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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s synopsis reads like follows: “Remember your university days, when you traded scary urban legends with your friends? Prepare to see some of those legends brought to life in the Thai horror anthology Haunted Universities. In the tradition of the hit “Phobia” franchise, young directing team Bunjong Sinthanamongkolkul and Suthiporn Tubtim frame four loosely connected school-related horror stories around a young volunteer paramedic with a special gift.

In “The Toilet”, a group of bad guys goes to a school to retrieve drugs from a young student’s locker. However, they didn’t expect the terror waiting for them in the school’s haunted fifth-floor bathroom.

A bad case of hazing sends a young girl into “The Elevator”, where she attracts the attention of wronged spirits. Worst yet, the young girl’s grandfather was the one who wronged them in the first place.

The darkly comedic segment “The Morgue” tells the story of a cowardly medical student assigned to look over the corpse in a hospital. The wilder his overactive imagination runs, the more paranoid he grows.

The directors save the best for last with “The Stairway”, about two girls who participate in a web-cam chat that ends with a creepy man vowing to kill them both. What they don’t know is how far the man will go to keep his promise.”

Neko certainly liked “Phobia”…. and I’m thinking it’s a pretty good bet I’ll be enjoying this one just as much. Ghosts…. creepy haunted Asian schoolkids…. and knowing Thailand, some particularly nasty, gory horror the way only they seem to do it these days. It’s popcorn crunching time this evening for me…. and a new review for all of you, so hang in there, Gentle Visitors and “Read On”!!

Given the success of GMM Tai Hub’s “Phobia” it wasn’t hard to guess that even more anthology horror films would soon be coming out of Thailand, and this one is Sahamongkol Film’s answer to that obviously lucrative trend. Despite it’s title, only three of the four stories are actually tied to a university setting, but hey…. that’s a fairly minor quibble. Only one real question matters…. How does it stack up as a horror film?  Hmmmm? Let’s see….

Our four tales are all told around a main character Muay (played by Panward Hemmanee), a young girl working the night shift with one of those Urban Rescue teams you see in Thai (and Indonesian) movies…. That’s right, those “corpse collectors” who generally show up at crime scenes and accidents to deal with the unpleasant (and spiritually unclean) task of cleaning things up and seeing that the bodies are properly delivered to the morgue. She seems a bit out of place to her more seasoned and weary co-workers, never ready to jump right into the thick of the job and always… always… talking away on her cellphone to an unknown friend rather than attending to the grisly business at hand. But….. unknown to them, Muay has already had her own brush with the supernatural and can see ghosts…. a definite downer given her current job. Her mysterious friend? Well, that’s something we’ll get to later….

Our other tales involve the various corpses and victims our Rescue Crew encounters during a typical Bangkok night shift. First up, a young couple of lovers who run afoul of drug dealing gang members and the angry, restless spirits haunting “The Toilet”. Here two thugs get their just desserts when they are sent to straighten out a young university student selling dope for them on campus. He’s fallen a bit behind on his sales quota and has apparently been ducking our two tough lads for some time before getting caught by them during an evening out with his girlfriend. They want their money and they want their dope even more….. Too bad our boy hid the stuff in his locker on campus, it just means we’re in for a midnight trip to the school where the leader of the thugs is vaguely amused by the story of a haunted restroom on the fifth floor that the two students are seemingly scared silly of. Needless to say… his attempt at bravado while torturing his two captives with their “superstitious” fears ends rather badly… for everyone.

Next up, in “The Elevator”, an auto accident brings Muay and her co-workers into contact with Nok Noi, the young granddaughter of a notorious army general who ordered the shooting massacre of protesting students on campus some 20 or more years earlier. (Probably a well known event, but not being up on Thai history I’m a bit vague on the date, so I’m guessing simply from the look of clothing and equipment seen in the flashbacks…) She’s tried to put her family’s ugly past behind her and simply be a freshman student, but there are those on campus that seem unwilling to let the past die with the victims. She eventually gets introduced, rather unpleasantly, to another haunted locale on campus…. an elevator where a group of students were shot to death by soldiers. Today so soaked with blood and misery that school officials first had it painted red to hide the blood that refused to be cleaned away, and now is planned to be removed altogether to end the controversy and rumors. Noi experiences all that misery…. and the ghostly spirits of two young lovers forever separated by that tragedy. It’s here we learn about Muay’s peculiar affinity for the ghosts…. but exactly how, Neko’s not going to spoil for you.

Our third tale, “The Morgue” takes us to the portion of the campus devoted to medical studies and a poor dental student named Prasert with a wee  lil’ problem. He’s a medical student who’s deathly afraid of corpses and ghosts. Considering he has to take anatomy classes as well as do the occasional postmortem dental examinations for the morgue as part of his training that’s a really big problem indeed. How’s a guy to cope?

Well it helps if you’ve got a best buddy like “Joke” to smooth things over, generally take care of the more grisly elements of anatomy class for you and cover your ass…. except when he doesn’t. Thanks to him failing to turn an assignment in for Prasert on time, he’s forced to score some quick points with his professor by covering a colleagues night shift….. in the morgue. D’ohh!! Well… at least Joke will stay with Prasert and keep him company…. right? Ummmm? Nope.

Our boy “Joke” has a big date that evening…. so Prasert is on his own to wait out a lonely night… just him and a room full of corpses. It wouldn’t be so bad if Muay and company didn’t deliver the body of a possible murder victim that the police are ever so anxious to know more about. They’ve only got one simple request…. just take a peek at the body and tell them if she’s got a tattoo on her back. If only Prasert wasn’t sooooo scared…. and if only the body wouldn’t keep disappearing!! This story is more comedy than full on scares…. but it works pretty well at both and it’s good to see “Joke” pull a cruel stunt on Prasert only to finally figure out why the dead are something to fear after all.

At last… our story wraps itself back to Muay and her friend…. her roommate Sa (played by Anna Hambouris) in “Stairway”. Muay and Sa are best friends and roommates sharing a tiny little upstairs one-room apartment. Sa like to flirt… and chat rooms on the Internet seem safe enough for a lil’ anonymous sexy fun, despite Muay’s unease. But after a chat session in which Sa goes a bit too far in her teasing results in a guy threatening to kill her and Muay, the fun is ruined. At least Sa assures Muay that the guy has no idea where they are… he probably isn’t even in Thailand…. so what’s there to fear… right? We’ve all heard that before…..

