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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!

If you’ve ever read the HG Wells classic, “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, you’ve got the basic idea here….. weird science has always been fascinated with the somewhat goofy idea of using surgery and secret formulas to transform animals into people…. or nearly transform them, you see…. it never quite works out so well in actual application. It does however make for some nifty scifi horror exploitation most of the time and “Mesa of Lost Women” is no exception… (Why, oh why, do they NEVER try to make beautiful women out of fluffy bunnies or lil’ kittens instead of spiders, snakes,  or other ridiculously deadly choices….)

Mad Science is such a demanding profession after all….

We get this one started as we see an oil company employee driving his jeep somewhere in the fictitious “Muerto Desert” of Mexico, who rescues the intrepid freelance pilot, Grant Phillips (played by Robert Knapp) and Doreen (played by Mary Hill) whom he comes across wandering through the wasteland suffering from the ravages of exposure and dehydration. Barely alive, Grant babbles on incoherently with something about “needing to destroy “Them” before they scatter”. Uh-oh…. You just know that can’t be good…..

Brought to the “Amer-Exico Field Hospital” they soon recover thanks to the efforts of Dr. Tucker, the oil company doctor in charge of the clinic. Once he’s conscious, Grant starts in again with his crazy story about “super-monsters…or bugs” as all the oil company guys listen in disbelief. Grant begs then to load up a truck with oil and hurry to burn out the “bugs” before they scatter forever. Nobody believes him….. except Pepe, the Mexican local who works for the company…. and so begins a weird flashback…..

The movie is full of these sorts of jarring, abrupt shifts in story. Ultimately it serves to give one the impression this film was edited by a cretin armed with a chainsaw….. and he’s probably also they guy who chose the soundtrack….. OMG!! The music!! The soundtrack of “Mesa” is dominated… yeah, that’s definitely the word for it… by a terrible Flamenco guitar that soon has you absolutely hating the very sound of guitars, repeated over and over throughout the entire film. This music is simply horrible…. and it’s probably why Ed Wood Jr. stole it to use in the soundtrack of his own film, 1954′s “Jailbait”…..

Respected eminent scientist, Doctor Leland Masterson, the world’s leading specialist in research (Just exactly what SORT of research we are never told… I guess he’s famous enough we’re all just supposed to know) visits Dr. Arana at his forlorn desert laboratory on Zarpa Mesa in the heart of the infamous “Muerto Desert” to learn the details of the Arana’s latest experiments.Once he discovers Arana has been breeding giant tarantulas and that he’s been using a combination of special serums and surgery to transplant their glands into humans, he sorta freaks out. Apparently he’s crossed that ever so fine line into the whole “things man was not meant to know” territory…. even if this research has resulted in creation of mysterious hottie Tarantella (played in sultry silence by B-movie starlet Tandra Quinn). Passing up on the chance to join Arana and learn how to make all of his very own spider girls, he is seized and given an injection that destroys his mind and is allowed to escape. Eventually found wandering, he gets confined to an asylum for the hopelessly nutty from which he later escapes and abducts several people he meets at a seedy cantina (The best sequence of which is a seriously weird sexy dance number by Tarantella…..). He forces his hostages aboard an airplane that’s got some serious engine issues to make his getaway. When the plane catches on fire, the our pilot Grant has to make an emergency landing in a clearing atop a remote desert mesa…. yep…. on THAT very mesa. Hey now, what are the odds of that happening?

Much of the film now shifts to our heroes getting chased around the jungle…. yes, jungle…. waaaay up on top of a Mesa stuck in the middle of supposedly the most arid region in all Mexico. But… we’ll let that slide…. After getting captured by Arana’s combined dwarf and spider girl minions, we end up at the lab where Dr. Matheson finally comes to his senses, only to refuse Arana yet again when offered a chance to join him in his plot. There’s the prerequisite destruction of everything by explosion…. (Ever notice how all evil labs seem to have so many things in them that go boom? Neko certainly has….) But of course our hero Grant and heroine Doreen somehow make their escape in the nick of time…. and our flashback ends…..

The oil guys are certainly NOT gonna believe this goofy story. Neither are they going to send a bunch of trucks out into the desert to burn out “giant mutant spiders”, so instead we get a final image of one of Arana’s spider girls… still very much alive, and setting things up nicely for “Mesa of Lost Women 2 – Spider Girls Gone Wild!!”

