Another nostalgia filled trip back to the days of your Favorite Catgirl’s misspent youth and the Saturday morning movies that warped my lil’ mind, gives us a look this time out at 1953’s utterly “craptastic” “Robot Monster”.

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

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

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

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

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Now and again somebody thinks fondly of me and brings this lil’ Catgirl the present of a movie…. sometimes they’re surprisingly good, sometimes amazingly baaaaad… but always welcomed… Recently, my sweet Carolyn bought me this one…. fresh from the “sale bin” at our local Video rental store…. brand spanking new and never even watched!! (However, after watching it, I’ve now come to understand why…. Hehehehe!!) It’s not every special person that would do that… especially knowing she’d have to also cuddle up on the couch and watch it too….. It’s little gestures like this that tell me how much she truly loves silly lil’ me…. and judging by this “craptastic” DVD, she must just love me oodles and oodles!!

Our synopsis goes sorta like this…. “A mad scientist named Dr Arana (Jackie Coogan) is creating giant spiders and dwarves in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom.”

Now this certainly sounds like a reasonable and well thought out plan for world domination…. and to think some might call Dr. Arana mad…… So, how’s it all gonna work?

Badly, my first guess would be, but to find out for certain, we’ll all just have to “Read On” to find out!!

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Ahhh, Vincent Price…. now there’s a memory from my childhood. Of all the actors I remember from all those old movies, he stands out in my mind the most clearly. Always so smooth, sophisticated and so, so classy, whether playing the hero, or the villain, he always left such a vivid presence on my mind. This film, one of the many Poe adaptations by Roger Corman has to be undoubtedly his best, “The Masque of the Red Death”, from 1964.

Loosely inspired by Poe’s writings, our synopsis for it reads: “Death and Debauchery reign in the castle of Prince Prospero (played by Vincent Price), and when it reigns… it pours! Prospero has only once excuse for his diabolical deeds–the devil made him do it! But when a mysterious, uninvited guest crashes his pad during a masquerade ball, there’ll be hell to pay as the party atmosphere turns into a danse macabre!”

Mmmmm…. now this one’s a real gem and has a warm place in my many early film memories so how could it not be a “Lil’ Kitten Classic”? I’ve seen it many times since my first encounter as a child on afternoon TV, and it’s always one of those films I can find time to watch over and over. That alone tells this Catgirl it’s got to be something special to hold such power after all these years.

But, of course you all want to know more…. so let’s all “Read On”!!

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Halloween fast approaches us and so it’s time for another holiday themed “Lil Kitten Classic” review… this time out it’s the spooky 1942 classic “Cat People”.

Now I know you are all wondering… “Miyuki? You really mean you haven’t ever done a review for this one? How is that even possible?” It does sound somewhat silly for your Favorite horror movie lovin’ Catgirl Princess to have somehow missed this particular classic film here at the ol’ Litterbox, but we can fix that up right now, now can’t we!

Our synopsis goes like this: “Architect Oliver Reed falls in love with beautiful Irena Dubrovna and they duly marry. But Irena refuses to give herself to Oliver, believing that there is something evil inside herself. She tells him of her Serbian ancestors who were reputed to be able to transform into cats when angered.

As Oliver’s frustration and unhappiness grows, he seeks consolation in the arms of co-worker Alice Moore. But a series of near-attacks on the two of them leave him wondering if Irena has not become jealously deranged or if maybe her Serbian legends are true and that she is turning into a cat person to avenge herself on them.”

Oooooh! Mysterious girls from the Balkans that can turn themselves into man eating panthers!! I don’t remember exactly when lil’ Miyuki first encountered this one, but I do remember it was a truly creepy, truly different sort of horror movie and that I liked it a lot even way back then.

Does it still hold up today? I guess we’ll have to give it another watch and find out. Let’s go!

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This time out our “Halloween Review-athon” takes us on a trip way, waaay back to your Favorite Catgirl’s misspent youth for a “Lil’ Kitten Classics” look at when Giant Killers Pigs roamed the desolate Australian Outback in search of human prey… at least in the movies…

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

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

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

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Another of the weird lil’ films that this Catgirl watched endlessly on her Saturday mornings back when I was nothing but a wee lil’ kitten. This one had it all…. romance, exotic south seas adventure, lost civilizations…. an evil Cobra Queen…. and Sabu!!

