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!!

Our Synopsis goes like this: “In the retro futuristic post-apocalyptic ruins of a deserted city, a small group of brave little robotic puppets led by a recently awakened “9″, battle evil machines for the right to rule over the lost world of Mankind…. Who will win this curious struggle and ultimately control the new world?”

Although produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov…. much of this film lies squarely on the shoulders of Shane Acker, creator of the imaginative short film upon which this one was based. I’d seen the Trailer of course, but this one turned out to be one of those films that just never made it to my lil’ town… so now that it’s newly out on DVD, I guess it’s time for your Favorite Catgirl to fix that particular lil’ oversight.

So… let’s all “Read On” and find out how this one ranks up, shall we?

Hmmmm? An animated movie about puppets fighting evil “Terminator”-like robot monsters….. Well you don’t get one of those every day now. This one starts out as our lil’ hero, 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), gets put together with intricate loving care by the mysterious scientist who dies bringing him to life. How long he hangs, motionless before finally awakening is unknown….. but when he does, everything lies in ruin. With only a strange talisman and no memory of what came before or anyone to explain the world he’s suddenly found himself in, he’s forced to wander into the junk strewn world outside the shattered house in which he awoke searching for answers. Something bad happened here…. that much is evident, with ruin and decay and the remains of the dead everywhere to be found. It’s not our world…. instead the world of “9″ is a steampunk version of World War 1…. with all the terrible trappings of Trench warfare and the quaint houses and wrecked cars of the 1920′s or 30′s. Thankfully it doesn’t take little 9 long to find a friend in the arrival of one of his “brothers”… Number 2 (voiced by Martin Landau)…. who immediately takes him in hand, glad to find yet another like himself still alive in this forlorn place.

2 realizes that 9 is mute… and being the inventive lil’ bugger he is, he tinkers a broken doll’s speaking device into 9 so that he can communicate. 9 realizes there must be others like themselves and that he isn’t alone in this weird place, but before 2 can really tell him too much, a terrible mechanical thing attacks them. Half machine and half skeleton, and all nightmare it seemingly is bent on destroying them at any cost. It wants the magic talisman 9 found in the ruined house where he awoke you see…. and it’ll tear him to bits to get it. Luckily 2 manages to distract the evil thing allowing 9 to escape, even though it tears up his shoulder in the process. Overpowered, 2 gets captured and the monster takes him to an ominous towering factory on the horizon as 9 slips into unconsciousness.

9 later awakens in the ruins of an old church, where he meets one-eyed Number 5 (voiced by John C. Reilly), who sews 9′s shoulder together and comforts him. Number 1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer), seems to be the leader of the group, along with the muscle  of the hulking Number 8 (voiced by Fred Tatasciore), and he tells 9 that they have been hiding here ever since they awoke into the madness of the last days of “War of the Machines” that spelled the extinction of mankind. Later things quieted down as the machines won the war yet all but disappeared themselves. Except for the ever lurking Beast……

9 tries to get them to help him go to the factory and rescue 2….. but 1 will have none of that. He’s autocratic and inflexible in his views…. and will never take the kinds of risks that 9 suggests. Using 8 to bully them, he tells them they’ll only end up like the other absent members of the group 3,4 and 7 who are currently missing… having disobeyed his warnings against going out into the ruins to look for the truth behind their origins. 9 manages to convince 5 to come with him on a rescue mission to save his friend and together they sneak off to the old factory.

On the way…. they encounter 7, the only female member of the group, who’s gone all “wasteland warrior”…. and with her help they get into the factory and destroy the Beast… Cursed with an insatiable curiosity, 9 makes the mistake of placing the magic talisman into a socket in the great machine waking it from it’s inactivity. It comes to life…. and promptly uses the talisman to suck the life force right out of poor 2. Our little heroes barely escape….. and the machine begins to construct other horrible servants (like a nasty amalgam of baby doll, skeleton and snake) from the mixed debris of the factory…. you just know that’s gonna suck for the future happiness of the lil’ puppets.

From this point forward, the action switches to 9 and the group trying to undo the mistake of waking the evil machine….. as well as 9 learning exactly why they were made in the first place. There’s the standard creepy machine monsters to contend with… the friction between 1 and 9 over leadership of the group… and the eventual reuniting of all the surviving puppets to decide what they’ll do with the world they’ve inherited. It gets a bit deep and metaphysical here… as it seems all the puppets actually carry some portion of the old Scientist’s soul… as, it seems, does the Machine as well, although perverted by the Dictator who ruled the country so long ago. It’s never stated.. but apparently each of them has but a single facet of his psyche…. with 9 having perhaps the purest portion of it concerning his desires to build and explore. Not all our little heroes make it through… but Neko’s not going to spoil that for you. In the end, it’s a bittersweet chance for things to happen anew, perhaps for the better this time out. But that, I guess is left for the sequel…..

So overall, how was “9″? Well… it’s a technical triumph… with a visual style and look like nothing else I’ve ever seen. The characters, while a bit shallow, are engaging enough…. but somehow there just isn’t enough of a “spark of life” to make this one anything more than an interesting anime inspired fairytale. Neko liked it, but I wasn’t blown away by it. So… I’m giving “9″ a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being quirky, and interesting, but somehow just as empty inside as the puppets themselves. Maybe a bigger examination of the various personalities of a single individual at war with themselves might have helped here, but I’m thinking the story wasn’t ready to get that deep. A shame… as this one is soooo close to being that kind or original vision that would be memorable for decades to come. In the end…. it’s only a curiosity like some of the junk our heroes find in the ruins of their world, recognizable in it’s potential but now lifeless. But… I do think this one is worth a look…. even if it’s not a buy for most, it should be a rental. Give it a shot… you might just like it even more than me.

Naturally, there’s a nice Trailer floating around, so here we go… enjoy!

Our synopsis reads: “Arundhati (played by Anushka Shetty) is a descendant of the Gadwal ruling dynasty. Her marriage is finally arranged and settled with her lover Rahul and his family. A few days before her marriage, she comes to her ancestral home of Gadwal from Hyderabad. There she is drawn to nearby abandoned fort where an evil spirit is lying in wait. Cut to flashback. Three generations back, Jejemma aka Arundhati (also played by Anushka Shetty) kills the evil sadistic womaniser, Pasupathi (played by Sonu Sood) whose eternal spirit vows to take revenge on her and her family. Three generations later, the new Arundhati is destined by fate to face him once again.”

I saw the trailer for this one and was just blown away… It has the look of a great big budget fantasy epic just the way I like them. After many fruitless months of searching, my efforts have finally been rewarded with a nice English friendly DVD at a ridiculously low price…. Yay!!!

So…. will “Arundhati” turn out to be that amazing Indian film I’ll just have to gush endlessly about to all my friends… or will it just be another goofy and confusing musical mess I’ll be embarrassed to admit I even watched?? I guess there’s really only one way to know….

So let’s all pop the popcorn, settle in on the couch and give it a try, shall we?