Wow….. I didn’t think a movie this bad could even be made. But…. here it is. Not surprisingly…. this one has slid into the public domain, thus allowing it to reach me by way of budget DVD release, one of many, for this particular title. The print used had me thinking the bad editing was the result, perhaps, of years of neglect and abuse…. but nope… this one was a “reel” turkey to start with, and it’s taken the ravages of years to give it a faint and curious sort of humor. If you can manage to stand that damn guitar and sit through it’s mercifully short 70 minute running time, it’s definitely worth a look….

For certain, you’ll never call another movie “crappy” after seeing this one….. so maybe that’s “Mesa of Lost Women”‘s claim to fame after all. Neko gives this one an amazing 0 “Meows” out of 5…. an absolute first here at the ol’ Litterbox…. but I’ll allow it several purrs of happy contentment for at least giving me a chance to watch it all curled up cozy with my sweetie and Goober for a quiet evening at home. (Psssst!!…. and the giant Spider puppets were sorta neat…..)

Could there possibly even be a Trailer for a film as absolutely “craptastic” as this one? Yes… yes there is, and here it goes!

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”!!

Our story concerns Prince Prospero (played by Vincent Price) the titular ruler of a small Italian fiefdom who is well known for his cruelty and wickedness. Every year at harvest time, Prospero throws a grand feast for all his fellow noblemen, while his peasants are stripped of their hard earned food and are left to starve. Two of these peasants dare to speak up in protest, so the ruthless prince orders them to be garroted for their impudence. A young woman, Francesca (played by Jane Asher), the daughter of one of the two men and fiancée of the other, begs Prospero to spare them this cruel fate. Smitten by her beauty, Prospero takes Francesca, her father (played by Nigel Green) and her lover Gino (played by David Weston) away to his castle. But….. thanks to the discovery of an old woman dying horribly of the obvious signs of the dreaded Red Death, he also orders the village burned to the ground.

At the castle begins Prospero’s attempts to win over Francesca by corrupting her innocence through manipulation and trickery. Here the real “meat and potatoes” of the story gets rolling as we get introduced to Prospero’s current paramour Julianna (played by Hazel Court). She’s just about as evil and wicked as he is… and knows exactly how long she’ll last if pretty young Francesca hangs around. She’s been cozy with Prospero long enough to recognize competition and lets Francesca know she’d better not have any plans to try to usurp her position at the castle… or else. Everybody else is pretty much secondary to the plot…. with perhaps the exception of Alfredo, Prospero’s main sycophant (played by Patrick Magee) who has more to do with a sub plot involving another Poe story, “Hop Frog” added in here to flesh out the plot a bit involving the revenge of a dwarf jester named Hop-Toad (played by Skip Martin) upon Alfredo who stupidly abuses his beloved Esmerelda (played by child actress Verina Greenlaw & dubbed by an uncredited woman actress), a pretty midget ballerina for whom Alfredo has lustful designs for.

Prospero pretty much tells his guests to settle in for the longest party on record…. They’ll keep him amused and do his bidding or he’ll simply throw them out of the castle to the mercy of the plague that now ravages the countryside. Most of these idiots are so darn glad for the chance to curry favor that they’ll debase themselves in whatever manner he wants…. much to his amusement and poor innocent Francesca’s horror.

It doesn’t take long to throw in some Satanism (Movies just loved that notion in the 60′s and early 70′s)…. seems Prospero has been a worshiper of his for a while and Julianna has been long toying with the idea of becoming one of the “Handmaidens of Satan” herself… it just takes the threat of Francesca replacing her at Prospero’s side to convince her to undergo the terrible ritual needed to “seal the deal” with the Lord of Flies…. Here we get some pretty nasty self mutilation in the form of branding her breast with the reversed cross of Satan and a hallucinogenic dream sequence before Julianna finds herself damned forever. One seriously bloody bird attack later, and the honeymoon is over….. I guess Satan just isn’t into divorce.

Meanwhile Francesca’s dad and Gino are being held in the dungeon…. First they try to get the two to learn sword fighting so the two can try to kill each other in grand style for the party guests amusement…. when that fails, they come up with a goofy Russian roulette idea involving a poisoned dagger in a group of daggers. It doesn’t end well… and Francesca’s dad nearly kills Prospero before getting cut down. Gino is alive, but Prospero shows him his “mercy” by throwing him out of the castle… granting him his freedom, but dooming him to death by the plague….

