The synopsis for it reads: “At an exclusive university dead bodies are turning up with alarming frequency, all believed to be victims of the notorious Campus Killer. The police are stumped as to who the killer might be and, of course, nobody suspects innocent looking med student Barbara. A superficial fashion queen whose childhood dream was to grow up to become the living embodiment of her favorite doll, Cindy Superstar, all Barbara needs now is to find herself a real-life equivalent of Cindy’s plastic partner, Glenn. But behind the mask of her perfectly applied make-up is a deadly cross between Paris Hilton and American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, a female serial killer for whom ruthlessly slaughtering people isn’t so much a question of why as one of why not?

Barbara’s grisly trail of murder fortuitously leads her into the arms of Tomas, a fellow student assigned to the campus morgue who is experimenting with a machine designed to translate thoughts and brainwaves into images. What he later discovers, though, is that with a little tinkering (and the addition of a healthy dose of Ecstasy to his subjects) the machine is able to reanimate the dead. Not surprisingly, this proves to be bad news for Barbara as Tomas begins reviving the Campus Killer’s victims in the hope that at least one of them will be able to identify their murderer. Of course, what he hadn’t bargained for was their insatiable hunger for both revenge and for human flesh. Soon, Tomas finds himself the innocent bystander in a bloody and explosive serial killer versus zombies showdown.”

Hmmm… now this one certainly sounds downright goofy. (And you know how Neko sooo likes goofy!!) So forgoing my usual popcorn and wine coolers, we opt for a movie night of spicy nachos and sangria, hoping the movie fairies will bless Carolyn and I with a delightfully grisly laugh fest to remember!! Think you might just like it too? Then you better “Read On” and find out more!

This one starts out with a scene right out of “Scream”… a girl’s locker room, plenty of sexy young co-eds with all the gratuitous nudity one needs in an exploitation film to set just the right ambiance. Oh, yes…. and a creepy masked killer with a big ol’ machete who stalks poor lone Barbara after all the other girls are off to class… but just who here is the predator and who is the prey? We find out pretty quickly who is who… as does the poor doofus who thought dressing up as a masked killer was a good way to peep on naked girls.

Barbara (played to psycho perfection by Macarena Gómez) is the sexy psychotic anti-heroine of director Miguel Martí’s black comedy and quite effortlessly steals every scene in “Sexy Killer” with her perky Barbie doll approach to sociopathy. She’s equal parts sexy co-ed and serial killer with the arsenal of “Kill Bill” , and  the violent combat skills of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”… minus, of course, any annoying moral conscience and regard for the sanctity of human life. More fun… the film allows Barbara to be an amoral “Ferris Bueller” constantly chatting with the audience about the things in her life that make her tick. Mind you… those are some pretty sick things… but hey… sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to make all her dreams come true. So… so wrong…. but you end up actually liking this character and it isn’t long before you start hoping she’ll find true love and happiness…. even if it ends up killing everybody else in the film.

And really…. Barbara’s goals are quite simple…. she just wants the life of Barbie doll clone Cindy Superstar. (I guess Mattel wasn’t really keen on associating with this particular young woman’s world view… go figure.. Hehehehe!!) She wants the colorful dream house, the 2.5 kids, the dog and a wonderful, successful, plastic surgeon husband like Glenn who’ll treat her like the Princess she knows herself to be. So what’s so wrong with that? If only everybody would just stop getting in her way…..

It’s just that our perky lil’ killer can’t seem to resist killing all those people that make her life difficult. It doesn’t help that she also finds the bloody slaughter immensely fun and just soooo, soooo sexy and arousing. She just needs to find the right guy who understands all that… a “kindred spirit” to make all her dreams come true. Barbara’s grisly trail of bloody mayhem fortuitously ends up bringing her and Tomas, a fellow student assigned to the campus morgue to help in the investigation of the “Campus Killer”, together and for each of them it’s both love (and lust…) at first sight.

