Ever wonder what a movie like “The Bad Seed” crossed with “The Belles of St Trinians” and seasoned with more than a heaping helping of “Psycho” just might be like if it were done with an all Russian cast? Well wonder no more…. From the land of Borsht and Vodka comes “Yulenka: Deadly Lessons”. Neko’s been aware of this one for some time now, but it’s taken me a while to hunt down some decent English subtitles…. until now.

The simple synopsis goes: “Professor Andriy Belov moves to a small town from the capital, and from his university to a woman’s high school, so that his wife can get the treatment and air she needs. After a short time a the school, he begins to notice strange things happening to his students. The students in the fifth class don’t play with dolls, they delight in making a toy of human lives.

One day he finds a note reading ‘Save Us,’ and he begins to take action. As he investigates, his life degenerates into a nightmare, and his only hope is a lone little girl, Yulenka….. or does something evil hide behind her innocent eyes?”

This is another of those odd little films for which your Favorite Catgirl ends up spending her odd hours searching high and low for subtitles when the original DVD lacks them. Sometimes I find them right away… other times it take a while… sometime it takes an excruciatingly looonnggg time. These ones required me to delve into some fairly odd places in the former Soviet Union, but my perseverance has finally paid off, and so now…. with some fairly accurate fan-translated subtitles in hand and a copy of the Region 5 DVD…. “Yulenka” is finally mine!!

Was it worth all my silly efforts (not to mention a fair amount of Bablefish translation of Cyrillic Russian)? Guess you’ll have to “Read On” to find out!!

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Day 6 and we’re back to Thailand (by way of Singapore) for the Thai Conspiacy Thriller “Burn” aka “คนไฟลุก” (Khon Fai Look). This is another of those recent Thai films I’ve had to do a bit of searching to find…. and this time I scored a success in Singapore with thier recent release… all English subtitled and ready for my viewing pleasure!!

Our synopsis is as follows: “A horrific incident takes place when a woman suddenly bursts into flames for no apparent reason. She becomes victim to the phenomenon known worldwide as Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC). Mona (played by Bongkot Kongmalai) is the victim’s daughter, who is forced to get involved with the case. She meets a nurse named Ploy (played by Archiraya Peeraphatkunchaya) whose mother also is killed by SHC. Don (played by Charad Na Songkhla) is a police investigator who gets suspicious of the cause of these incidents. With his investigator’s instinct and a devotion to justice, Don takes on the mysterious fire case to try to stop it from happening again. Will the truth behind the deadly fire be exposed as a suicide, murder, accident or the sacrifice to superstitious belief? The mystery must be solved before the dreadful fire burns another victim alive!”

This one isn’t actually a horror movie… more of a Scifi oriented Conspiracy Thriller…. but hey, it’s got people “Spontaneously Bursting into Fire”!! That sounds like it’s up this lil’ Catgirl’s alley… So will it be a nifty Police Procedural? A preachy warning about science and evil corporations run amok? Or just a really… really dumb excuse for a movie?

Hmmmm? Guess you’ll all just have to “Read On” and find out!!

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Time this lil’ Catgirl had herself a change of pace from all the straight up horror, fantasy, or scifi she usually indulges in. This time out I’m reviewing the new Korean suspense film “Truck” for you….. but don’t worry, I haven’t strayed tooo far from familiar territory, this one has a serial killer… a poor overwrought father forced to do the unimaginable to save his little daughter… violent gangsters… and a truck full of dead (and maybe not so dead) bodies aimlessly roaming the rainy highways of South Korea. Yep… I think it’ll do.

Our quick synopsis reads: “Cheol-min makes a living by working in the shipping business. He has a daughter suffering from a heart condition, and in need of surgery. To save his daughter, he urgently needs the tremendous amount of 60,000,000 won. To make this money, he gets involved in dangerous illegal gambling and barely saves his life by promising he will take care of body disposal for the gang. On his way to Gangwon-do where he intends to dump the bodies, he encounters a police van that had been in an accident, and ends up giving the police officer a ride. Although this situation is tense, events take a turn for the worse.”

Soooo, interesting enough for you you want to “Read On”? I thought so….. Hehehehe!!

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