Luckily the plague itself is more than just a mindless pestilence…. it’s a very real presence personified by a mysterious figure dressed in a scarlet monks robe. Not only that…. but it seems Prospero is on this supernatural spirit’s hit list and it’s willing to help Gino return to the castle and save Francesca in return for somehow aiding the Red Death in it’s attempts to enter the castle. Just in time for the grand ball….. First Hop Toad gets his revenge on Alfredo, trapping him in an ape costume and burning him alive before the other guests. Then Gino arrives…. and the Red Death with him. He’s told simply to wait at the battlements, as the Red Death itself stalks through the revelers spreading it’s deadly touch….. At first Prospero mistakes him for Satan, his Master, but soon discovers his mistake and is trapped at last in a hell of his own making here on earth…. just another victim of the plague with his face that sweeps through the castle slaying all the guests and making a tomb of the place.

At the end…. the Red Death meets it’s brothers at a crossroads…. and they discuss the death they have sown in their journeys. It’s revealed that only six now survive here, a young girl, Francesca and Gino, Hop Toad and Esmerelda and one lone old man in the burnt out village. A quick quote from Poe’s story, and it’s off to the end credits….. “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

Mmmmmm… now this one was certainly a movie like they just don’t make anymore. Absolutely the best of Corman’s Poe adaptions, it benefited greatly from a budget and shooting schedule almost double his usual allotment for such a film. Also, being shot in England, he was able to use many preexisting sets, backdrops, and wardrobe from other productions at the studios where it was filmed that give it a lavish, expensive, and unique look which he well exploits. Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg does an amazing job filming these sets and really makes the overall film look like it cost far more than it did. Add some class actors and this one shines as an excellent example of the genre. Vincent Price is at his best…. and although many reviews find him to be somewhat of a overrated ham, they fail to grasp the sheer talent he had for taking some of the most melodramatic dialog ever written in these films and investing his characters with an unearthly presence that transcends the sometimes silly material.  At no time do you not feel this when he is center screen….. and he could do more with his facial expressions than many other actors could do with a page of dialog.

For it’s sheer sumptuous look, it’s style and it’s slow brooding menace, Neko gives “Masque of the Red Death” 4 “Meows” out of 5…. it’s not the most gut wrenching of horror films, but what it might lack in shocks or gruesomeness it more than makes up for with sheer classic looks and Gothic creepy mood. Little Miyuki loved it, as she did all these classic Poe films, and grown-up me still does….. If you’ve never seen this one, I guess I can only say “For goodness sake, why not?”

Naturally there’s just got to be a Trailer for such a classic film as this, and here it is….. Enjoy the terror!

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!

When I was a girl, it was still possible if you were so inclined, to spend quite a few precious hours watching oodles of classic black & white horror and scifi movies on Saturdays and Sundays…… one of the things that obviously helped to shape my fertile imagination and let me grow up into the somewhat quirky woman that I am today. It’s a shame that 500 channels and an almost pathological dislike of anything not in color, or inspired by a video game, or anything made over 20 years ago that prevents the current generation from the simple joy of many of these films not shown except on rare occasion anymore on mainstream TV. That’s a shame…. especially when you realize that today’s kids miss such wonderful gems like… “The Cat People”.

Made in 1942 by producer Val Lewton for RKO studios and directed by Jacques Tourneur, the film stars Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, and Tom Conway in a smart sophisticated tale of psychological horror with surprisingly adult sexual undertones for a film of it’s genre and era. Made for a tiny budget of only $141,659, it amazingly brought in nearly $4 million over the next two years and is credited with saving the studio from near financial disaster. Not bad for a little movie like this….. certainly good enough to spawn a sequel, “Curse of the Cat People” in 1944 as well as a more forgettable remake in 1982 starring Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell.

This one starts out in the ordinary everyday familiarity of the city zoo, as Serbian-born fashion designer Irena Dubrovna (played by french actress Simone Simon) spends her lunch hour making sketches of the zoo’s black panther. Pretty… and talented, she easily catches the eye of construction designer Oliver Reed (played by Kent Smith). Despite his attempts at witty small talk, he nearly blows it…. as Irena seems disinterested in his overtures. But eventually he lucks out when Irena reluctantly invites him back to her apartment for tea. But, ominously, as they walk away, one of Irena’s discarded sketches is shown to be of a panther impaled on a sword, a macabre foreshadowing of the things to come.

Back at her apartment, Oliver sees an antique statue, a crowned medieval figure on horseback impaling a cat upon a sword. Irena tells Oliver that the figure is of King John of Serbia and then tells him the folklore behind the image. According to her story, her ancestral village was located in a region once reputed to be the last hideout of a group of terrible Satan worshipers that were eventually wiped out by King John for their evil ways. However, “the wisest and the most wicked” of them managed to escape this fate, fleeing into the mountains where they are still supposed to be hiding today, modern bogeymen for Serbian children to fear. Something about this tale tells you Irena feels some secret shame for her ancestry which is tainted by the legends of these evil people, and it obviously makes her shy away from Oliver… but despite her feelings, she falls deeply in love with him, and he with her, leading to a whirlwind marriage….. but Oliver doesn’t know the true depths of her fear.