Unfortunately she’s wrong, of course. “Beckham” is actually her socially maladjusted next door neighbor…. and worse the protege of a smooth and sophisticated serial killer who cruises the Bangkok nights in search of vulnerable young women to slaughter. “Beckham’s” been waiting to finally get the chance to perform his own torture/ murder just like his friend…. and now he’s got the perfect victim in mind.

Sa leaves Muay to slip out for some late night take out food, only to run afoul of a group of dangerous looking guys on motorbikes. Saved from a probable rape by “Beckham’s” smooth partner, it’s off to the boondocks for a vicious bit of torture at the hands of her captors before being dumped in the swamp to be forgotten forever. The two killers decide to go and get creatively messy with Muay as well, tying up all loose ends, but Sa did promise her friend she’d bring home noodles……

Our two evil killers slip up the staircase to Muay’s room, knock quietly at her door and wait for her to sleepily wake up expecting her friend to have locked herself out. It’s the perfect plan…. but it fails to take into account Sa’s burning desire to protect Muay and seek revenge on her killers. The two are terrified…. as the shattered, bloody remains of Sa slowly…. agonizingly…. crawl up the stairs to frighten them away from her friend’s door. By the time Muay finally gets to the door and opens it, they’re gone for good, leaving only a grisly blood trail upon the stairs……. and a takeout bag of Pad Thai hanging from her doorknob.

To finish…. we see Muay finishing her shift as dawn breaks. A final phone-call from Sa lets her know she’s leaving…. that she’s found those two at last and that Muay shouldn’t worry about her. It’s a sad, bittersweet ending but somehow satisfying for all that. Of the four stories, this one resonated most clearly for me…. as an oft-times timid Asian woman sharing an apartment alone with my girlfriend and often more than a little scared of the very real things that might just be lurking outside my door at night. Of all the possible things about the film to remember, I think that image of the bag of take-out food hanging from a doorknob, lovingly delivered from beyond the grave, will stick with me the longest. Sometimes the scariest ghosts aren’t the ones who hate you, but the ones who love you more than their own life itself……

So. How did this one compare? In general, I have to say it’s a restrained film compared to “Phobia” and it’s sequel. While all of the stories were good, the final story “Staircase” worked best for me and gave me some very squeamish moments, mostly I think, on a personal level. But overall, the entire film works very, very well. It’s properly filmed, and acted with good, simple little stories that won’t have you going “Huh?” too many times, but probably could have stood to have been a bit more bloody to satisfy the gore fans out there. Still, for my money this one gets a well deserved 3 “Meows” out of 5 for bringing on the scares the way I like them.

The Thai DVD itself is well done as always, listed as a Region 3 (but actually a Region Free disc) in anamorphic wide-screen PAL format. No subtitles are on board at all, but luckily the English fan-subs Neko managed to find are remarkably well done, grammatically correct and properly timed for use with the Thai DVD. I imagine either Singapore or HK will release a version eventually, but if you, like this impatient lil kitten, can’t wait for your Thai movie fix, they’ll more than do the job. Given the 6-10$ cost of a Thai import though, it’s hard to wait for them to get around to it…..

Don’t worry, it’s Trailer time…. so take a look at all the creepy fun of “Haunted Universities” for yourself!!

Our synopsis sounds awfully familiar…. and goes sorta like this: “Avi (Shreyas Talpade) while dating a model Sonia (Sada) is a successful photographer. They hit a girl while driving back from a party and decide to run. A ghostly picture starts appearing in all of Avi’s photographs after this incident. Three of Avi’s friends are killed one by one and both Sonia is convinced it is the girl’s ghost after them.”

This one is another of the many “uncredited”…  almost direct scene for scene remakes done by the Hindi film industry. Practically any successful movie done anywhere eventually gets the “Bollywood” treatment to make the story more palatable for their domestic audience. So then? How close will the Hindi film copy the Thai one? Will it manage to equal the chills while weaving in those peculiarly goofy “Bollywood” elements we’ve all come to know …and sometimes fear more than the ghosts themselves? Well Neko’s never been one to let a little thing like blatant plot rip-off get between me and a movie, especially a ghost story, so I guess I’ll find out.

You wanna know more, you say? Then all you gotta do is “Read On”!!

Your Favorite Catgirl has the eerie feeling she’s been here before….. or at least I’m experiencing again the cinematic equivalent of deja vu that is sometime the Bollywood horror film. You know what I’m talking about…. films like “Bhoot”, which was basically “The Sixth Sense” put through the Hindi cultural filter or more specifically ones like “Naina” aka Bollywood’s version of the HK hit, “The Eye” or even Ram Gopal Varma’s “Darna Mana Hai”, the Hindi equivalent of “Campfire Tales”. Yep….. this is one of those. In this case, it appears somebody in Mumbai must have finally watched Thailand’s “Shutter”… (or maybe just saw the Americanized remake, Hehehehe) and figured it was time to take a crack at this one.

The plot doesn’t stray at all from the Thai movie you might remember. As before, this one concerns the story of a young hip photographer and his model girlfriend, this time out named Avi and Sonia, and their brush with the supernatural vengeance of a “Long Haired Ghost” named Aarti. Even though the story tries to make you think the whole thing has been caused by the death of Aarti in a hit and run accident…. just like was done in “Shutter”… it’s not. The filmmakers made no attempt to change the story at all, and that’s the biggest flaw here. All the suspense is wasted as we’re all in on the “twist ending” right from the beginning. I has originally hoped for something to go in a different direction, but nope…. not gonna happen.

However…. it’s at least interesting to see the film as an example of how to weave those traditional Hindi movie ideas into a good story in a proper fashion rather than the jarring slapdash attempts we sometimes get. Yes… yes… I know….. that means the singing and dancing stuff. But, surprisingly for this lil’ Catgirl…. this time they actually work. The opening credits are a nicely done musical number about photography… mercifully short and used to enhance a modeling sequence introducing Avi and Sonia as our main characters. After a few minutes we get a song and dance sequence disguised as a celebration at a nightclub for Avi, Sonia, and some old friends that Avi has had a falling out with in college. (Yep…. you know why if you’ve seen “Shutter”, but hey…. let’s just roll with it….). Most surprising… there’s another musical interlude partway through shown as a montage of those same friends all having fun in the sun during a getaway to blow off steam once the weird ghostly bits start to get them down. This particular song, Rubayee, was actually a very nice pop duet that was both catchy and infectious…. and had me liking the moment! Who’d have thunk it?