So… this one starts off as Arundhati, the great grand daughter of the Raja of Gadwal Mahasansthan is planning her marriage. Much grand pomp and circumstance is planned as she is the first woman born to the family in over 3 generations…. and more importantly, her family and their retainers all have the same idea that she’s the reincarnation of her great grandmother, Arundhati who was considered the living incarnation of the local Goddess Jejamma. Her great grandma, it seems, was basically Xena, Warrior Princess, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi all rolled into one…. and that’s some big slippers to fill….. trust this lil’ Catgirl. Worse…. Arundhati is the gorgeous spitting image of her famous ancestor so everybody walks around her in awe. The marriage is a big deal, so she returns to her ancestral family home in Gadwal…. which is a big… big… mistake. Seems her great grandma sorta walled up an evil guy alive and now his spirit wants revenge……

You see… waaaay back then, Arundhati’s grandma, Jejamma, had an elder sister who had been married off to her father’s wastrel nephew Pasupati (played by Sonu Sood). Pasupati was a sleazy womaniser and all around sexual sadist who used to ride around the countryside raping all the women that were unlucky enough to catch his eye and killing all those who resisted him. Jejamma’s sister finally committed suicide to escape his torments and her little sister flew into a righteous rage and ordered the people of Gadwal to publicly beat Pasupati nearly to death before tying him behind his horse and sending it galloping off dragging him to what should have been his messy and well deserved death.Though all of Gadwal celebrated Jejamma’s ending of his reign of terror, he somehow survived, saved by the evil Aghora monks, who served the Devil. Pasupati healed and then mastered the forbidden tantrik arts so he could return to Gadwal fort and take his revenge on Jejamma and her entire kingdom. Here’s where things get cool…..

Yep… these Aghora guys…. now they got all those wicked voodoo/ witchcraft/ eastern mystic evil stuff going on and then some…. and when Pasupati returns, the first thing he does is to start killing everybody he can with his magical powers, ripping them apart… slashing them like the wind is full of razors…. smashing them into wall like bloody rag dolls. He’s all set to wipe them all out when Jejamma arrives…. all regal and beautiful and soooo sooo sexy. Having a weakness for such things, he decides instead to satisfy his lusts upon her and rape her right then and there before her remaining family and retainers….. His big mistake….

In a sequence “borrowed” right out of the wonderful Chinese wuxia film “House of Flying Daggers”, Jejamma does a sultry dance with scarves in the middle of a room surrounded by drums…. Yep. Unlike most sequences “borrowed” for Indian films though, this particular version is excellently used and truly fits in. If you hadn’t seen the other film, you’d never realize it…. and the way it’s used here comes across much more as a true homage than a blatant rip off. Also…. unlike Zhang Zhi Yi’s dance… this time our heroine managed to surprise the villain with her tricky sword snatching scarves. Thinking quickly, she binds his hands, chokes his throat before embedding a chunk of glass in his mouth and topping the whole attack off by dropping a huge spiky iron chandelier on top of him skewering him to the floor helplessly. All that’s left is for her to swoop in and behead the bastard….. But nooooooo. The Yogis that are present say that’s a bad… bad… bad idea. He’ll only become an ultra powerful evil spirit then and be unstoppable. D’ohhhh!!!

But…. Jejamma is nothing if not a smart cookie. If she can’t kill him, well….then… that’s OK. She’ll just order her subjects to haul every holy relic, mystic talisman and loose stone from any holy shrine they can find to build a big ol’ tomb right over top of him where he lays. Then you get every Holy man you can find to bless the living beejeebits outta that tomb and that oughtta hold his evil in check forever. It means abandoning the fort…. but that’s a small price to pay to put an end to him at last. Unfortunately…. it still isn’t enough. After 48 days languishing in his tomb, he finally dies and his evil spirit is still powerful enough to curse the land of Gadwal causing sickness, misery and ruining the peoples lives. Jejamma leaves to wander the land, looking for a solution, but telling her people to name the first daughter born to the family after her…. and that she would be her reincarnation come to save them in their hour of need should the evil ever escape. She never returns….. and she’s never heard from again.

But…. 80 years later…. Arundhati is born, and all this stuff is hers to deal with. Her arrival in Gadwal coincides with Pasupati’s escape from his imprisonment in the ruins of the old fort. He’s still evil…. still seething for revenge… and still one nasty horny bastard. He wants  Arundhati…. and he sets out on a mission to make her submit to his will and surrender herself to him. She’s frightened…. and she’s unwilling to believe she’s the reincarnation of her famous ancestor….. luckily she’s got some help in the form of a Muslim Holy guy named Anwar who’s got all the answers to the mystic stuff and just enough Holy whammy to keep her safe enough until her buried memories of her past life reveal to her the solution to her problem.

At this point we get all sorts of neat “Exorcist” meets “Final Destination” effects as evil Pasupati goes about possessing people, murdering Arundhati’s family and friends…. even tricking her husband to be into coming to Gadwal where he can become the ultimate hostage he can threaten to force Arundhati to submit to him at last. Stressed out and desperate…. she finally taps into her buried memories of her past life and finds out that her great grandma sacrificed her own life so that… from her own body… a weapon could be forged by Holy hermits that can actually destroy Pasupati’s evil spirit forever.

Our Holy guy Anwar and our heroine try to find the weapon, but get separated…. and our Anwar is thrown into a bottomless gorge to his death. Oh no!! Broken in spirit… she returns to the ruined fort to prevent the death of her family members by surrendering herself to the evil Pastupati’s unholy lusts. But….. Anwar isn’t dead!! Yay!!! Surviving his fall he manages to collect the weapon from the hermits and brings it safely to her… just in time for the super effects laden climax at the old fort of Gadwal Palace where Pasupati dies at the hands of the reawakened Warrior princess, Arundhati. And boy…. what a finale it is! A deadly fight occurs…. the fort collapses as the evil power that restored it fails…. flames pour from the sky and burn Pastupati  to ash as the innocent villagers scramble to safety.

I have to say….. this one isn’t a perfect film…. there are some definite problems in continuity with the ages of certain characters. A maidservant… aged at the time of Jejamma is still an old lady some 80 years later… But those are minor quibbles that don’t detract much from the spectacle of this one. Neko really got into this one…. and I enjoyed it greatly with the magic and the story of revenge and valor in the face of evil. Neko gives “Arundhati” a definitely well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 with many purrs of fond contentment for the gorgeous sets, colorful costumes and even the dancing and singing… which actually works in this one to give it a real feeling of exotic fantasy. If only more Indian films were this much fun…… It’s a very worth while DVD to hunt down…. and for about 5$ US, with a Region Free NTSC Anamorphic Widescreen presentation and excellent subtitles, is an excellent bargain to boot.

Yep, there’s most definitely a Trailer… and to get you as excited as I am about this one, here it is!!

Our quicky synopsis reads: “1950′s Japan. Orochi, a mysterious eternal wandering spirit in the form of a young girl, comes upon the mansion of the Monzen family seeking shelter from a storm, and goes to work there as a housekeeper. The current owner of the house is Aoi Monzen, the Japan’s greatest star of the silver screen in that era. Her life seems a dream come true for a woman in postwar Japan, and she has two pretty daughters, Kazusa and Risa.

But the Monzen family also has a deep, dark secret: the women of the family may be beautiful to all eyes, but once they pass the age of 29 a terrible curse strikes and that beauty crumbles, and gradually they become hideous, rot away, and die in madness.”