It eventually becomes clear that Irena really and truly believes herself to be descended from these wicked evil cultists, and that her greatest fear is that she will be transformed into a murderous black panther if ever deeply aroused by the emotions of passion, anger, or jealousy and kill any foolish enough to be near her. Not wanting to risk his life, she pathologically avoids sleeping with her new husband. Desperate to free her from this delusion, Oliver persuades her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd, (played by Tom Conway). Rationally, the doctor tries to convince her that all those fears she has are less about old folk stories and more about the perfectly natural everyday fears of a sexually repressed and timid young woman confused about the desires she feels for the first time in her life.

Unfortunately, the whole situation is complicated when Oliver confides these sensitive marital problems to his attractive fellow co-worker, Alice Moore (played by Jane Randolph). Hurt and jealous of Alice, who obviously also has romantic feelings for Oliver, she feels betrayed…. provoking the curse to surface. Or does it? Alice feels threatened by an ominous presence while swimming alone in a pool. In the darkness, she seems to be stalked by a large animal, shown only by its lurking shadow. Only the safety of the water seems to keep the creature at bay and saves her life. After it leaves, Alice climbs out, beginning to wonder if she had imagined the whole thing. That is, until she finds her robe torn to shreds.

Eventually the stresses of all this tear the two apart, and Oliver tells her he wants a divorce. This is more than Irena can stand and she loses all control of the curse. Later on, while at work, Oliver and Alice are cornered by the terrible panther that is Irena. Thinking quickly, Oliver grabs his trusty T-square and wields it as a cross warding them from the evil that has possessed Irena and forces her to flee. After the panther leaves, they call Dr. Judd to try to warn him to avoid Irena, but he hangs up on them when she shows up seeking help. Attracted to her, the doctor makes the fatal mistake of trying to kiss her. She transforms into a panther before his very eyes and kills him, although he does manage to wound her first. When Oliver and Alice arrive a few minutes later, she slips away, having regained her control and regained her human form as well, and goes to the zoo. There, she opens the panther’s cage and lets it kill her to end the terror once and for all.

With it’s understated themes of repressed sexual desire expressing itself as a tangible and deadly destructive spirit, “Cat People” was pretty well ahead of it’s time in 1942… Lil’ Miyuki never picked up on any of that stuff….. it was just a neat variation on the old werewolf movie for me back then, but now I can say I really admire the clever way the whole plot is woven around that idea without once getting gratuitous or scandalous about it. It’s also a film that understands the idea of keeping much of the scary stuff just out of sight…. to great effect. I can definitely say it uses every one of it’s 73 minute running time, making it an easy film to watch and yet feel like it was complete and unhurried. Neko gives it 4 “Meows” out of 5 and if you’ve somehow missed it in the deluge of junk on your 500 cable channels or never once picked it up at the video store, you really, really ought to. They honestly don’t make them like this anymore……

Oooohhh!! There’s even a nifty Trailer available for this one too…. and here it is!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

So…. this one is by Universal Pictures during the heyday of their classic horror films and features the star of the great “Thief of Bagdad” and “The Jungle Book”, Sabu….. C’mon…. you remember Sabu…. the  turbaned inspiration for lil’ Hadji in those nifty ol’ “Johnny Quest” cartoons of the 60′s….Add Jon Hall and the exotic Maria Montez and even Lon Chaney Jr., spend the big bucks for Technicolor and you must have the recipe for a winner of a film, right? Well, maybe you do…… but then again, maybe not….

This one is directed by Robert Siodmak, who did some excellent Film Noir pieces, along with some really craptacular stuff in his early career, but there is just so much even a great director can do with material of this nature. Luckily…. lil’ Miyuki was easily entertained by the exotic, the wild, and the implausible….. so “Cobra Woman” was right up her alley.

It all starts off with the beautiful Tollea (Maria Montez) poised to marry the love of her life, Ramu (Jon Hall). Before this can happen, she gets kidnapped by Hava, the mute servant of her grandmother, the queen of the Cobra people (Mary Nash). Seems she’s actually the rightful heir to the position of High Priestess…. but was hidden away as a child because she failed to be immune to the deadly poison of the King Cobra. In her absence, the title of High Priestess has been in the hands of her equally gorgeous twin sister Naja…. but Naja it seems, is completely evil…. crazy, megalomaniacally evil and has taken to torturing and killing those among her subjects who oppose her in her bid to rule Cobra Island with an iron fist.