As in “Shutter” there’s the bits about spirit photography, but not treated with the level of importance you might remember. All we get is one strange Indian Professor who’s into the whole “ghost” thing… but he’s not particularly useful to our heroes, feeling like he’s been included just for his oddball looks and antics. Avi’s friend at the photo store has less of a role as well in this version too. Instead there’s a bit more available screen time to lavish on ghostly Aarti and her creepy appearances as she slowly kills her enemies, haunts Avi, and tries to show Sonia what really happened to her back in college.

This is where “Click” is at it’s best…. and this is indeed one sharp, modern looking film, despite it’s lack of original material. If you are remembering Hindi horror films from the 80′s and 90′ in the days of the Ramsay Brothers then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that production values in Indian films have improved dramatically since then. The visuals, the effects, and the overall cinematography displayed here throughout are high quality and help lift this one up to a very respectable level.

But…. it can only lift it just so far given the lack of innovation or originality, plot wise. My sweetie Carolyn actually liked this one more than I did…. surprisingly enough… but I’m thinking that was mostly because she’s never seen “Shutter”… ever. I found myself at times nearly losing interest as the story unfolded just as I remembered. Luckily, the cast here is at least a good one, with plenty of chemistry between them, and usually when my interest would lag, the filmmakers would wow me with another particularly nice piece of ghostly eye-candy to revive me.

Eventually the story turns to the death and mayhem you might expect if you saw the Thai film, but here it’s all less bloody…. Hindi film being just a wee bit more squeamish about the particulars of such action. Ahhhhh…. and the plot element of Aarti’s rape at the hands of Avi’s college buddies…. Now there’s a taboo notion in Hindi film. At no point is it actually stated what happened between Aarti and the guys….. and the rape scene itself is done as a confusing jumble of juxtaposed images of them, her and some classic Hindi paintings showing demons ravaging virgins. Afterwards it’s only said that she was “disgraced”….. leading her to suicide. Quite clever given the constraints of the Hindi film censorship rules under which this one was made.

The ending? Well, if you too, have already seen “Shutter”, then you know how it ends. But I suppose you are at least wondering what the overall impression “Click” had for Neko. I can give this one a middle of the road 3 “Meows” out of 5 for…. well…. not surprising me, but not disappointing me either. It ain’t the most original film out there but it’s a quality attempt to produce a version the Hindi audience, at least, will certainly identify with. Throw in some musical numbers that didn’t annoy me for a change (and at least one of which I found catchy and entertaining), keep it to a reasonable 2 hour running time, and I’m a reasonably happy Catgirl indeed.

The Hindi DVD is it’s usual Region free NTSC format in anamorphic wide-screen with those excellent English subtitles we all know and love. Slap a 10-13$ price tag on it with reasonable domestic availability, and you’re in business if you want an evening of Hindi film fun. I wouldn’t say rush right out and grab it if you’ve already seen “Shutter”, unless you, like a certain Catgirl, are just plain goofy for foreign horror films, but it’s certainly worth a rental. On that note, it’s “Meow, meow, for now” until the next time I decide to spring my latest review at the Litterbox upon you all, Gentle Visitors!!

There’s a Trailer, of course, so let’s all take a peek, shall we?

The synopsis? Well it goes like this: “Anushka (Tanushree Dutta) marries a widower Ravi (Sachin Khedekar) against her mother’s wishes. Just when the duo is about celebrate a year of their married life in a new house in Goa, the nightmare begins. It turns out the house is haunted and the evildoer behind inexplicable events is no older than a little girl. Haunted by the girl’s ghost, Anushka approaches a healer who tells her that the house is cursed and there is a definite link to Ravi’s dead wife. Things then take a turn when Ravi is murdered and the blame falls squarely on Anushka who’s then sent to a mental asylum to gain her sanity back. But the ghost follows her there. Anushka just about manages to flee.

Enter Anushka’s sister Ahaana (Udita Goswami) who, with the help of a police inspector (Shaad Randhawa) tries to unearth the mystery behind the haunted house and save her sister, and later on herself, from the curse of the evil spirit.”

Certainly sounds like a ghost story to this lil’ Catgirl, and you all know how Neko just dotes on her silly ghost stories….. The price is nice, and it’s all subtitled in English and ready to go. Naturally I just had to grab a copy for my viewing pleasure. Will I like it as much as “Phoonk”? Guess I’ll find out!

So can you, o’ Gentle Reader… as always here at the Litterbox, you have only to “Read On” to get all the details for yourself!!

By now you, (and my sweet Carolyn as well) are probably saying to me.. “But Miyuki?…. Isn’t this just another of those tediously overlong Indian movies with all that goofy musical stuff? I don’t know if I’m ready for another of those…….” Not to worry. It seems Hindi films are slowly but surely moving away from their standard formula of being mostly vehicles for MTV style pop music sales and flashy superfluous choreographed dance sequences. “Rokkk” has none of the standard musical interludes this lil’ Catgirl usually has to suffer through to watch a Hindi film…. instead being a very tightly plotted narrative driven story with a very Western feel to the storytelling. Thank Goodness! Now…. a few wise Indian film makers do take the effort from time to time to weave those elements into their films with some attempt at making them relevant to the overall story…. unfortunately not all of them do, and it’s this tendency towards simply cramming in musical numbers to please a domestic audience that, in my opinion, has always held most Hindi films back from being taken seriously by the rest of the world. That’s not a problem here. “Rokkk” is a coherent story, well plotted for the most part, and seems to have paid good attention to the Asian “Long Haired Ghost” genre from which it obviously takes much of it’s inspiration. Not only that…. it seems to be truly a film “inspired by” those films rather than simply a direct copy of any of them. And all coming in at a reasonable running time just short of 2 hours….. Nice…..