Hmmmm… now that certainly sounds promising. But Neko’s been fooled before…. Will it happen again, or will “Orochi” thrill and entertain this lil’ Catgirl? I guess the only way for you to know is to “Read On”!!

We start out with a fast introduction to Orochi herself (played by Mitsuki Tanimura)….. seems she’s some kind of eternal spirit in human form that just sort of wanders through mortal existence observing we humans…. why is never really explained. She’s got all sorts of creepy mystical powers… she can unlock doors by pointing at them and move with surprising stealth and speed when she chooses. But apparently she’s not waterproof…. so one dark and stormy night in 1950 she finds herself outside the estate of the Monzen family and with the detached attitude she shows about many human rules, just walks into the house uninvited to get warm and dry off. Here she encounters the residents of the house, Aoi Monzen (played by Yoshino Kimura), famous film star and her two cute and talented daughters Risa and Kazusa…. but despite the first appearances, not all is well here….

The mansion is dark and lavish with a great period atmosphere…. still almost immediately Orochi gets a feeling something is terribly amiss….. Nearly caught by Aoi while prowling around the upstairs hallways and rooms, she’s forced to use her mystical powers to cloud Aoi’s mind…. convincing her she’s nothing more than a new Maid Aoi herself hired only that day, and allowing her to move within the house to observe the strange goings on that are unspooling there like one of Aoi’s films. She soon discovers that Aoi, herself, is a demanding, spoiled diva who seems driven to push her little daughters towards stardom whether they actually have the talent for it or not. A brutally pragmatic decision on her part to focus all her efforts towards grooming Risa and her singing career rather than waste time with her less talented sister. This drives poor Kazusa to emulate Aoi in studying acting in an attempt to secure her mother’s love and attention. It’s a cruel thing to see… but it’s not the worst thing going on at the mansion. There’s the attic you see…..

Nobody is allowed up to the attic…. and you just know that’s always a bad thing…. Aoi keeps a prisoner there, chained to a bed, and is the only one allowed to go there for any reason. Eventually Orochi discovers that the prisoner is in fact Aoi’s own mother…. a victim of a family curse that strikes down all the Monzen women when they reach their 29th birthday. All of them are born remarkably beautiful, but then a freakish malforming series of tumorous growths turns them into hideous monsters and drives them to madness. Sounds like an H.P. Lovecraft inspired bit of creepiness just destined to have freakishly deformed film stars tainted with insanity wandering the hallways of a Gothic mansion in search of pretty victims to vent their rage and madness upon…. right? Well…. not exactly.

Here’s where the film kind of goes astray…. The curse strikes Aoi at last and makes her shun her career at it’s peak for a destructive descent into alcohol and suicidal driving ending with a crash that nearly kills her. If not for Orochi’s last second intervention, that is. The accident wounds Orochi…. who wanders off to find a place to “sleep”….. something that is only supposed to happen only once a century. (And we don’t get told why….. any more than we know what caused the Monzen curse….. and we never do get to find out either….. Grrrr!!!)

Orochi fall into a crevasse in the forest…. and then suddenly it’s 1970. Huh?? Say what?…… Stranger…. Orochi finds that she’s now a girl named Yoshiko, the “daughter” of a couple of seedy street performers in Tokyo found wandering the streets alone as a child. They treat her badly but soon she gets sold like cattle by them to a mysterious woman for 3 million Yen. Confused, Orochi finds that the woman is Risa Monzen (played by Noriko Nakagoshi), now a grown woman searching for just the perfect girl to serve her famous sister Kazusa as a personal Maid. Coincidence?…. naw…….

Soon we’re back at the mansion….. and Orochi finds that Kazusa (played also by Yoshino Kimura) has grown to become the spitting image of her mother….. and that her drive to emulate Aoi has made her as famous an actress as her mother was all those years ago. And….. she’s almost reached her 29th birthday……

Orochi can’t figure out what has happened…. why she seems to be….. well….. human… for one thing. Yoshiko appears to be be very, very human indeed… and Orochi has none of her mystic powers, leaving her wondering who exactly she really is….. the immortal spirit Orochi or poor orphanYoshiko. There’s no time to waste on that though…(although Neko sorta wishes they had… I was getting sorta confused myself by this point..) Aoi is now the deformed monster in the attic…. and finally dying, reveals a last secret to Risa. It seems Aoi had a plan to end the curse after all. One of the daughters is not really her true child!!! Lucky Risa, adopted secretly at birth, will be spared the hideous curse that is now ready to claim Kazusa…. and that brings misery to the house as Kazusa goes crazy with the knowledge that soon she’ll be alone while Risa is free and beautiful. Orochi can only watch helplessly as Kazusa vents her fear and anger upon her sister in a series of cruelties…..

Just when you think this one is headed for a climax in which freakish Kazusa battles Risa and Orochi/Yoshiko in the spooky mansion, the movie throws a new curve in…. Risa didn’t just pick Yoshiko as her sister’s maid by random. She’s got a plan of her own to beat the curse…. by replacing all of Kazusa’s tainted blood with that of a compatible “donor”…. poor Yoshiko!! The two sisters knock Orochi over a balcony…. smashing her skull and Yoshiko lays dying, try to siphon off that blood for a transfusion to cure Kazusa. It fails…. and the incompatible transfusion nearly kills Kazusa, who goes crazy…. kills her faithful butler and burns her own gorgeous face with a hot poker in anguish over what will soon happen to her. Meanwhile, Yoshiko’s fatal trauma finally frees Orochi’s immortal spirit to return to the crevasse where her true body still “sleeps”. Wakened at last, and with her powers returned, she rushes to the mansion in a vain attempt to save the poor Yoshiko who’s body held her heart and soul for all those lost years.

Not gonna happen…. Instead we do another about face…. and here it’s “Spoiler Alert” time….. Seems this one has one last improbable twist to throw in. Risa has been lying to Kazusa since their mother died. It’s really Risa who is the true Monzen daughter and Kazusa who would have survived the curse. Risa wanted to torture Kazusa with the thought of losing her beauty in revenge for having to suffer the cruel fate alone…. Boy… do these women have issues!!

Ultimately…. Orochi arrives too late to save Yoshiko….. There seems to be nothing she can do to fix the ruin of the two women….. Kazusa now reduced to a scarred murderess and Risa showing the first signs of the tumors that will soon consume her….. so she does the only thing there is left to do. She leaves the mansion to resume her wandering existence yet again with only the memory of having… for a short time…. been as human as those she has observed throughout the ages.

So…. what’s Neko’s opinion on this one? Well, it’s gorgeously filmed and very well acted, but there are some serious holes in the plot that needed fixing to make this one a classic. I liked the “Monzen Curse”…. but wish they had actually explained what the heck was behind it all… Orochi herself could have been better explained too. I’m assuming the Manga that this one is based on touched on all these points, but their lack of clarity here made “Orochi” a hard story to wrap my mind around comfortably. Still…. for atmosphere and style, this one scores very well as do the nice English subtitles on the Region 3 HK disc. If you like Japanese films… and like them a little weird, “Orochi” might just be for you.