Tollea’s grandmother wants her to depose her sister and her equally villainous confederate Martok (played by Edgar Barrier) and return the island to it’s peaceful idyllic lifestyle…. but that’s just not gonna happen without a fight… you just know that. Luckily Ramu and his little buddy Kado find out all about Tollea from her “father” MacDonald, the Scotsman who raised her ever since he was unlucky enough to get shipwrecked on mysterious Cobra Island all those years ago. Captured by the natives, he had been tortured and sentanced to death, but then awoke back on his ship far out to sea. How he managed to escape was unknown to him… even stranger was that he had baby Tollea with him. He had raised her since that day as his very own daughter despite her mysterious appearance in his life. (How that ended up creating a beautiful white girl raised by a Scotsman somewhere in India who speaks English with a thick Mexican accent completely slipped by lil’ Miyuki at the time, but does feel a bit weird to me watching it again after all these years…. but we’ll skip over that…. sometimes you just gotta let these things go… Hehehe!!)

Anyway…. Ramu and Kado get to Cobra Island and almost immediately get into trouble. Ramu gets captured by Naja’s guards and they plan to add him to the annual human sacrifice made to the island’s active volcano. Luckily,he escapes from prison while being interrogated by Martok, Naja’s priest and corrupt adviser. Naturally, in true pulp adventure fashion he has to run into Naja and then mistake her for his beloved Tollea (That ALWAYS happens when you use the “twins” plotline…. and I mean ALWAYS….) Of course, the evil Naja quickly falls in love with him. Yep…. had to happen, it’s a rule or something…

Eventually our thick headed hero figures out what the heck is going on and who is who but not before spilling the beans to Naja that her sister has been returned to the island by those plotting to remove her from power. Naja promises Ramu that she will let Tollea leave the island in safety if he agrees to stay behind with her and become her lover (Boooo!! Hisss!!). Kado, in the meantime, gets himself caught after he mistakenly frees the villainous Martok. Refusing to divulge the locations of Ramu and Tollea, Kado gets himself tortured by Martok until he is rescued by Hava and Coco, a chimpanzee. (See…. they had to squeeze a lovable monkey in here somewheres…. otherwise Sabu would get lonely….Hehehehe!!)

Then the old Queen tries to end the trouble by asking Naja to abdicate her crown in favor of her sister for the good of all the island’s people, but the wicked Naja refuses her and sets her men to hunting for Tollea, Ramu and Kado. Later that night, the queen is murdered by Martok when she refuses to reveal Tollea’s whereabouts to him instead of Naja, but manages to lay a terrible curse upon him before expiring. Whoops!! Guess he’s in for it…. The very next morning, Ramu and Kado get captured by Naja’s guards, so Tollea finally goes to the royal castle to confronts her wicked sister. She plays her trump card, and demands as the first born daughter of their mother, to take her rightful place as High Priestess. Not one to give up easily…. Naja then tries to kill her sister, but is killed herself when she falls out one of the castle’s windows while attempting to throw a spear.

The evil Naja finally dead, Tollea takes her place and orders a stop to the executions of Ramu and Kado. Realizing who she is, Martok demands that Tollea perform the priestess’s deadly cobra dance. Deadly Cobra Dance? That just doesn’t sound good….. Apparently the ancient island gods agree because then the Queen’s death curse strikes as the volcano erupts with all the fun and apocalyptic action you’d expect from such an event.During the eruption, the queen’s servant, Hava, takes revenge for her mistress and kills Martok. With the evil priest’s death, the volcanic eruption stops and the Cobra people are finally freed to return to their formerly peaceful existence. Ramu and Kado then leave the island, but Tollea stows away on their boat and begs Ramu to return to Cobra Island with her, stating, “Thy people shall be my people. Awwwwwww… soooo sweet! Love really does conquer all…..

Neko managed to watch this one on the recent French Region 2 PAL release and even though it’s an old film, the print still looks good after all these years…. there’s definitely something about Technicolor that gives one of the films a certain “look” that you just don’t get from modern color film. So…. is it a great film? Is it even a good one? Hmmmmm? With the almost pulp serial plotline and soap opera evil twins and the terrible acting and script, Neko would have to say that “Cobra Woman” is certainly never going to be regarded as a particularly great cinematic epic, but even still…. if you liked this one as a kid, and I really, really did, you’ll probably still dig it’s crazy plot even now. Neko gives it her 3 “Meows” out of 5 for being a neat little movie gem that somehow got stuck in my head and still gives me a chuckle even after all these years.