Our film starts out with a strange frantic phone call from to our heroine Ahaana from her estranged sister Anushka… something terrible has happened and Anushka need her sister’s help. Seems she’s being held in a Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane, accused of the brutal murder of her beloved older husband and his sister. Before Ahaana can get any details, Anushka is discovered by the hospital staff and dragged away to her cell screaming for help and proclaiming her innocence. Even though her mother has held Anushka’s marriage to a rich, much older husband against her, Ahaana is determined to help her however she can.

We go into a flashback here… back to the start of all Anushka’s troubles, and the first anniversary of her marriage to Ravi, her wealthy older husband. It seems, despite her mother’s dislike of their marriage, the two actually are happily in love…. a very solid relationship with no problems that has even managed to win over the approval of Ravi’s younger sister Nishi, who has come to love her sister-in-law almost as much as her husband does. To celebrate this, Ravi has moved them all into a beautiful house he owns in Goa to begin their life together in a new place to call their own. Unfortunately for them….. the house is both haunted as well as cursed!! (Don’t ya just hate when that happens?)

Weird things start to happen immediately, but seemingly only Anushka notices them…. The typical haunting stuff, strange noises, moving objects, power failures, blood dripping from the ceiling… you know the drill. Next the terrifying specter of this long haired little girl, all crazy and bedraggled starts appearing to her, menacing her at every turn with some unknown evil intent. That’s when things get bad. Her husband Ravi thinks she’s simply seeing things, but eventually decides to move them out of this house of ill omen and back to their old one to calm her fears. It doesn’t help, as the ghostly lil’ girl follows them. She seeks help from a strange agoraphobic spiritualist, but it’s too late. The angry ghost starts possessing people too. First Nishi, who experiences that whole long haired ghost thing where evil hair sneaks up on you and gets you…. then it abandons her to take over Anushka so it can kill both Ravi and Nishi. The police show up, find the hysterical Anushka covered in the blood of her victims, and it’s off to the asylum…. Time to flash forward.

Ahaana rushes to the asylum to find out what has happened to her sister, but before she can get there the evil ghost strikes again and tries to kill Anushka. By the time Ahaana finally arrives, her sister is nowhere to be found, the police are convinced she’s escaped…. and that somehow Ahaana is part of a cover-up of this. As part of the investigation of her escape, snide police inspector Ranvir makes it his goal to keep an eye on Ahaana till she leads him to her missing sister. He figures she’s got something to do with the death of Ravi’s first wife Pooja too, but even though this keeps getting mentioned, nothing is ever done plot wise about this, we never even learn how or why she actually died. This glaring plot hole is about the only real problem overall with the story, and one that could easily have been remedied by simply mentioning a visit she could have made to the house, thus falling victim to the curse……

At least by now we viewers know the particulars of that curse…. It seems that anybody who so much as touches the shadow of the house is fated to die. It’s that simple. But of course Ahaana doesn’t know that…. so she starts right out falling victim to the curse herself and drawing the attentions of that evil lil’ ghost. If only she had the evil Black Magic book her sister found in the cellar of the house (The one bound in demon skin with the freaky eyeball that looks like it came right out of “The Evil Dead”)…. but unfortunately it’s disappeared along with Anushka. Darn….

Eventually heroine and skeptical policeman find their way to that same spiritualist and find out this all has to do with the death of that little girl years ago, a grieving mothers desperate attempt to raise the dead using the powers of Black Magic, and her failure thanks to the interference of a mean spirited drunk named…. Steve…. Yes, I kid you not….. Steve. I had quite the laugh over this… it just seems so jarring to hear such a name for a Hindi guy in amongst all the native ones, but hey, maybe Steve is a really popular Hindi name that just happens to also sound like the name of a geeky Western guy. (Somehow Neko sorta doubts it though…..Hehehe!!)

More deaths follow…. the ghost certainly understands that whole “unholy vengeance thing”, and wastes no time killing Steve before Ahaana and Ranvir can even find him. They have marginally better luck finding the lil’ girl’s mother, now crazy and hiding within a house protected by sacred seals like our spiritualist’s is. She fills them in on the ceremony she tried, explains the curse, tells them they’ll need the book to end it, and then promptly leaves the house for the demon to kill.

Our climax is close at hand…. and so Neko’s gotta give you her “Spoiler Warning” before we wrap this up, as I’m thinking you all just might want to watch the film yourselves. Don’t want to spoil the fun for ya now do I?

Just when you think this movie might be going the direction of most Hindi films and throwing a “romance angle” in which our Heroine Ahaana and tough cynical cop Ranvir fall in love, that idea gets stomped flat….. along with poor Ranvir who’s the next to die, run over by his own car. Wow…. really didn’t see that coming, but it’s surprisingly refreshing to see the strong female character left to work out things on her own for a change without the help of a “strong capable man”, not something a lot of Hindi films do.

Having failed to find the book, Ahaana is forced to confront the evil demon girl with the help of the spiritualist in a plan to trick the demon into possessing her so she can kill herself (and presumably the demon) when it’s at it’s weakest during the time of the new moon. It fails…. but luckily Anushka shows up, right at the crucial moment, evil book in hand, to end things with the powers of Black Magic she garnered from studying the book since her escape from the asylum. The two sisters join forces and destroy the evil creature, ending it’s threat once any for all. Or do they?…… Let’s just say our final moments leave open the possibility of a “Rokkk 2″ being in our future…..

So how does this one rate? Hmmmmm? I actually liked this one a lot…. and it’s a worthy addition to the “Long Haired Ghost” genre that you all know I’m just nutty for. With it’s very “Western” feel, a strong female heroine, and a sensible easily understood story (for the most part…. there are a couple of minor plot holes) , I can comfortably give “Rokkk” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5. It’s a good film to watch if Hindi films aren’t really your thing but horror movies are. I’m not certain how well received it was in India, but I can tell you it should do very well in foreign distribution if anyone cares to try marketing it. Hopefully they will, it’s the sort of film that could start making the Indian film industry start making real inroads towards a broader acceptance by a world audience. The DVD itself? Let’s see…. as always, the Hindi DVD is very well produced, with excellent accurate English subtitles and a gorgeous 16:9 letterboxed format at a price that can’t be beat. If you see it lurking around, your Favorite Catgirl says grab it for certain and have a creepy evening of chills, Hindi style. Hopefully I’ll be just as lucky with the other Hindi horror movies I picked up along with this lil’ gem….. Till then, Gentle Readers, “Meow, meow for now!”