Tomas and his best bud Alex are working with the police to help track down the killer, thanks to the official coroner having been killed accidentally by Barbara during one of her earlier murders. They’re both smart and have also been experimenting with a machine designed to translate thoughts and brainwaves into images. Just the sort of thing to help therapists see and understand the thoughts of the mentally ill…. Not only that… but it can also be used to see the thoughts of the recently dead, reading the fading electrical activity of their brains. It doesn’t take long before they figure out it could be used to give them a view of the mysterious killer… if only they could get a fresh enough body. And even though this invention could possibly end the Campus Killer’s murderous spree, it might just put an end to Tomas’ chances with Barbara. If only he knew…..

But… despite the fact that Barbara freely admits to being the killer numerous times… and despite a very funny dinner sequence in which she murders a woman for a sexy red dress she wants while on a date with him, poor Tomas never figures it out. Worse, Barbara mistakenly believes he’s a soulless killer too… responsible for the death of the coroner he replaced to move up the ranks and steal his job as well as the guy who lends him his tuxedo to help him score with her. Eventually…. Tomas’ friend Alex gets in her way… and so it’s “Bye-Bye Alex”, gutted and hung up to bleed out in the morgue like a side of beef. Then the film hangs a left…..

What’s more fun that a movie about a cute, sexy serial killer? How about a movie where that serial killer’s victims return from the dead as flesh eating zombies to seek vengeance against her for their murders? Oh yeah…. seems that Alex and Tomas’ brain machine has a side effect you see… it doesn’t just let you see the thoughts of the recently deceased, it also reanimates them…. Yep. They start out being pretty normal… if a wee bit grisly looking… but soon decay sets in and they quickly degenerate into the fun loving, instinct driven, flesh-eaters we all know and love. Unfortunately… by the time Tomas figures this out he’s already reanimated the 30 odd victims Barbara has already put in the morgue… whoops!!

Now the film turns into a kinetic zombie fest… Tomas rushes to the campus memorial party to save Barbara and the others from the vengeance of the living dead, only to finally figure out it’s Barbara they are after… that she really is the killer after all… She figures out that Tomas isn’t the stone cold killer she thought he was… But it’s too late, they can’t deny the love that binds them together and so they go all “Resident Evil” on their opponents zombie butts, blowing up the party and killing all the undead fiends and students alike in an over the top ending.

Does this mean that our Hero and Heroine will live all happily ever after and walk off into the moonlight? Will they get the fantasy Barbara has always wanted for her very own? Well… it’s best to remember the old parable of the Scorpion and the Frog….. (as Barbara reminds us at the end of this one…)… and know that a scorpion will always be a scorpion just because that’s what it truly is.

Neko really… really… liked this one… (and you know “slasher” films really aren’t usually my “thing”…) It’s smart, and funny, yet viciously gruesome all at the same time with great zest and style that gives it a hallucinogenic bliss all it’s own. The director Miguel Martí’ and writer Paco Cabezas obviously love the horror genre and the film is peppered with great moments inspired by all those films we’ve all seen, from Wes Craven’s “Scream”, to George R. Romero’s zombie epics, “Friday the 13th”, and “The Silence of the Lambs”, even managing to throw in lots of neat lil’ references to films from other genres including “Titanic” and “Taxi Driver” sure to give movie buffs years of fun catching them all. The cinematography, effects, and editing are sharp and the acting good… particularly Macarena Gomez, who absolutely nails the crucial role of Barbara, a character that could have come across as far less appealing and fun in the hands of less talented actress.

All in all… I can most definitely recommend this one to people looking for something… well… just a wee bit different… from your average horror move. Your Favorite Catgirl Princess gives it 4 “Meows” out of 5 with more than a few contented purrs for the lil’ touches that make me know I’ll be watching it again and again in the years to come. If you like your scares mixed with more than a few laughs or if you ever wondered what “Legally Blonde” meets “Halloween” just might be like… then you’ll probably want to see it too.