Trailers? Oh yeah… we got that covered. Enjoy!

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!

Vincent Price….. now there’s a classic horror movie star! With a lesser actor in the title role of Dr. Anton Phibes, “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” probably would have faded into obscurity as yet another re-tread of that famous old classic “Phantom of the Opera”. No doubt… the film does share many similarities to that famous old story…… disfigured anti-hero/villain….. beautiful tragic story of lost love… secret lair with creepy pipe organ…. and a macabre series of murders for reasons beyond the understanding of a sane and reasonable man. Yep, the inspiration is easy to see. Even as a popcorn crunching lil’ girl curled up on the couch in the dark, I recognized them. But Dr. Phibes…. he certainly had his very own style and panaché!!

Unlike the dour Phantom, the good Doctor Phibes hides out in a lavish 1920′s London estate, fitted out with the most gorgeous art-deco design and a lavishly bright, almost psychedelic, color scheme. His animatronic band “Dr Phibes’ Clockwork Wizards” accompany him when he plays… or when he and mysterious henchgirl, the beautiful Vulnavia (played to silent perfection by Virginia North) dance the night away in glorious abandon. Yep…. gotta love a villain with that much showmanship.

He’ll need all of it too. Seems the Doctor has one of those burning needs to get some serious revenge. Terrible, deadly, yet ever so intricate and almost “Wile E Coyote” type revenge on the 9 people connected to a botched surgical operation that cost the life of his beloved wife Victoria (played by Caroline Munro, in photos at least… as she never actually appears in the film…).

We start with trusty Inspector Trout of Scotland Yard…. he’s stuck with the weird case of a London Doctor killed in his bed by a swarm of Malaysian Fruit bats…. (although I think we’re supposed to believe they are some sort of voracious vampire bats or something….) Sound pretty out there? Well it’s no less strange than the other case they had the week before in which another surgeon was stung to death by a swarm of bees…. Bats, Bees…. what the heck is going on here?

Hehehehe…. seems that the good doctor isn’t just a world class organist and musical genius… he’s also a medical doctor, and a doctor of Theology as well. Handy for knowing all sorts of crazy stuff like the ancient Jewish Curses on the Egyptians… Why, that’ll do the trick!! It takes yet another way out death… this time by suffocating Frog mask if you’ll believe it, to convince Trout’s superiors that maybe he’s got more of a seriously dangerous serial killer on the loose than they first thought…. Duhhhh!!

Oh well…. none of this is going to slow down the good doctor who already has all his plans in place to get his victims right where he wants them. We get a veritable cornucopia of crazy killings with the police in dogged pursuit always one step behind him or Vulnavia trying hard to make sense of his actions. Little Miyuki wasn’t certain what the heck was going on most of the time back then, but then what other movie has people getting skewered by catapulted brass unicorns? Huh? Answer me that!!

Luckily… the police get some help in the form of Dr. Vesalius (played by Joseph Cotton), head of the team of doctors that originally operated on Phibes’s wife all those years ago, now on the presumed list of victims himself. He’s a smart cookie, and does his best “Nayland Smith” imitation in an effort to head off Dr. Phibes and save the surgical team before it’s too late. Naturally, despite his best efforts, it’s to no avail. We get a death by snow cone machine…. a man eaten by rats…. a creepy death by exsanguination and even a nifty one in which a woman is completely devoured by locusts.

By now, you are probably thinking that “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” is… well… just plain silly. You’d be right… the film is downright wacky, but that’s just the point of it’s charm. It takes an actor of Vincent Price’s style to make such a film work. I absolutely loved watching the campy action and was soooo taken by the mysterious Vulnavia and her gorgeous clothing. I remember wanting a big fuzzy Russian style hat and cloak just like hers for my very own. (And proceeded to pester my mother to buy me that outfit despite her somewhat reasonable objections that little girls didn’t wear clothes like that in the 1980′s) It’s probably the most striking memory I have of this film as a child, and it stands as the first time I remember being interested in costume play at all. (And yes…. in college I finally got that very same hat and cloak and gorgeous riding boots to wear for a Halloween bash…. so sometimes a little kitten’s dreams do come true….)

Eventually the fun comes to an end after Phibes unleashes his final curse… the “Death of the First Born” by kidnapping Dr. Vesalius’ son and placing him on an operating table in his lair above which a container full of acid is perilously poised to destroy the boy’s face. Using his considerable medical talents, Phibes has implanted a small key near the boy’s heart that will free him from this trap, but the catch is that Vesalius must perform the entire surgery within six minutes to get this key before the acid begins to rain down. The operation succeeds and in a struggle, the acid instead strikes Vulnavia, presumably killing her. But… what about the good doctor? Do the police nab him in the end and end his reign of terror? Nope…. always the perfectionist, he’s saved the final curse for himself. The dread “Curse of Darkness”…..