Neko gives this one 3 “Meows” out of 5, mostly for those very reasons…. had the story explained things a bit better it would have definitely scored another “Meow” as well, but I’ll give it a couple of nice purrs for it’s two “period” story settings all crammed into one movie. All in all… I sorta liked it, and, in the end, that’s not bad.

Trailer? Yep….. Neko found one for this one and I’d never leave you all without pouncing upon it and dragging it back here for you all to see.

Our synopsis reads:“Nawin, an army secret service agent decided to withdraw from a scientific investigation because of unlawful procedures that involved International forces. Although he had tried desperately to avoid the illegal acts of the armed forces, it seems the harder he tried the more involved he became. He was constantly under surveillance no matter where he went or what he did which made him realize there was more to the situation that meets the eye.

Jin, a young woman who Nawin once saved from a brutal attack is undergoing a strange transformation within her body as her blood circulates through mutation. This transformation on Jin, is what Nawin believes the International forces are after. The half breed mix between animal and human.

Nawin decides to help Jin by taking her back to her birth place. As he leads her home, her illness seems to subside. They will soon grow close and fall in love. When it comes time for Nawin to choose between her and his life, he awakes to find that it has all been an image of his imagination…or was it?”

Hmmmm? Certainly sounds like this lil Catgirl’s kind of movie…. so naturally I wasted no time in watching it as soon as it arrived. Was it up to my expectations? Let’s all find out then, shall we?

We get a cryptic start here… with some mythological flashback romance thingee between some hunky guy and a scared girl being chased to the edge of a cliff by some pissed off villagers. They convince him to abandon the girl, it seems she’s not actually…  completely….. human….. Devastated by his betrayal, she falls from the cliff just as the guy realizes what an utter dumbass he is for treating her so shabbily. Cue the credits!!

First we get a voice-over tells us all about these two snake-god children, Jin and Jai, the last of their kind who are destined to roam the earth in human form until the time when the all nine planets reach a mystical alignment. Then they’ll feel drawn to return to the sacred cave in the mountains and finish their transformation into the giant serpents that are the true form of the Nagas. Got it? Okie dokie then…..

And then before you can blink, we’re in the present day jungles of Burma (or Myanmar if you prefer)…. somewhere waaaay, waaaay out in the boondocks, with some commando guys sneaking around what looks to be the camp of a group of unnamed bandits, drug smugglers, or human traffickers. You know the type of scumbags we’re talking about… all bad and nasty and just the sort of thugs you hope get soooo killed in large numbers in a film like this. Just when it looks like it’s time to whack these guys, they get visited by some other scumbags…. not the low rent type, nope these guys are a decidedly different kettle of fish. Worse, our hero, Nawin, (played by Jesadaporn Pholdee) the leader of the special forces, recognizes their head honcho, Manus (played by Pasin Ruengwut). They’ve got “history” you see…. and you know that just can’t be good in a movie like this. Manus’ “men in black” are here looking for somebody…. and they find her in amongst a pitiful group of refugees caught by the bandits. A beautiful prisoner, (played by Ploy Jindachote) who seems like she’s in bad, bad, BAAAD need of saving. What Nawin doesn’t know, or couldn’t even suspect, is that pretty prisoner is actually that very same little girl, … errr?… snakegirl…. errrr?… whatever. Before he can decide to do anything though, he gets orders from his commanders to back off…. seems they are privy to the goings on down in the camp. But then aren’t they always?

But what self respecting action hero could just let things go that easily? One well placed shot later and Nawin and his guys are running for the Thai border in a gunfight for their lives. They escape… just barely, but Manus knows it’s his old “buddy” screwing with him…. and that just means it time to show him who’s higher on the food chain. Nawin escapes… but not without getting shot up pretty bad.

Naturally he’s now in some real trouble. First thing that happens? Some helpful doctor tries to kill him. Yep…. seems the “powers that be” want Nawin, his guys, and all the people who know anything about Jin dead…. Luckily Nawin’s a tough guy… and he’s got the help of the only one of his men still alive who shoots the “doctor”, and tells Nawin to trust nobody but their old friend Sergeant Dang, who left the service some time past, but who still knows all about those dirty little secrets that the black ops boys try to hide so well.

What we get for the next 40 minutes or so, is a big pissing match between Nawin and Manus as they both try to find and keep Jin away from the other… Manus wanting her for his mysterious Western backed superiors (read evil CIA) and Nawin who wants first to thwart his rival, but who eventually comes to feel love for the mysterious Jin. Throw in Jin’s brother Jai sneaking around looking for her as well, killing anybody stupid enough to get in his way and you get a fairly simple, yet well done bloody love triangle that you just know can’t end well for anybody.

Eventually the planets all align…. Jin feels the need to return to the ancient cave of her ancestors, with Manus and his goons, and Jai all following close behind. There’s barely time for the obligatory “back to nature” sequence as Nawin and Jin spend some idyllic time living simply as guy and girl in love with the peaceful hill people before a brutal atrocity filled raid by Manus and the military kill everybody but them.

So…. how does this all end? Well, if you think Neko’s gonna tell you, you are just sooo outta luck. Let’s just say this…. when the girl of your dreams is, in reality, a giant snake, your love life is just soooo gonna suck. Big time.

Hmmmm. So lets see then…. did I enjoy this one you ask? Well, by now you all know I’m a sucker for these weird romance stories… and although this one didn’t have a whole lotta meaningful romance between Nawin and Jin, it was sorta OK.

I managed to see this one on the Malay disc, which, I have to say, was actually an excellent bargain with a nice price (8$ US), a letterboxed image, and yes… those wonderful english subtitles I so need and love (also surprisingly accurate and well done for a Malay disc I might add). Neko gives the overall film a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5. Had they actually had more to the love story I might have gone a whole “Meow” more, but then, you takes what you get sometimes…. (but “Chinese Ghost Story” calibre this one just ain’t… Sigh.)

Before we wrap this one up, I just had to hunt down a Trailer for ya, just to keep things all cozy and familiar!! So enjoy the snaky romance action!!

Ooooohhh!! Cowboys… and dinosaurs!! Frolicking together in the Old West… whooping it up… trying to kill each other…  doing whatever it is cowboys and dinosaurs will do when they manage to actually (and, perhaphs, implausibly) meet up. How could lil’ Miyuki not watch this one?

Our quick synopsis for it reads: “A ragtag group of cowboys find a lost valley in Mexico and manage to capture an Allosaurus, named Gwangi. They decide to capitalize on their exploit by putting it on show as the featured attraction at a fading traveling circus despite the objections of superstitious locals. As with all such plans, it turns out to be a bad… bad idea.”

Yep, even today, this particular film still holds a fond place in my memories… But is it really any good, or am I just remembering it through the marvelous haze of childhood nostalgia? Let’s all take another look and find out, shall we?

When I was a wee lil’ Catgirl, this movie was the pinnacle of special effects wizardry from it’s time…. and the futuristic computer effects of today were only just starting to be seen in those big screen films that were coming out in the early 80′s. I remember that I caught this one, as I did soooo many others, through the medium of Cable TV one Saturday afternoon. Remember when there weren’t yet 500 channels? When much of the fledgling new cable network channels filled their schedules by running old movies on Saturday and Sunday mornings, afternoons, and most late nights? Well I certainly do…. After all, it was a steady diet of 50′s Scifi films, Tarzan Movies, cheesy Chinese Kung-fu imports, euro zombie flicks, and nazisploitation movies that kept me imagining all sorts of crazy things as a lil’ kid…. and worried my poor Mom to no end.

