pair of beautiful Jade & Peridot Earrings…. just the sort of pretty and expensive things I love and yet never seem to buy for myself. My parents tried to coordinate gifts this year, as Mom sent me a lovely antique ivory comb, and Dad bought me a set of silver hairpins. Seems I probably should have told them about my new short lil’ hairdo…. Ooops!! But after all… it’s the thought that counts, right? Oh… and Sam just couldn’t go without getting me another gift as well… a sweet little western print broomstick skirt. So your Favorite Catgirl seems to have really cleaned up gift wise this year!! Yay!!

The evening ended fairly late, after all the wine and the cupcakes were eaten, and Sam let me know I was off the hook for work the next day as they had gotten together to make certain one of the other cooks would cover my shift… and Carolyn let me know she had called in already for a “personal day”….the sneaks!! So all that remained was to leave the cleanup for tomorrow and scamper off to bed for a bit of naughty fun with my sweetie guaranteed to make us both sleep in late the next day.

All in all… it was probably the best birthday I’ve had in years….

So, that’s about it… for this time out. But don’t worry, I’ll try to get back much sooner for my next “Diary” posting, and I’ve got some more reviews in the pipeline so until then, as always gentle visitors, “Meow, meow, for now!!”