The Region 2 PAL formatted DVD is certainly a spartan one… with only the movie itself and a couple of Trailers…. presented 16:9 widescreen in Spanish with excellent English subtitles. It’s sufficient I suppose, but I would have really liked a “Making of Featurette” to watch as well… The nicest thing is probably the price… only 7$ or so US, so you can’t go wrong if you hunt it down.

As always… there’s a Trailer and here it is to whet your appetites!

Our quick synopsis tell us: “Typical Japanese schoolgirl Rika becomes a full-fledged zombie fighter when she travels to the countryside for a visit with her grandfather, and discovers his village has been overrun with the living dead. Rika almost makes it to her grandfather’s house in one piece, but a nasty run in with some particularly hungry flesh-eaters leaves her half the girl she used to be. Fortunately for Rika, Grandpa Ryuhei is a talented surgeon. In the process of patching his granddaughter up, Ryuhei goes one step further and turns Rika into the ultimate zombie fighting machine. But Rika’s ordeal isn’t over just yet, because Zombie Boss Glorian is still out there and thirsting for vengeance. Perhaps with a little help from her friends Takashi and Yuji, Rika will finally lay waste to the lowest of the low, and somehow find the time to keep up her good grades.”

I almost gave this one a pass…. as it was Part 3 of the same “Direct to DVD” series that also gave us the absolutely abysmal piece of craptaculous soft porn nonsense “Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead” which you might remember I reviewed here at the Litterbox some time ago. That one left such a terrible impression on me that only my overwhelming need to watch practically every bad Zombie movie ever made gave me the strength to take a chance on this one.

So….. Let’s see if that was a big mistake or not…. shall we?

Your Favorite Catgirl’s known about “Rika” for a long time…. even before I knew of it’s connection to that OTHER film…. (Which we’ll all agree… never, never…. ever, to mention again….Hehehehe!!) and back then the preliminary buzz on it looked fairly good. Given that bit of memory swirling about my lil’ noggin’ I took the chance and picked up a copy of Switchblade Pictures Region 1 DVD release just this last week. Pairing it with another Korean film with similar theme (Which I’ll also be reviewing soon…..Tease, tease!!) , I settled in to make an evening of it with Carolyn and Goober all snuggled with me on the couch.

We start off with regular schoolgirl Rika (played by Risa Kudo) on her way to school one day with her best friend Nami. On a whim, they decide to skip classes and sneak off to take the train and visit Rika’s grandfather Ryuhei in the little mountain village where he now lives. Rika loves her grandpa dearly and hasn’t seen him in quite some time for reasons that are unknown… (and never really explained..). Arriving in the town, the story wastes no time in having them attacked by a horde of zombified villagers only to be saved at the last moment by a slick young man who agrees to take them to Rika’s grandfather’s house so they can rescue him from this new menace.

Once there, Rika is surprised to find her grandfather married to a much younger woman Sayaka, supposedly the sister of the guy who saved them at the train station…. but somehow that seems fishy. Rika’s Grandfather appears to have has gone senile and doesn’t recognize his favorite granddaughter at all!! Once a brilliant surgeon and also an instructor in swordsmanship, now he’s been reduced to a helpless invalid under the care of his suspicious “wife” and three goofy maids (….. even an honest to goodness Catgirl Maid!). It doesn’t take a genius to see she’s really an evil “black widow”, whose “brother” is actually her lover, and who’s slowly poisoning grandpa to inherit all his money….. but things start happening too fast for Rika to really have the chance to figure that out.