Ahhh… this one…. now it was a real corker!! We start out with a dying Gypsy guy…. and a mysterious… squirming… burlap sack, and the craziest looking Gypsy witch since “The Wolf Man” going on about the terrible “Curse of Gwangi”…. Yep, you just knew this one was gonna be good! So…. what’s in the sack you ask? Well, now that’s the thing the whole movies revolves around….

It isn’t long before Tuck Kirby (played by James Franciscus of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”) comes to town looking for his former fiance, T.J. Brenkenridge (played by former 1960′s Miss Israel, Gila Golan) who owns this fading and rundown Wild West show, ala “Buffalo Bill”…. He’s here to try to buy her out, seems she’s still got one truly worthwhile property… Omar the Wonder Horse, who does this amazing high dive act. He figures on using his boyish charm and some references to “the good ol’ days” to overcome T.J.’s dislike of his rather repulsive personality and steal this show out from under her while she’s at her weakest. Luckily… she’s soooo over him and tells him she’s got a new attraction that will save her show (just not what it is…)… and that she doesn’t need him hanging around… and she sends him packing. Good for you, T.J.!!

Well…. Tuck isn’t exactly the kind of huckster willing to take no for an answer, so with a little bit of sneaking around, he finds out that T.J.’s got her own “My Little Pony” thing going on….. for real. Yep, seems she went ahead and bought that squirmy bag from one of those Gypsies named Carlos, (who just luckily works for her circus as some sort of roustabout), and in it was just the cutest lil’ prehistoric pony!! Awwwwhhh!! So cute!! So what do you do with a wee lil’ horsey anyway? Why teach him to dance on a platform you mount to the saddle of your amazing wonder steed Omar, of course! That’ll certainly wow the crowds and bring in the money!

Tuck learns it’s actually an Eohippus… (C’mon.. say THAT three times fast… I dare ya!!) from a nice old (read: crazy old) paleontologist named Horace Bromley (played by Laurence Naismith of “Village of the Damned” fame) thanks to his helpful orphan go-fer Lupé, who just seems to know all the interesting  people thereabouts. He’s the one who really gets the ball rolling wondering just where this lil’ horsey came from exactly…. and if there are even more interesting non-extinct critters lurking about just waiting to be discovered.

Tuck hears the “Cha-ching!!” implicit in that bit of scientific curiosity and decides to partner up with T.J. to explore the possibility of grabbing some other varmints for the show. After all, he’s got his own “scientific expert” to offer such a partnership… and he’s sorta still romantically hung up on T.J. too…. But…. it seems the Gypsies have other ideas.

That nasty ol’ Gypsy witch has convinced them that Carlos is going to bring down the terrible “Curse of Gwangi” upon them all for having stolen the cute lil’ horsey away from him…. so they bust in and steal the little guy back to return him to… now just wait for it… the “Forbidden Valley”!! Yep, just what lil’ Miyuki was waiting to hear!! (I was just about stuffed to the gills with popcorn by now and soooo aching for some cowboy versus dinosaur action….) If you know the formula for these films, it pretty easy to guess what happens next.

In fact… this one pretty much plays out like most of the Harryhausen films I’ve seen. There’s always a number of really nifty sequences featuring the creatures…. all strung together with a fairly formulaic plot. But those sequences!! Always worth the wait. Let’s see…. we get the little horsey of course, but there’s also a Pteranodon that swoops in and tries to eat little Lupé, a fast running long necked thingee that shows up just to be chased so the cowboys can see big ol’ Gwangi show up for the first time and gobble it up, a Styracosaurus that shows up mostly so Gwangi has somebody to kick the prehistoric stuffing out of…. you get the picture. The animated creatures are… well… dated by today’s “Jurrassic Park” standards, but when you realize the sheer amount of work…. by mostly one man… to get these effects, then they are truly amazing accomplishments.

Lil’ Miyuki was soooo loving this stuff, and I have to say, even grown up me liked watching this all over again. Harryhausen always had the gift to give his creations an almost eerie lifelike quality, and by the time the cowboys finish their expedition and get ol’ Gwangi tied up and decide to haul his big lizard butt back to the circus you just know it’s gonna go a lot differently than they planned. Did nobody learn the lessons of “King Kong”? Giant prehistoric critters always… and I mean always… escape and run amok at the climax of any movie. That… and they make terrible.. terrible… pets.

Yep… the Gypsy witch has to show up and get her followers to free Gwangi at the pivotal moment, (he’s a “god” after all) but at least we get to see a cool battle to the death between an elephant and an Allosaur… something we always wondered about when I was a kid, Hehehehe. Then it’s a leisurely romp through town chasing locals, till Gwangi catches up with our hero and heroine at the grand cathedral for the fiery climax. Makes perfect sense that the best way to kill an unstoppable eating machine like Gwangi is to bury him under a flaming church. Honest… it’s exactly what 9 out of 10 cowboys would do in a similar situation….

So… how did this one stack up seeing it again after all these years? Well… it scores high on the ol’ nostalgia meter, but even the passing of decades has not dimmed the sheer fun and amazement that Gwangi evokes for me. Ray Harryhausen was a genius… pure and simple… and this film shows his work at some of it’s best.

Neko gives “The Valley of Gwangi” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being a true masterpiece well worth sharing with the lil’ ones you love…. you can trust this Catgirl, they’ll be thrilled.

Naturally there’s a Trailer for this classic… isn’t there always a Trailer?…

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!!)

The synopsis for it reads as follows: “In the 1600′s. Queen Raja Heejau of Langkasuka must defend her country against numerous foes when a rogue prince conspires with a coalition of vicious pirates to incite a rebellion and plunder the kingdom. A famous Dutch Cannon maker tries to aid the kingdom by constructing the “Mother of All Cannons” to be used to defend the kingdom against it’s enemies. Unfortunately the pirates learn of the cannon and try to seize the ship delivering it.

The raid fails, and the ship, along with its crew and weapons sink into a deep ocean abyss after an titanic explosion. This fateful incident occurs on the very same day as the birth of “Panee”, born with the amazing gift that enables him to communicate with all the creatures of the sea.

In the years to come and after much training Panee’s uncanny ability would be used to help the Queen and her sisters defeat the merciless pirates that threaten their shores. Panee will call upon whales, giant rays, and dolphins to aide him in the historic sea battle for the fate of the kingdom of Langkasuka.”

Sounds good!! Neko-chan just loves the whole sweeping epic romance angle and the promise of some crazy kickboxing… and if you do too, then I just know you are gonna want to “Read On” for more about “Queens of Langkasuka”!

Every once in a while, studios in Thailand get the urge to try and do a film to elevate themselves to the level of real players in the Asian film market. This one is certainly a big budget film for Thailand… that much is evident right from the get go. It’s awash with gorgeous costumes, sets, and a great sense of the grandeur of old Siam…. mix in some nicely done digital effects and good solid acting and we’re talking some good cinema here.  I’ve read that it originally ran some 133 minutes in length, but the version released eventually to theaters and on the Thai DVD is some 114 minutes. Having seen this one… Neko can only scratch her lil’ noggin’ and wonder what the heck got cut by Sahamongkol Film .