Unaware that Dr. Vesalius has saved his son,Phibes chooses to retreat to a stone sarcophagus hidden beneath his lair to lie at last beside the embalmed body of his beloved wife. In a final macabre gesture, he commits suicide by completely draining out his own blood and replacing it with embalming fluid. Then, to the swelling organ music, the coffin’s inlaid stone lid slides into place automatically, concealing them both in darkness, presumably for an eternity together. Eventually Inspector Trout and his men arrive only to discover that Phibes has vanished….. but they somehow know “Dr. Phibes Will Rise Again”…. But that’s another sequel for another time….

Mmmmm…. a good ending for a truly unique movie. They don’t make them like this anymore. Unfortunately the wry humor and over-the-top camp of “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” belongs to another era. A shame really, as lil’ Miyuki could watch this one and squeal in joy with every crazy murder, unlike the gory and excessive films of today. Thankfully, this one has been lovingly restored on DVD and can still be enjoyed today even though I’m a grown woman with only a glimmer of the youthful zeal of all those years ago. (OK… maybe more than a glimmer…. Hehehe!!)

Neko gives this one a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being a fun, silly, campy romp in which murder and musicals actually work, and where crazy mad scientists still waltz the night away. If you haven’t seen it, by all means do!

Trailer you ask? Don’t worry…. Neko’s got you covered. Enjoy!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

With a beginning right out of that other genre classic, “Night of the Triffids”, we start this one with a meteor shower…. the standard “Not To Be Missed Sight of the Century” type of display guaranteed to be viewed by the whole darn world… but our Heroine Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) has to miss it thanks to work. Stuck at the local theater playing usher, she’s just about guaranteed to miss the fireworks…… Her sister Sam (Kelli Maroney) isn’t having any better luck seeing the light show either….. She gets roped into spending the whole evening with her stepmother and her vapid friends. GHAAAHHH! Little do the girls know that it’s these very things that’ll save them from a terrible fate….

You see, at the peak of the amazing stellar show, the earth passes through the tail of the comet and everybody is reduced to a fine red dust…. well, most everybody anyways. The less lucky survivors are turned into Zombies…. yep, you just gotta hate that…. Seems if you weren’t sheltered in something made out of metal the radiation just cooked you but good…. A little shelter and you went Zombie…. Yes, yes, I know… it doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but lil’ Miyuki bought this instantly and so will you….. just roll with it.

The city is deserted…. the perfect playground for two 80′s teenagers to have some serious fun in, Zombies not withstanding. In time the two sisters find their way to a local radio station, where they discover truck driver Hector (Robert Beltran), a hunky fellow survivor who’s also running from all the zombies. Naturally they decide to hang together while looking for other fellow survivors.

But… Zombies aren’t the only problem our heroes have to contend with. Seems a group of creepy government scientists also survived and is hunting down other survivors to experiment on as they try desperately to create a cure for themselves. And naturally…. that means Regina, Sam, and Hector are in trouble.

Seems our brilliant scientist had their own deep bomb sheltery style research lab waaaay out in the desert to sit out the comet in but they forgot to close the air vents. D’ohhhh!! (Say what? Air vents? I thought it was radiation that got everybody? Ummm…. ahhhh…. errr… never mind. Little Miyuki didn’t care about this goofy plot element either. Less science and more Zombies!! Yay!!) Not to worry though… long before they turn into Zombies and then dissolve into dust they’ve got just enough time to whip up a cure by draining all the blood from those other survivors they catch and make a serum to take care of that problem. Played by Mary Woronov and Geoffrey Lewis, these guys are thoroughly creepy and you’ll just know they are the bad guys immediately….. but thankfully they’ve been snagging other survivors like the two adorable kids that our heroes will just fall in love with and want to save. Good thing Regina and Samantha’s dad was a Green Beret and taught the girls more stuff than GI Joe ought to know about automatic weapons and butt kicking….

Yes indeed, the plot for this one was simple… But that’s a definite plus here. It’s such an incredible slice of time… absolutely reeking of the 1980′s from the hairstyles and fashion to the music and pop culture references. I still can’t figure out why Eric Estrada wasn’t in this one…… Hehehehe!! If MTV and “Dawn of the Dead” had a drunken evening together, this would be their love child. Honest!