Yep, I managed to snag a Trailer, suitably pacify it and here it is for your viewing pleasure!!

It’s been a while since I got anything from Malaysia…. most of my horror goodies from that part of the world come out of Indonesia, but every now and again the Malays surprise me with something homegrown in the way of creepy movies.

“Chermin” remains one of my favorites, and “Congkak” wasn’t too bad at all, so will “Santau” deliver the scares for me as well? The Trailer certainly looked promising…. enough that when I finally sniffed out a copy of this one and it’s “oh so nice” English subtitles, it wasn’t too hard to twist my lil’ arm into ordering it up for my very own.

Our synopsis for it reads like this: “Halim (Esma Daniel) and Nina (Putri Mardiana) live together with their daughter Tuti (Farisha Fatin) in a modern Malay village. Halim is successful in his career and leads a harmonious life with his family. Their neighbor is also a married couple; Usin (Riezman Khuzaimi) and Ana (Lis Dawati), while the other neighbor’s home is empty and waiting for new tenants to move in.

After a new neighbor moves in, Halim’s family begin to experience strange and horror incidents inside their home. Tuti starts to witness various mysterious events while Nina often experiences strange incidents that have never happened before. The strangest part is it all happens when Halim is away and he only comes home late at night.

Nina begins to gradually change from a good and hardworking wife to a lazy and bad-tempered wife. Each day there are things that happen that can wreck the family relationships. As a successful person, Halim does not believe of paranormal stories when Tuti complains about it.

One day Nina begins experiencing abdominal pain and Halim brings her to clinic for medical checkup. The doctor confirms gastric existence inside Nina’s stomach. However Tuti suspects his mother has been possessed by spirits.

One night, Halim returns home after Tuti informs him that Nina has been possessed and keep screaming at home. Halim finally brings Nina to see a shaman. The shaman confirms Nina has been possessed due to jealousy of Halim’s successful career and having a happy family.

Halim feels surprised by this revelation. How can Halim handle his family problem? Who is actually the mastermind behind this problem?”

Well….. it most certainly sounds like we might just have been down this story plot a few times before. A bad thing? Hmmmmm? The jury is still out on that one, and surely the only way to know for certain is to “Read On” o’ Gentle Visitor and find out!

So Ok….. From the moment this one starts out, you’ll have a definite feeling of Deja Vu. We first see the hands of an evil sorcerer at work…. You know the drill, lots of weird smoke, strange nameless herbs and ritual tools all being used to cast some sort of evil spell. No big surprise there, and it isn’t long before we meet honest hard working family man, Halim (played by Esma Danial). He’s a young successful engineer with a loving wife, Nina (played by Putri Mardiana), and an adorable lil’ girl (played by Farisha Fatin) named Aishya (I think…. the subtitles also refer to her as Ecah…. so I’m not really certain…) Starting to get that feeling you’ve been here before? Yep… if you’ve seen the Hindi horror film “Phoonk” you’re pretty much in that same sort of story here. Luckily… as it turns out… that’s a very good thing.

Seems somebody close to Halim and his family has a bit of a grudge against him and his seemingly perfect life. At a number of times throughout, he constantly gets told “Some Malays can’t stand to see the success of others…”. They aren’t kidding either. The unknown villain feeds his burning envy with a secret black sorcery attack aimed at ruining Halim’s happiness at all costs. Now our hero Halim is a pious Muslim man, but he’s a thoroughly modern guy too, so he’s quick to dismiss these veiled warnings of curses and danger. Boy is he in for a surprise…..

There also his new neighbors…… Yep, if your favorite Catgirl had to pick out a likely suspect for these creepy goings on, it most certainly would be these guys. Seems the husband has absolutely mastered that creepy scowl that every nasty anti social loner should have. At the very least… he’s worth keeping an eye on. But nope. Halim is quicker than his counterpart in “Phoonk” in coming to understand something supernatural is afoot but no closer to getting a handle on who’s after him. Even when lil’ Aishya starts finding a ghost under her bed and Nina starts getting possessed by the hungry spirit of some old hag from time to time.

Here’s where “Santau” really goes for it. Nina certainly goes all out in the gross out department hungrily scarfing down oodles of worms and maggots and other disgusting stuff. She’s certainly got the “bat shit crazy” look going on too with plenty of screen time scaring the snot out of people with the standard “Lookie at me! I’m Possessed!!” shtick. The makeup and special effects here are good… top notch for a Malay film, and actress Putri Mardiana gives it everything she’s got to make you really buy her situation. Sure, it’s somewhat two dimensional, but all in all it works (As it usually does…. if you make the effort, as a filmmaker that is.)

Naturally though, there has to be a twist in the plot, just to throw a little spice into things. That turns out to be the real identity of the sorcerer. It’s not Mr. Creepy Guy, Oom from next door….. that would just be too easy. Our wierd guy Oom’s just a spiritualist it seems, who can see ghosts and spirits and gets all grumpy about constantly being sucked into other peoples problems. It’s why he had to move from wherever he used to live and he just wants to avoid trouble….. too bad for Oom. So…. who really wants to screw with poor Halim? Well… Neko’s not gonna tell ya, so there!

Let’s just say we spend the rest of the film looking for somebody powerful enough to cast off the evil Jins that the sorcerer has sent to bedevil Halim and his family. It’s kind of strange to see him going from wizard to holy man to spiritualist on his way to the final holy guy. Sorta makes me wonder who in Malaysia doesn’t have a selection of mystic mojo right at their fingertips….. Halim certainly doesn’t, but practically everybody else in this film’s got something up their sleeve for when the ghosties and naughty ol’ Satan comes a knockin’……

Now…. You’ve got to remember…. this is a Malay film, so there wont be any serious bloodshed on display outside of a little back seat wrestling and some ear chewing by Nina on her hubby Halim (Although they did push the gross factor pretty hard as far as the censors would probably allow…) and, of course, the ultimate result has to be the unambiguous triumph of Allah over the Forces of Evil…. that’s a given…. but as I said earlier, that all actually works pretty well given this simple plot. Hey, a story about Black Magic curses and evil witchcraft worked in India, it works in Thailand, the Shaw Brothers made it work in Hong Kong….. and yes, it works here in Malaysia too.

