(Sorry it's been a while since I posted here at DV, but recent computer gremlins have been drivin' this lil Catgirl crazy for the last month or so...... Thankfully that looks to be behind me now, so let's jump right in with somethin' new...)

This time out... a break from the Asian ghosts, monsters, and kung-fu antics that usually populate the trashy cinema I like to watch. With Halloween approaching, I lucked out and discovered this lil' gem, a double feature parody of old 40's serial adventure cliffhangers and 50's alien invasion films, "Monarch of the Moon" and "Destination:Mars!".

I ran into this one quite by accident, and was lucky enough to find a copy of the two disc collector's release of this one by BCI/ Image Entertainment.

So.... is it a nostalgia filled look at the films of old I saw on Saturday mornings? Let's take a look!

If you want to read all five reviews of Halloween Highway, you should go to the DV blog Avenue Kurtodrome. You'll find a link to the Avenue (and the other blogs by NekoNeko and Deeopey) on the left side of your screen. Here on DV's frontpage we'll only serve you a sample of that series. Tonight: the American-British horror movie Scream and Scream Again (1970).

Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in one movie? With the addition of Hammer girl Yutte Stensgaard (Lust for a Vampire, Zeta One), surely such a movie can’t be bad! That movie is Scream and Scream Again and unfortunately I couldn’t find myself enjoying it.

Scream and Scream Again was a co-production of AIP and Tigon, released in 1970 and directed by Gordon Hessler. Hessler is mainly known for three other movies: The Oblong Box, Cry of the Banshee and KISS meets the Phantom of the Park. All movies which rate him as a cult movie director, just not a director of good cult movies. All have a certain je ne sais quoi (note we’re trying to overcome our shortage of French words at the Avenue) which make them watchable but not exceptional.

Howdi, stranger. I saw you hiking and decided to pick you up. It gets fairly lonely here on this long road. So buckle up and tour with me for a full week of horror movies.

Our trip begins with Rest Stop, a straight to dvd movie released in 2006. The writer and director is one John Shiban, a name that shouldn't be unfamiliar to you if you followed the Chris Carter series. He wrote quite a few good X-Files episodes, one Harsh Realm episode and was one of the creative forces behind The Lone Gunmen show. Erm, maybe I should've known that last bit before I bought Rest Stop. All I knew was that he was a staff writer for The X-Files and that some of the better episodes were penned (and occasionally directed) by him. I learned something today: if part of someone's filmography is okay, it isn't bad to also look at the lesser successful part of the filmography. It shields you from extra disappointment.

The synopsis I found for it reads as follows: “A reckless young man, Eun-soo drives to his mother’s and has a car accident. When Eun-soo wakes up, he meets a mysterious girl and is led to her fairytale-like house in the middle of the forest. There, Eun-soo is trapped with the girl and her siblings who never age. Soon he learns all the adults who have visited or stayed in the house have met mysterious yet terrible ends. More shockingly, their cruel deaths are drawn in details and made into a fairytale book by the children. Scared Eun-soo tries to find the way out, but the house is secluded in the forest with no way out. And then, Eun-soo discovers a book which tells a brutal end of none other than himself!”

Ooooh! Scary sounding stuff… and the Koreans usually do really good horror movies that your Favorite Catgirl Princess likes, so let’s find out, shall we?