There’s the prerequisite risque bits sprinkled in here…. Sayaka going into slut mode out on the veranda with her “brother”, and then with three maids having a wierd moment in which they argue about which of them is the most “busty”…. but these moments are quickly over as the house gets surrounded by the living dead who batter their way inside…. nearly overwhelming our little group, even biting poor Rika savagely on the arm. All is almost lost, but grandpa has a moment of clarity and swings into action, first going all “Shogun Assassin” on their zombie butts…. then severing Rika’s wounded arm at the shoulder to prevent her being turned into one of the walking dead. It’s into surgeon mode then, and he patches her up and saves her from bleeding to death before dropping back into his catatonic state.

Plenty of Zombies already…. not amazing ones mind you, most are simply really greenish skinned people all bloody and wearing ragged clothing, but at least we got zombies…. you really can’t expect great makeup or effects in such a low budget effort shot to go direct to video sales. That’s pretty much the weakest part of “Rika”, but it stands head and shoulders above that “other” film we won’t mention…..

Anyway…. at this point a couple of new faces join our little band of human survivors… three goofy locals and… of all crazy things, a zombie scientist who has sworn off eating people to help stem the tide of the undead menace. The big problem…. each one has a different story about what’s ultimately going on. The Zombie doc tells everyone this is the result of a failed government conspiracy to develop a euthanasia drug to combat Japan’s growing population of elderly citizens using up heath care resources. Not only that… there’s a “Boss Zombie” named Glorian who needs to be killed so that everything will mystically “set itself right”…. Say What?? I guess zombies aren’t the sharpest cookies in the box…. must be the brain that rots first.

Our other three have a story about a secret US government program to combat Zombies that have always been around since…. like.. forever…. the only reason we aren’t all dead is because of their ceaseless efforts to stamp out all outbreaks just as they occur. They send in one guy… the “Master Zombie Hunter #1″ who usually just chops them all up with his magic sword…. unfortunately this time, he died…. so it’s time for Plan B now. In 10 hours they just nuke the place where the Zombie Hunter died and get rid of the problem that way. No wonder everybody around the world seems to just hate the US….. Sigh….

Regardless of who’s right, eventually they get the arm that was chopped off this Zombie Hunter and Grandpa the genius surgeon transplants it onto Rika, giving her this freakish big ol’ Guy arm that can actually use the magic sword….. This is somehow simultaneously both the dumbest and coolest idea ever, and it’s a hoot watching our heroine roam about with the fake looking arm for the rest of the film kicking zombie butt all over the place. For this silly idea alone, I give “Rika” a particularly satisfying purr for originality…..

As they try to figure out what’s really going on, the all meet horribly bloody deaths, one by one, the only consolation being that if Zombie doc is right, when Rika kills Glorian everything will be just fine, as if none of the horrible stuff ever happened. You just know that she’s gonna get to do just that…. it’s that kind of movie… and when she does, we get to see her battle a monster oni/ zombie thingee right out of an episode of “Power Rangers”…. Heck, I almost expected “The Masked Girl” to show up and make a cameo.

So…. will Rika destroy Glorian? Will everything go back to normal? With the naughty Americans nuke the little village and kill everybody first? Well…. Neko’s not going to spoil it for you… but lets just say, there really isn’t any question that it’s all gonna happen and more……

So how does “Rika” stack up in the end? Well, it’s definitely not gonna win any awards for film making, acting, makeup, effects, screenplay or… well… anything actually. But…. it was made with a true sense of fun by people who seem to love the goofy zombie genre enough to have some desire to do a film you can enjoy watching just for the sheer silliness of it all. So I guess Japanese Schoolgirls can continue to hold their heads up high and kill as many more monsters in the future as they want. It’s won a firm 3 “Meows” out of 5 from me for it’s quirkiness alone….. although it had poor Carolyn rolling her eyes at a couple of moments. (I think I owe her an evening of romance movies in english for THIS one….. Yep.) The DVD by Switchblade Pictures is spartan…. with only subtitles and a couple of Trailers on board, but it does the job adequately.

Trailer you ask? Well, naturally we’ve got a Trailer!! All the Zombie Hunting fun you could want…. just for you o’ Gentle Readers!!

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!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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