Our synopsis reads: “Upon discovering his fiance Tollea (played by Maria Montez) has been kidnapped, Ramu (played by Jon Hall) and his friend Kado (played by Sabu) set out for a Pacific isle where all strangers are to be killed on arrival and the inhabitants, who are frequently sacrificed to an angry volcano god, worship the cobra. The island is ruled over by Tollea’s evil twin Naja (again… Maria Montez), the “Cobra Woman”, who, besides having designs on her handsome new prisoner Ramu, also desires to eliminate any romantic competition from her sister.”

Oooohhh!! Identical twins! You just know with a tried and true plot element like this that we’re in for some nifty “mistaken identity” fun….. and with a fanatical island of snake worshipping natives and a volcano god needing some virgin sacrifice this one’s got classic pulp goodness written all over it.

So…. having whetted your appetite for classic old school pulp adventure let’s dive in and see if the years have been kind to my memories of this one, shall we?

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Time for another nostalgic time traveling journey to the fun films of my youth and another of our “Lil’ Kitten Classics” reviews…. this time out we’ll be reminiscing about the classic Vincent Price film, “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”….

Our simple synopsis reads:“A brilliant man who was horribly disfigured in a flaming, near fatal automobile accident that also took the life of his wife, seeks a macabre revenge on those whom he believes to be responsible for her death.”

As with most of these capsule synopsis, the teaser only scratches the surface of exactly what this one is about… there’s just soooo much more to the film than can be summed up in a couple of lines….. (After all…. it does star Vincent Price!! Ahhhhh!!! Sooo creepy!!) Lil’ Miyuki had a special place in her heart for the great Vincent Price, and there’s still a warm place there even today. I’ve seen all his films, and I’m hard pressed to think of even a one that wasn’t elevated by his participation…. Even the most silly premise was given a measure of respectability and charm when Mr. Price took the screen in them to delight, horrify, and entertain me.

Naturally, you guys are going to want to see just what there was about this one that captivated lil’ Miyuki all those years ago, so watcha’ waitin’ for? “Read On”, by all means!

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Here we go again…. it’s yet another chance to peek back to this Lil’ Catgirl’s childhood and find out just what sort of movies kept lil’ Miyuki glued to her TV in those innocent years of my childhood. This time out… it’s 1967’s “The Valley of Gwangi” by the amazing special effects wizard of stop motion animation, Ray Harryhausen.

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?

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Well…. after a couple of weeks of inactivity, I’m finally back and yep…. it’s time for another nostalgic filled trip back to the wondrous times and fond memories of lil’ Miyuki’s youth and another of my “Lil’ Kitten Classics” reviews. This time up we have, from 1984, the goofy classic  zombie fest “Night of the Comet”.

Starring Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney as spunky teenage sisters forced to fight Zombies and evil government creeps in the aftermath of a worldwide apocalypse caused by the close passing of a comet, this one had all the goofy genre conventions needed to captivate a young zombie fan like me…

Naturally I just had to watch it….. and this time it was at the movies on the big screen! How I managed to trick my Mom into taking me and my friends one evening is a tale into itself…. Hehehehe!!

Let’s just say it’s a good thing she never really watched TV all that much…..

Anyway… lets get on with the fun! So by all means, let’s all “Read On”, shall we?

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It’s time for another look at those wonderfully silly films that help to shape lil’ Miyuki into the movie loving Catgirl Princess I am today. This week we take a look at “It’s Alive”, 1974’s mutant killer baby movie….

A lot of films since then have touched on this idea, but this one was there first…. and all the others since owe it a more than a passing nod for reminding us all just how scary babies really are. Given that the news is this one is currently the latest classic horror franchise due for a remake soon, and since I have “Tamami, The Baby’s Curse” winging it’s way to me direct from Japan, I thought this one would make just the perfect entry into my “Lil’ Kittens Classics” reviews…..

I remember first seeing this one uncensored on pay cable, I think…. It was over at a friend’s house during a sleepover with some other girls from school. Her family had cable, and she had a TV in her room, which was a novelty waaaay back then.

This was way before those silly “parental controls” started popping up on the decoder boxes, so we were able to watch this one without having to sneak around to do it.

So…. was it worth forgoing the usual sleepover hi jinx to watch? Or should we all have just talked about boys, had the prerequisite pillow fight, and painted each others toenails? Let’s “Read On” and find out…..

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