They threw a heck of a lot of stuff in here…. We’ve got some kickboxing, evil assassins, mystic Thai Sea Magic/ Martial Art, romance, and pirates…. lots and lots of pirates. At times it was a little confusing, but ignoring all the gorgeous visuals and paying a little attention let me absorb it all pretty nicely.

The title is a bit missleading though…. There is really only one Queen to be seen throughout most of the movie…. Queen Heejau… the rest of the women are actually the “Princesses of Langkasuka”, but hey…. Neko can deal with that. Anyway… our hero for the film, Panee, is played by Ananda Everingham. He’s born with some sort of mystical synergy with the sea…. able to understand the fish and read the ocean and the weather like an open book. Seems there’s this Mystical art called Dolum that deals with stuff like that…. you get all sorts of powers that basically make you into the Thai version of Aquaman crossed with Tony Jaa….. but there’s a downside. (Isn’t there always a downside? Sigh….) Yep… just like “the Force”, it seems there’s a Good side to Dolum and an Evil side….. and naturally the  wicked Pirate King has gotten himself all filled up with evil Dolum power, the better to weld together the disparate pirate forces into a group to actually threaten the kingdom. Got it so far? Good…

Well… it would seem plausible that the answer to everybody’s problem would be if the Hermit Master of Dolum would take Panee and train him in the ways of Good Dolum so he can whup some pirate butt and save everybody… right? Problem is.. he won’t do it. Seems he’s worried Panee has the taint of darkness in his soul… How he knows that isn’t really clear, but it’s reason enough to deny young Panee’s early training. That’s ok, he’s a happy boy who likes hanging out with the slightly crazy Chinese apprentice of the Dutch cannon smith Lim Kium (played by Jakkrit Phanichphatikram) who survived his master’s death and now lives a peaceful life with the Sea Gypsies. That, and Panee’s got himself a childhood sweetheart… a pretty girl who just absolutely adores him, and who you just know isn’t going to make it to the end of the film…. these sorts of epics are just like that after all.

Meanwhile…. (yep, our movie jumps back and forth quite a bit from the Palace to Panee…Neko’s advice is to  just roll with it…) the Queen is receiving the ambassadors of all the nearby Kingdoms, some of which are potential allies, and others just there hovering like vultures waiting to swoop in on her and Langkasuka when she shows the least bit of weakness. In the midst of this, the pirates sneak in disguised as diplomats and try this cool ninja/ kickboxing/ assassination attempt that gets foiled by the youngest of the Palace guards, Jarang (played by Chupong “Diaw” Chungprung from “Dynamite Warrior”) in what has to be one of the coolest fight scenes in the movie. There’s swordplay, wire work and enough sneaky ninja weapons to please any action junkie. Jarang stops the pirates, but gets a face full of poisoned needles meant for Queen Heejau before killing the deadly female assassin/ lover of the Pirate King Black Raven (played by Winai Kraibutr from “Nang Nak”) and forcing them to escape. He ends up wearing this “Phantom of the Opera” style mask for the rest of the movie and fills the roll of secondary hero nicely. I kind of thought he and Princess Biru (played by Jacqueline Apithananon) would end up together, (and maybe that was a subplot that got left on the cutting room floor) but it doesn’t happen… he’s just to noble a guy too risk such a thing.

Haven’t got enough people to keep track of yet? Well there’s always the token “Princess who wants to be a Tomboy” character in the form of Anju (played by Anna Ris), youngest of the Princesses who studies the bow and the sword and wants to be a warrior instead of a Princess. She’s upset that the Queen has betrothed her without her knowledge to Prince Pahung (played by Jesdaporn Pholdee), to link their kingdoms and ensure his army and support are with them in the coming struggle. When the chance to go with Jarang and Lim Kium’s sister  in search of  him and gain his expertise comes up she’s all over it…..

But…. the pirates get there first. Seems a dastardly spy at the Royal Court is giving them every move the Queen makes, and they raid the Sea Gypsies, killing everybody but Lim Kium and Panee who were off fighting the pirates at sea. Panee’s sweetheart gets raped and killed… and he sort of loses it. Big time. Boy, are those pirates in for a serious ass kicking now….. but only after he and Princess Anju get saved from the Pirates by Master White Ray and taken away to his island retreat for some well needed R&R.

Here we go into the prerequisite Training montage…. and of course Princess Anju falls for Panee (He’s just sooo brooding and dreamy and everything a Princess could want in a Hero…)…. and we get all the back story about the Art of Dolum, along with an introduction to a mysterious evil prisoner on the island (Yep… Still more characters..)…. and then there’s Anju’s fiancé Prince Pahung to consider…. But Neko isn’t gonna spoil all that for you. Nope, you are gonna want to find out some secrets for yourself.

Let’s just say that all this stuff builds to the “Big Climatic Battle” of Good vs. Evil… with a giant pirate war fleet, treacherous rebel spies, lots more swordfighting and kickboxing goodness, the return of the honkin’ big ol’ Dutch cannon, a squadron of hand gliders, and our hero Aquaman, (errr… ahh I mean Panee), and his army of sea creatures. Yep… it’s a big ending alright….

All in all this one more than lives up to most of the hype that preceded it. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess liked it a lot and my sweet Carolyn even enjoyed watching this one…. (although she needed me to fill in some of the blanks for her at times)…. My only quibble was with the somewhat choppy editing that made for a somewhat confusing jumble at times. I’ve been told that this one was originally conceived as a two part film, and while I’m rarely a fan of such splits… here, that just might have been the way to go. There was just too much story to shoehorn it all into a 2 hour package comfortably. It might have worked better in the original running time of 133 minutes as well…. hopefully we’ll get the chance to see that version sometime. (HINT!! HINT!!) Still, as epics go, this one fits the bill nicely and shows what the Thai Film industry can do when it really wants to think big.

So, in conclusion, Neko-chan gives “Queens of Langkasuka” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being just the sort of well crafted fantasy costume epic I like…. with good acting, excellent action sequences, nicely integrated special effects, and everything needed to make for a fine movie watching experience. More films of this caliber certainly couldn’t hurt the Thai Film Industry’s reputation at all. (But english subtitles on the DVD would have been nice…. I just gotta nag about those….) However… the Fansubs that are now available out there on the Web are excellent… so don’t let this one slip by, you’ll be sorry.

There’s a nifty Trailer….(isn’t there always…) and here it is!!