This film works on all those levels, and looks very slick and modern all at the same time. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess is used to far cheaper looking films coming out of Malaysia… and that’s not the case here. “Santau” is a very professional film that shows that the Malay film industry can really pull it off when they want to. I truly enjoyed it…. it’s fun, creepy, a wee bit scary, and the Muslim exorcisms stuff certainly gives it a flavor all it’s own. It’s a shame this one will probably fade away without getting seen here on this side of the Pacific outside of a few odd film fans like me. I give it a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being a tight, well acted and easily understood horror film with a comfortably familiar plot that delivers exactly what it sets out to deliver for a viewer. That, my Gentle visitors, isn’t a bad thing at all…. trust me.

The DVD itself, is excellent. Done in an All Region PAL letterboxed format with excellent English subs as well as Chinese and Malay subs on board too, it has adequate chapters (6 in all) as well as a Trailer and some  other coming attractions…. all for about 6$ US for the Malay release. Perfect for a night of budget scares from the mysterious East…… It’s likely to fade away soon, so if you are even a little intrigued, I’d say snap up a copy now, you could certainly do a lot worse.

Oh, my goodness…… Yep… we got us a Trailer alright, and here it goes!

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.

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!!

The synopsis goes as follows: “Three ex-girlfriends, three dates with death

Has she really left you?

Ken (Chakhrit Yamnan from Bangkok Dangerous) is a ravishing young superstar and the dream date of every girl. While he can attract any woman he wants, every detail of his life ends up in gossip columns and tabloid magazines.

Two of his previous girlfriends — high-society girl Meen (Navadee Mokkhavesa) and innocent college student Bow (Atthama Chiwanitchaphan) — have already been exposed by the media. After dumping the pregnant Meen, he is now dating gorgeous young actress Ploy (Wanida Termthanaporn) and their every move makes the headline.

When news leak that Ken will marry Ploy, the media goes into a frenzy and the couple’s dream life turns into a nightmare. It seems that someone is stalking them, day and night. Is it an ex-girlfriend, an obsessed fan or vengeful paparazzi? Ken’s agent, Nimit (Bordin Duke), encourages him to take a break at his beachfront house but the problem only escalates as Ken starts to have visions of a woman and mysterious scratches begin to appear on his body. One by one, the people around Ken start to disappear…”

I just know this one is gonna be good! Wanna find out for sure? Then you’re just gonna need to “Read On” and find out…. silly!!

Another recent Thai goodie… this time coming to me from Malaysia all happy and English subtitled, and ready for my viewing pleasure. It’s the simple story of Ken…. a big movie-star who likes to think of himself as just another ordinary guy….. but who is obviously anything but. It’s just his way of dealing with the simple fact that his dashing good looks, fame and money seem to make him irresistible to lots of women. Seems he really needs some excuse to explain why he loves them and leaves them faster than he does new films…. all juicy fodder for the tabloids of course.

We start this one off just as he’s switching girlfriends… ditching both his pregnant rich girlfriend Meen as well as naive college girl fling Boy for his latest film co-star, sexy Ploy…. This results in some problems of course… first of them being the fact that Meen is pissed off!! I mean  completely crazy ass gonna go all “Fatal Attraction” on your butt kind of pissed off. Then there’s Boy’s tragic death during her attempt to call him and beg him not to dump her… cut short when she’s smashed to death in a phone booth by a runaway truck. Ouch!! That had to hurt…..

This leads to a series of nasty things happening to both Ken and Ploy… Vandalism… weird figures stalking Ploy and Ken… just out of sight, but always there. So what’s going on? Is Meen stalking them? Or….. Is Boy’s ghost haunting them? It’s not really clear but Ken just knows something up. Here the film does a reasonably good job of making us wonder if the problems are supernatural or not… but it doesn’t take long to decide which is which. Given this is a Thai horror movie… it doesn’t take long before things get gooey, bloody, and downright messy either.

Basically… the whole movie is driven by the character of Ken… unfortunately he’s not all that sympathetic a figure. Maybe it’s just me being a woman… but his whole narcissistic idea that the world isn’t fair… that he should be able to fall in and out of love with no consequence or shred of responsibility “just like every normal guy”…. really rubbed me the wrong way. The female characters aren’t much better… just why they waste their time..and some of them, their lives… on him is just incomprehensible. The most regrettable death in the whole movie is probably that of Ploy… but even she truly knew deep inside that Ken was playing her… she just keeps trying to ignore it… with tragic consequences.

As to our ghost…. well, it’s “Spoiler Alert” time…. although it doesn’t really come as any actual surprise by about halfway into things. Our ghost is Meen… not Boy… as one might have thought. Seems she commits suicide early on after giving herself the bloodiest “do-it-yourself” home abortion you’ve ever seen. Then she drinks a biiigg ol’ bottle of cleaning fluid… and finishes off by slicing her wrists with a carving knife (as if she wasn’t bleeding enough from the self-abortion… EWWWWHHH!!) Since then, she’s been going about making life miserable for…. well…  just about everyone in the film.

Carolyn couldn’t figure out why Meen kept killing all the other girls… after all,“Aren’t they Ken’s victims too?” she asked. I told her it’s just one of those “begrudged ghost” thingees…. Still.. she had a point. I know I’d have enjoyed the film more if she had merely used her ghostly powers to drive the women away rather than killing them outright. Revenge driven horror always works better if the audience can feel the horrible stuff is actually sorta deserved by those it happens to. Poor Boy certainly didn’t deserve her awful death… and Ken had already broken up with her by the time it happened anyway. Meen had even heard the exchange between Boy and Ken in which he seduces the poor girl, swearing that he’d already broken off things with Meen. So why kill her? Just plain meanness?

Other ghost stuff is handled much.. much… nicer. A sequence in which Ken gets attacked in a big bathtub full of blood springs to mind…. some serious long haired action here!! There’s a nice bit where she goes after a paparazzi photographer who’s been capturing her in “ghost pictures” as he secretly followed Ken around taking tabloid shots of him and Ploy. But… probably the niftiest and downright grossest death is reserved for Ken manager…. let’s just say he’ll not be talking trash to any of Ken’s lady friends in the future!! Nope.