I liked this one a lot as a kid…. although the Zombie element was sorta tame, and I found it held up well. The all grown up Miyuki still likes it even today. It’s a fun lil’ film that truly captured it’s time on film and just the sort of thing kids my age loved. (Even if our parents didn’t…. )

Neko gives “Night of the Comet” a firm 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being a goofy lil’ movie that is just plain nostalgic fun from start to finish. If you haven’t seen it… you truly should. So grab a copy of the DVD today, you won’t be disappointed!

A Trailer? Naturally there’s a Trailer…. and your Favorite Catgirl Princess would never leave you hanging without one….. Enjoy!!

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…..

Hehehehe…. you have to love a film that was actually banned in Finland… twice!! Neko-chan just knows those are usually the best ones to rot your mind….

We start this one with expected parents, Frank and Lenore Davis (played by John Ryan and Sharon Farrell, respectively) expecting the immanent arrival of their second child. No time is wasted, and after a couple of character scenes establishing just how normal and loving a middle income typical american family they are, we go to the hospital as Lenore goes into labor. But not everything goes as planned. After a long and painful labor, Lenore gives birth to a freaky deformed cannibal baby thing that attacks and kills everybody in the delivery room except its mother. It then escapes the hospital by crawling away into the ventilation system, triggering a frantic police manhunt headed up by police Lt. Perkins (played by James Dixon). Our hero, Frank is at first traumatized by the whole situation, then both disgusted and ashamed of his freaky monster spawn as it continues to elude all police efforts to track it down.

Director Larry Cohen wastes no time by having the police do all the stupid denial about the situation at hand. Refreshingly, here we see the entire Los Angeles police force mobilized, motivated and armed to the teeth, ready to blow Frank junior to hell whenever they manage to catch his lil’ mutant butt. Ah…… Dirty Harry would be sooo proud!!

Much of the film revolves not around the killer baby at all, but instead focuses on the terrible effect of this on the previously stable relationships of the Davis among themselves, their friends and co-workers and with the incredible media circus surrounding the whole incident. Here we start to see the cracks in that family, barely hidden before now coming to the surface dramatically. Seems this wasn’t exactly a planned pregnancy…. Frank and Lenore were close to having it aborted till they changed thier minds. Their 11 year old son is sent to stay with a family friend, to keep him out of the media spotlight, but it ends up confusing him and making him worry.

As a relatively low budget effort, there isn’t a lot of explicit gore… for example, we never get to see the violent attack in the delivery room at all…. just see an intern stumble out of the room and die of his wounds. Later, a milkman is killed in the back of his truck…. there’s no view of it, just the creepy image of spilled milk running out of the back and down the street, slowly turning pink with mingled blood. That’s pretty much how the violence is handled here…. but it works well. Just imagining the lil’ freak ripping apart his victims was plenty effective… lil’ Miyuki was scared silly back then, and apparently the good people of Finland thought it was too gross to even think about. Maybe babies are scarier in Finland…..

There were a lot of talented people associated with this one too. Rick Baker of “American Werewolf in London” fame handles the special effects building the baby puppet itself and doing most of the other stuff needed for the few gory bits shown. The film’s score was done by the great Bernard Herrmann, and it’s listed as being some of his last work before he died. Although the budget here is small, each did their usual stellar job lending some real class to what could have been just another cheesy exploitation film that would otherwise slid into obscurity long ago.

I think the most fun in this one is the absolutely earnest way the police race around on the hunt for the monster. We’re talking the cream of the crop of police action from the seventies… no assault rifles or SWAT guys, no girly body armor…. just a bunch of guys who look just like the entire cast of “Adam 12″ armed with revolvers and shotguns tearing around in those retro black and white police cars, sirens blaring. When it seems that the freaky lil’ guy has some almost mystical ability to sense it’s “family”, the cops not only let Frank join them on the hunt for it, but they actually give him a gun…. don’t see that happen anymore….. Naturally we have to have a tense showdown in the sewers and a shootout in the LA river…. just to make everything perfect here. This is just soooo silly and yet serious at the same time. You don’t get that kind of fun anymore.

So…. to conclude, Neko gives “It’s Alive” a well deserved 4 “Meows” out of 5 for being the perfect film to ever serve as a testimony for birth control. The DVD for it is great too… with a Widescreen 1.85:1/16×9 screen format, an optional French audio track, and it has English, French, and Spanish subtitles….. There are Trailers on board for this film, and the two sequels it “spawned”… and surprisingly even a nice audio commentary track by director Larry Cohen.

Naturally there a cool Trailer available, and here it goes!!