Our synopsis for it reads: “A mysterious scientist, Dr. Sugita, has invented a new medicine which can wake dead people up. The streets are filled with zombies. A beautiful girl, Aya, with a samurai sword who is seeking revenge for the murder of her father, keeps fighting with the zombies day and night. One day, she meets a girl called Reiko. From Reiko, she learns that her half-sister Saki is under the evil Sugita’s control…

Up-and-coming actress Otoguro Eri (from the American “Shutter” remake as well as “Shaolin Girl”) stars as the feisty heroine Aya, slashing her way through the movie in the character’s signature costume – cowboy hat, boots, long scarf, and naturally……a Bikini! To survive, she has to battle the quickly multiplying army of zombies that was raised from the dead by the evil scientist Dr Sugita. Aya is joined in her fight by lone biker chick Reiko (Hashimoto Manami) whose beloved daughter was killed by the living dead and who now lives only to seek revenge, and together they fight the undead army and battle Aya’s half-sister Saki (Nakamura Chise from “Swing Girls”) who suddenly shows up in a schoolgirl uniform with a saber of her own having joined the evil doctor in his twisted schemes.”

OMG!!! So… let’s get this straight now… it’s got Zombies… and a tough, tattooed, bikini clad Japanese cowgirl with a sword (… and you all know how much this lil’ Catgirl loves to play “dress-up”!!) so you gotta see how Neko’s already on board for this one, but it it actually going to be any good? I mean, the whole “inspired by the hit video game” thingee usually tells me a movie is destined to be fairly “crap-tastic”. (Or would that be “crap-tabulous”? Hehehehe!!) I guess I’m just gonna have to wade in and find out!! Why don’t you “Read On” and join me? (C’mon…. ya know ya wanna!!)

Originally titled “Onechanbara” in Japan (pronounced “o-nay-chan-bara” and translating to mean “sister swordplay”) this one got retitled for it’s HK release as “Chanbara Beauty”. This is the version Neko managed to snag… mostly to get those ever so important English subtitles you hear me rant about constantly…..

It starts out in the future…. the near future… No,no, no….. not the sterile urban tech driven future we saw in “Chrysalis”…. you know.. that OTHER near future with the desolate wastelands and the mutants.. er, ah… I mean Zombies… wandering around making life a hell on earth. Luckily for us, the best way to fight such a menace is to have Japanese bikini girls armed with samurai swords and biker babes with sawed off shotguns take them on in apocalyptic combat….. all we need is some rock and roll and we should be off to pop culture movie heaven…. right?

Well, Yohei Fukuda has certainly tried to take that idea and run with it, but I’m afraid it doesn’t quite reach to the level of goofy fun of other Japanese genre efforts like, say “The Machine Girl” or “Tokyo Gore Police” or the excellent “Azumi”. It’s campy…. and I can see where the idea of making it’s combat very much like the video game seemed a good idea…. (especially given that the actresses here really can’t actually fight convincingly…) but this lil’ Catgirl has to say it just plain didn’t work.

Mind you… Eri Otoguro certainly looks the part… and she’s a dead ringer for the video game character, managing to be very convincing with every pose and steely glance…. just don’t expect her to look dangerous once the swords start swinging. I think though, that the thing that bugged this lil’ Catgirl the most was Reiko’s sawed off shotgun….. that seemed to be blessed with infinite ammunition!!! Not once do I remember seeing her take her 2 shot weapon and ever reload the darn thing….. Instead, she can just blast away with shot after shot killing as many Zombies as she wants. Grrrrr!!! I soooo wanted to scream every time it happened. It’s very “Video Game”, I suppose…. but I like to see my action heroes do the whole blast em’ and then reload with some cool moves thing, maybe smacking a Zombie here or there with the empty gun.

There are a couple of subplots thrown in to pad this one out…. one involving Aya’s original partner and his kidnapped sister, one with two lovers who get tragically killed almost as soon as they get introduced…. (It’s supposed to reinforce the bleak feeling of hopelessness I suppose, but just comes off as unnecessary), and one involving an orphaned girl… adopted by Reiko as surrogate daughter, but who ultimately goes Zombie and has to be destroyed (Included to remind us it’s a bleak hopeless future… in case we still hadn’t figured it out yet?).. Sigh…. Just get on with some Zombie killing already.

They finally do. It’s this last part of the film where we actually get some fun. Aya’s animé inspired battle with her evil little sister Saki is probably the best sequence in the film. Swords glow and crackle with power… girls with blades fly around and slash at each other with “Dragonball Z” style killer moves. This battle actually works for the most part… and it’s a shame that not much else does.

It’s not that the movie is too unrealistic or outlandish…. heck, “Hard Revenge Milly” has a simpler plot, hardly any characterization, and a smaller budget. Why did it work for me, where this one fails? The fault lies, I think, in the inability of the actresses to convince me they were the dangerous fighters that the story demanded they be.

So… unfortunately Neko has to give “Chanbara Beauty” only 2 “Meows” out of 5. I mean it tried like heck to do the job…. but ultimately it failed me. (And, remember, this lil’ girl actually likes crappy Zombie slaying movies!!) I can only recommend this one to those of you rabid fans of Zombie cinema who have to see absolutely every Zombie movie ever made or any of you out there who like to watch scantily clad Japanese girls play around with swords. Oh well…. better luck next time…. At least it gave me some really good costuming ideas for Halloween this year… (Your Favorite Catgirl Princess would just look sooo darn cute in a cowboy hat and bikini!!!)

Naturally…. there a Trailer for this one, and Neko would never leave you hanging without posting it here for you to view!!

It’s a simple film from a far simpler time, and the synopsis I found reads: “In this fun-filled adventure-fantasy, a rookie knight embarks upon a valiant quest to save a princess who has been captured by a malicious magician. Along the way he must battle the usual assortment of dragons, ogres and other mythical beings. He is assisted by a good witch who gives him a magic sword. Unfortunately, the magic fails and suddenly he must find his own magic from within.”~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Mind you… this is a film that was originally targeted for children, much the very same as this lil’ girl was when I first saw it that Saturday morning all those years ago. So if you are expecting the sword slashing savage action of “Conan the Barbarian” or the mystical special effects and epic story of “Lord of the Rings” you are going to be sadly out of luck. However, if you, too, saw this one as a kid, then you’ll be hard pressed not to remember it as a fun film, even after all these years…..

But…. the big question is, does it have enough nostalgic kitsch and quaint goofiness to still hold up after all these years? I guess you’ll just have to “Read On” to find out…..

We start our film as our hero George (played by Gary Lockwood) spends his days pining away for the love of the beautiful Princess Helene (Ann Helm from another genre classic “Nightmare In Wax”) and spying on her through the magic of his foster mother’s mystic pool. His mother, Sybil (played with her best “Bewitched” impression of Endora by Estelle Winwood) , is a witch…. a real honest to goodness spellcasting, cauldron stirring witch right out of Macbeth. Why she wanted to raise an orphaned princeling as her son is never quite explained… but since she lives alone in a dank cellar lair out in the haunted woods with only a chimpanzee and a two headed butler for company, maybe it’s not too much of a stretch to understand her need for an outlet for her motherly love.

George is a strapping young lad… and he’s at that age where spending time peeping at lovely young princesses as they skinny dip can only lead to one thing. When he spots Helene being magically abducted by a sultry minion of the sorcerer Lodac (played by genre giant, Basil Rathbone) naturally he’s all fired up to finally leave the woods, the mystic protection of his mother, and go to Helene’s rescue! Unfortunately…. Sybil is in no mood to let her precious boy go up against an evil sorcerer of Lodac’s quality. Besides… he shows her how her father, the King, has everything under control. He’s all ready to send Sir Branton (played by Liam Sullivan), his best Knight, on a secret mission to singlehandedly defeat the evil threat of Lodac’s “Seven Curses” and save Helene. Ummmm? Say what? Sybil really thinks George can be swayed by the argument that some other guy will handle things and “get the girl”? Nope… just not gonna happen….