So OK…. how about Ken? Does Meen finally kill him off? Given that he’s the source of her misery, you’d certainly think she’d get around to it eventually…. and she does, but ultimately ends up feeling sorry for the goofy bastard at crunch time. Sigh….. So much for revenge, eh? Guess she can just chalk up poor Boy and Ploy to “bad decision making”…. So… that means Ken learns his lesson… repents his foolish ways and spends his days making amends for his stupidity? Ummmm… nope. But don’t worry… Meen’s keeping a ghostly eye on him so he’ll get his just deserts.

Neko liked this one soooo sooooo much more than yesterday’s “Paku Kuntilanak”. But even so, it wasn’t a perfect movie. The lack of a character that I could empathize with made this one just another ghost revenge film… not bad, just not great. The effects, acting, and overall presentation were good. I can certainly give it a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5 with several purrs for those nifty bloody bits scattered throughout. Certainly the Malay disc helped me enjoy this one… it’s done in a good letterbox format, with accurate English subtitles (although at times those subtitles did display rather quickly… so you’d better read fast!!). As for the price…. well at 8$ US, it certainly won’t break your wallet or force you to start eating ramen noodles to afford your Thai movie fix. That’s always good, isn’t it?  So… I guess “My Ex” will keep me happy till the next time Thailand beckons me with a tale of ghostly shenanigans… till then, “Meow, meow, for now!!”

Trailer? Trailer? Has Neko got a trailer? Yep! ‘Course I do, so here we go!!

It’s a horror anthology by local Singaporean writer/director Jack Neo and our synopsis goes as follows: “Every year on the Lunar 7th month is the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival and Singaporeans with Chinese heritage and background will be celebrating with their beloved family members that have passed away. Most common methods are burning paper money and offering food for their deceased family members. “Where Got Ghost” is a typical Singaporean horror-comedy movie that is divided into three stories, each with some thrills, some chills and quite a few laughs along the way…”

How did it stack up for me as a movie watching experience? Was it as charming as some Chinese ghost comedies? Or did they go with the toilet humor route that most Thai and Indonesian films like to go? (I admit I sorta expected the latter might just be the ticket here….. not that there’s a problem with that, mind you….Hehehehe!)

I guess we’re all about to find out, so you are certainly gonna want to “Read On” and see!

Admittedly I’m a bit of a novice on the topic of Singaporean cinema… I’ve only seen just a couple over the years, but they always strike me as a sort of cross between Chinese and Malay films (and I’m usually somewhat lost trying to follow Malay popular humor….) so I was hoping this one would stick close to the theme of the Hungry Ghost festival which I’m all up to speed on. Thankfully… it did.

Unfortunately, “Where Got Ghost?” bases much of its humor in some very specifically Singaporean situations and day to day ideas such as their obsession with local lotteries. That and some “play on word” jokes based on the differences between the Chinese language and the local Singaporean dialect went completely over my head…. they just didn’t come across when translated into English subtitled form. Without any grasp of these “in jokes” much of the humor sorts fails an audience from elsewhere in the world…. at least they did for me. Luckily there are no shortage of basic universal physical humor to fill in the blanks.

The first of the three stories, “Roadside Got Ghost”, concerns three scoundrels,  Cai, and his lackeys Fu and Shou, who devise a new lottery scam. Realizing the limited number of possible winning numbers in a popular lottery, they decide to make random calls to people, promising each of them that the lucky numbers for winning are theirs courtesy of the “God of Wealth”. Those who win the lottery are asked to pay 20% “offering” to Cai to show their gratitude. Those who try to avoid paying, become the victims of mysterious “calamities” designed to scare them into complying. This works so well that soon the three set themselves up up a company to expand their scam into new markets outside Singapore. Then Cai himself receives a phone call. The caller gives Cai the same offer he’s been making to his victims…. offering the winning numbers to the lottery for a percentage of the winnings. Believing it to be another scam artist trying to move in on their idea, Cai ignores the call, but then tries his luck with the given number anyway out of boredom. Surprisingly, he wins, and wins big. While out celebrating his luck, a strange pale faced man confronts him asking why didn’t he pay the commission. Cai laughs at him and refuses to pay,the man anything telling him to get lost. The ominous stranger then tells Cai that he will be killed by a car as punishment for his insult. Fu and Shou are worried, but Cai laughs off the whole thing and runs out into the middle of the road, daring the curse to strike. Naturally it does, and Cai is crushed by a car that smashes through the retaining wall of the overpass above him. As Cai is dying it is revealed that an angry spirit from who Fu and Shou stole offerings from in Cai’s name has returned to take her revenge. Never steal from the dead….. a lesson Cai, Fu and Shou will never forget.

The second story, “Forest Got Ghost”, tells the story of Nan and Lei, two lazy city dwellers who have become unlucky enough to be forced to take their compulsory army reserve training during the unlucky 7th month. Worse… they have to complete a map navigation exercise through the jungle near a hill widely regarded to be haunted. Warned about the dangers of the jungle, the none-the-less get lost and decide to take a shortcut to their destination despite warnings to stick to their instructed route. The two malingerers soon find out why they were warned…. a “red dress spirit” haunts the area… and soon it’s chasing them through the jungle scaring them silly. Eventually they encounter Yin Yin, a local woman who lives alone in a creepy house waaaay out in the forest. Seeking some shelter, they accept her invitation to stay overnight…. only to become the victims of her and her sister, the “red dress spirit”…. exchanging places with them in death to haunt this part of the jungle till some other unlucky fool is killed to allow them to leave.

The third and final tale, “House Got Ghost”, is the most comedic of the three and concerns a family, haunted in strange and bizarre fashion by their late mother. (Strangest among these…. her constant bothering of one son to find her the favorite “Mickey Mouse bra”…. try explaining THAT one to an exorcist!!) What seems her failings to provide her living relatives with luck due to an in auspicious death, leads to a series of weird encounters that nearly force her family to abandon her funeral plaque to a remote temple is in reality, a lesson in humility as the family finally learns that she has been protecting them from disaster all along from beyond the grave. One should always honor one’s ancestors…..

So… how was this one? Well… as ghost stories go, these weren’t particularly scary… and as comedy, not particularly funny either. Much of the special effects are digital… almost painfully so…. and lack the charm of practical effects, no matter ho obviously fake and cheesy such effects might be. The acting is alright, but no one character springs out to make their face stick in my mind forever. All in all, it’s a competently made film, just not a great one.