So she tries to distract him by showing him the nifty magic items she just been saving for when he finally “becomes a man”…(guess the peeping hobby wasn’t clue enough that he had already reached that stage, eh? Hehehehe!!). We start off with a magical  war horsey named Beyhar, whom Sybil claims is the fastest horse in the world…. Then it’s on to a nifty set of impenetrable armor….. proof against any weapon made. Finally, the mystical sword Ascalon, capable of defeating all Black Magic and opening any locked door!! Ummm? Wait a minute, Neko-chan? Isn’t this just the sort of stuff a smitten young man might need to save a kidnapped princess? Apparently Sybil doesn’t make the connection, and ends up getting locked in a secret vault so George can “borrow” his gifts early and set out on his quest. Ooops! Sorry, Mom!!!

As he leaves, he runs across a final piece of dumb luck, 6 frozen Knights that he accidentally wakes up with Ascalon and despite the weirdness and improbability of it all, they all immediately pledge themselves to George and his quest. (Ah well… don’t worry about such plot contrivances… they didn’t bother Neko when she was a wee girl, and they dont bother her now…. we just gotta accept the idea & roll with it!) Luckily these guys, Sir Dennis of France (played by Jacques Gallo), Sir Pedro of Spain (played by David Cross), Sir Ulrich of Germany (played by Leroy Johnson), Sir Anthony of Italy (played by Taldo Kenyon), Sir James of Scotland (played by Angus Duncan), and Sir Patrick of Ireland (played by John Mauldin), don’t seem to be too upset at having been frozen…. (or that Sybil hadn’t unfrozen them) and the whole “International League of Justice Knights” just seem happy to get in on the action…. (Boy… are these guys gullible or what? Can you just say “free cannon fodder”… or in this case “monster chow”…)

Anyway… they ride like the dickins to get to the palace in time for George to get himself and the gang added to the rescue mission…. despite the protests of Sir Branton…( Yeah, yeah… he’s secretly a bad guy working in league with the evil Lodac…. as if it’s THAT hard to figure out…). They set out and within five minutes or so the run into the first of Lodac’s “Curses”… a big old ogre who looks like the bastard love child of Quasimodo and Chewbacca and who promptly squooshes two of our brave knights in a deadly battle against his rear projected scariness. (Yep… “cannon fodder”… See, Neko told ya so!!!) George is upset, but neither he nor his companions are willing to turn back, despite Sir Branton’s advice that they do so before even more of their brave number meet other horrible fates.

Meanwhile, we learn that Princess Helene has some real trouble in Lodac’s creepy castle. Seems Lodac doesn’t plan on ransoming her at all…. and he isn’t the sort to ravish nubile virgin princesses either…. he’s got this big ol’ dragon you see, and it’s on a fairly strict low fat diet of princesses. D’oh!!! Luckily Lodac seems to have lots of princesses he can abduct for this…. and he feeds it two of them just to give Helene a private cell to call her own. Oh…. and since he’s ever so evil, naturally he uses his magic to show her a vision of the brave knights… George included… on their way to her rescue. Helene really perks up here, as she hadn’t even known any cute guys were looking for her. Also… it’s handy for later, since up till now, Helene hadn’t even heard of George… and that would have been a sticky things later when he shows up to profess his love for her. Ahhhhh, young, improbable fairytale love!! Don’tcha just feel it?

We move right along… and the quest continues as more of George’s valiant knights get killed by all sorts of nasty magical things and cheesy special effects…. there are misty haunted swamps filled with deadly pools of acid, a crazy flaming microwave thingee that cooks you alive if you look at it, a hidden cavern full of soul eating ghosts, and my personal favorite… the shapeshifting seductress hag that lures men to their doom…. (the French guy, of course… Hehehehe!!) It doesn’t help that Sybil breaks out of the secret vault just in time to help George…. naturally by screwing up her mystic ceremony and dispelling all his magic toys…. D’ohh, again!!

Eventually, even without them, George reaches the castle…. he has to you see, he’s completely out of knights by now, and yes…. he stupidly falls for the old “shapeshifting hag disguised as the real princess” trick. Sir Branton tries to trade the magic ring he stole from Lodac for Helene…. and then HE promptly falls for the same trick….. stupid, stupid villain, Seems it was the only thing protecting him from Lodac’s revenge…. Anyway… George gets tied up and hauled away and Lodac brings the real Helene by his lonely cell just to rub his face in it all. We get our standard romantic movie scene as Helene and George see each other, make the romantic goo-goo eyes that made lil’ Neko go all “Eeuuwhh, gross!!” way back when, and then Lodac drags her off for Dragon din-din time. But, don’t worry, all is not lost!!!

Sybil has decided to magically teleport herself to Lodac’s castle and confront him herself… even though it’s probably a stupid thing to do…. A cage full of tiny, tiny people escape from Lodac’s minions and then find Ascalon so they can cut George free. Yes… things are speeding up, but then this film only runs about 75 minutes so they better hurry…. hehehehe!! It’s Dragon slaying time… and we get to see the biggest budget item of the movie… the ferocious giant two headed puppet dragon and it’s flamethrower breath!! Really!!… While goofy and fake looking by today’s standards, as a kid, I remember this big ol’ critter was pretty impressive. Anyway… Sybil remembers the proper spell to give George back Ascalon’s power just in time to put the proper whuppin’ on mister dragon, pickpockets the ring away from Lodac and then turns into a big black panther in time to go all feral on his butt. Yay!!

We end this lil’ epic back at the castle, where Sir George and Princess Helene get married to rule the kingdom together, and even the dead knights come back from the great beyond thanks to the new magical powers Sybil has with Lodac’s ring. All ends happily ever after…. just like you thought it should.

So…. all in all, how does “The Magic Sword” hold up now that I’ve seen it through the eyes of a grown up Catgirl and not with the memories of an impressionable wee kitten? Well… put quite simply it’s an atrocious film…. with a terribly simple plot that has enough holes in both logic and continuity that are big enough to fit that giant puppet dragon through. It’s a pale imitation of another similarly themed low budget “epic” “Jack the Giant Killer” from 1961 (which Lil’ Neko also saw waaaay back then….) and the film that inspired that one, the vastly superior classic “Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”. Neither of them reached that level of filmaking but at least they were… for the time…. charming in their very crudeness. I wouldn’t want to pay big money for this one… but luckily I found the Canadian DVD release for it in the bargain bin for a delightfully reasonable 3$ US.

Given that… Neko gives “The Magic Sword” a nostalgia boosted 2 “Meows” out of 5. It’s just not a good film… but hey, the price is right, the memories of youth are precious, and it’s far from being the absolutely worst film I ever watched….. and the lil’ kittens out there would probably be as entranced by it even today as lil’ Neko-chan was back then….

And as I wasn’t able to find a Trailer online yet, I’ll have to get back to you all once I find one.

Till then, “Meow, meow for now!!”