Neko can only give “Where Got Ghost?” a meager 3 “Meows” out of 5….. and that’s being generous. It’s not bad enough to put this lil’ Catgirl off Singaporean films forever, but it doesn’t make me want to run out and hunt more down either. Thank goodness they still do all that great subtitling of Thai stuff, so at least I’ll keep peeking in and who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise me next time…..

So… a Trailer you ask? Yep…. and here it is for your viewing pleasure!

Our synopsis goes like this: “This comedy/horror movie tells a story of three youths from Kuala Lumpur; Punai, (Mazlan Pet Pet) a petty thief, Asmat (Cat Farish), a car jockey, and Johan (Sam Shaheizy), a salesman.

They each received a letter from the late Pak Sudir (Piee), inviting them to his house. Upon their arrival, they meet up with Pak Sudir’s assistant, Mustika (Lisa Surihani), and they discovered that Pak Sudir was actually their grandfather who happens to be very rich.

The three of them stands a chance to inherit all of his belongings and wealth but under strict circumstances; they would have to stay at his house for three days consecutively without touching anything, especially an old Congkak. On the first night itself, strange and hilarious occurrences begin to happen.”

I catch a lot of Indonesian films, as visitors here at the ol’ Litterbox might have noticed, but Malay ones are a bit harder for me to come across… Don’t know exactly why…. they just are. Maybe somebody will explain the whole situation to me, but I get the impression that they just watch a lot of the same Indonesian produced films in Malaysia that I manage to find as well…..

So…… Is this one gonna be any good? Is it gonna stink really badly….? I’m not at all certain….. and I’m getting a weird vibe from the cover art… but it does come with those nifty English subs I love for a ridiculously tiny price, so I guess there’s really only one way for me to actually find out…. and that’s for me to give it a watch and for you all to “Read On”.

This one starts out at an exorcism…. a promising start for a horror film… Seems the local sorcerer has died suddenly, and as is usual in these sorts of cases, is still possessed by the many evil spirits he’s controlled to work his magic over the years….. They’re a nasty bunch of troublemakers, and just because the old man is dead, they just don’t get to go away…… Bummer. The comedy starts right off…. making some reference to another film “Jangan Pandang Belakang”, also directed by Ahmad Idham, but unfortunately your favorite Catgirl missed that particular one and the joke slipped completely over my head falling pretty flat in the process. I wish I could say it was the only such one to do that, but this was just the first of many….. Guess most Malay humor is sorta like that…. I got very little of it, and those I did understand, I can’t say I found particularly hilarious….. must be an acquired taste.

Anyway, the villagers just want the ghosts to go away…. otherwise without the sorcerer to control them, they’ll get up to all sorts of mischief. What they don’t know is that the ghosts are just like all of the old man’s other possessions…. something that can be inherited and passed along. His disciple, the evil sorceress Mustica (the most interesting character in the whole movie) wants them…. probably to increase her mystical powers or something like that, but first she’s got to do away with the legitimate heirs to the old man’s legacy, three idiot grandsons from Kuala Lumpur who come to the village to inherit what they think is all the old man’s money….. Big… big…. mistake.

The guys show up, and again your Favorite Catgirl was left scratching her head trying to figure out who these guys were….. I’m assuming they are big comedy stars or music stars in Malaysia…. But to me they seemed… well, honestly… not all that interesting. Maybe they’re Malaysia’s answer to “Abbott & Costello”, but whatever mystique they have in Malaysia didn’t translate to me at least. No slam against them…. I usually get Thai or Indonesian humor and cultural references, but not this time.

So… they watch Grandpa Sudir’s video will… and are told all his stuff is now theirs, as long as they stay 3 consecutive days at his home and not disturb anything while they are there…. Yeah, right, heard THAT one before. It takes all of an hour before they mess with the antique congkak board in the spooky ceremonial chamber and promptly get themselves possessed by three of Grandpa’s ghosts….. the Hantu Raya (a zombie looking thing that prowls the night eating chickens), our old buddy the Orang Minyak (the oily sex maniac maniac himself), and the Toyol (a little green demon who steals money).

The rest of our film concerns itself with the various hijinx that result from the nocturnal episodes where our heroes transform into these ghosts and wreak havoc around the village. Along the way, they manage to meet some nice local girls… fall in love…. run afoul of the prerequisite gang of local toughs who, of course, blame all the village troubles on “outsiders”…. Ah, and dodge Mustica’s attempts to kill them and steal the spirits. Most of this is somewhat amusing, if uninspired…. but doesn’t go anywhere daring or downright hilarious at all. Eventually we get introduced to the Mystic guy from the beginning of the film, who has a couple of funny bits… mostly dealing with how it’s much more impressive to travel by popping magically from place to place or by jumping out windows dramatically rather than simply using the door.

There’s constant Malay pop song references… most of which I missed, with the exception of Punai, who has crazy fits in which he sings Western pop song fragments as he transforms into the Oily Maniac….. (Say what?…), so I’m thinking these guys might just be pop stars. (Anybody wanting to let me in on these gys…. by all means speak up…. this poor lil’ Catgirl feels soooo lost on this.) Ahhh, yes…. and the fat gay shaman (I think….)….. didn’t get that part of the movie at all…..

Confused yet? I most certainly was…. but eventually we do get our big magic showdown between Mustika and the Holy man, everything gets sorted out, and our heroes get the girls. Thank goodness…..

Can’t actually say this one was really my style….. I’ll give it 3 “Meows” out of 5 mostly because the makeup and special effects weren’t all that bad…. the plot had some promise, and I’m assuming that stupid lil’ me just didn’t get half of the “in jokes”….. but that’s being pretty generous. I’m guessing most folk from anywhere outside Malaysia will be just as lost as I was, so it’s really only recommended if you are as goofy for quirky Asian stuff as I am. It’s presented in letterboxed format on the DVD with reasonable English subtitles… but be aware that they are often displayed very quickly, so read fast!! I’m soooo hoping my next Malay film is more like “Chemin” or “Congkak” than this one….. yes indeed!!

There’s actually even a Trailer available for this one! Here it is, for those of you wanting to take your own look…..