Ahhhhh…… Tasty!! As you know, Neko likes these “Female Empowerment” films a whole lot, as they really help petite lil’ me channel my inner Tomboy…. (although I’ve probably scared away many a date with my choice of cinema goodness….)

All I really wanna know is where was I when they were casting for the part of Yuki? Another missed opportunity for your Favorite Catgirl Princess….

Sigh…. Oh well.

Anyway…. Neko knows that all you guys like this sort of silly action movie just as much as she does…. so c’mon….. It’s time to get “Bitch Slapped” all over again!!!

Hehehehe!! Now you all KNOW you gotta “Read On” to see all the video goodness!!

The synopsis for it reads as follows: “Mag-Ingat Ka Sa… Kulam” concerns Mira (Judy Ann Santos), a recent survivor of a car accident that has partly affected her memory, and her grip on reality as well. Mira tries to regain bits and pieces of her life with her husband Paul (Dennis Trillo) and blind daughter Sophie (Sharlene San Pedro). Meanwhile, Dave (TJ Trinidad), Mira’s business associate with whom she has an illicit affair, convinces Mira to leave her husband, as what she has planned to do before the car accident. But what drives Mira to further confusion are the strange things that start to occur in her home. As a malevolent presence threatens to destroy her marriage to Paul and her relationship with Sophie, Mira is forced to confront her past and discover her true history.”

Creepy, eh? Well let’s not just stand around here, let’s “Read On” shall we?

This one starts promisingly…. a late night car accident…. a young woman miraculously survives and walks away from the wreckage to collapse dramatically in the road. Then it’s off to the hospital where Mira awakens only to find her memory gone…… A solid “stock’ beginning to what will be a pretty much “by-the-numbers” horror film. Neko’s seen a lot of these…… a WHOLE lot of these….. but the lack of originality isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes a film comfortable and easy to watch and sometimes that’s what you want…. Not every movie needs to make your head hurt with a complicated plot or tricky twists and turns. Luckily you won’t find anything like that here.

We spend much of our time following the main character, Mira, as she finds out just what a terrible wife and mother she has been before….. something that seems almost improbable given her personality since her crash. She desperately wants to reconnect with her little blind daughter, Sophie, and win back the love of her husband who is unaware that she apparently had been planning to leave him for the arms of her business partner with whom she had been having an affair.

Dave, the business partner, starts out as a helpful, if obsessed, ally, with a desire to continue his relationship with Mira and more than a little information about Mira’s secret family history…. but later on he just gets to be obsessed….. crazy, old fashioned, dangerously obsessed. But more on that later…..

You see, things get all tangled up as Mira fumbles with her attempts to somehow make thinks right with Sophie and husband Paul. No matter what she does, she seems only to drive them all further apart…. and then there’s the ghost….. Yep doesn’t take long for the creepy stuff to start happening in this one. Soon she’s seeing the ghost out of the corner of her eye everywhere. Only little Sophie seems to encounter the spirit too…. a strange lady with nice perfume that wants to play hide and seek and otherwise lure lil’ Sophie away from her mom. Mira knows something terrible is going to happen….

Anyway…. Dave tries to win Mira by telling her all about the “deep dark family secret” that she trusted him with but not her husband. Seems that Mira’s mom was a whacked out psycho witch woman, despised by her neighbors, who tried to pass her evil powers along to Mira, and from whom Mira ran away from to start a new life. Even more shocking…. Mira has an identical twin sister, Maria, who stayed with crazy ol’ mom, and was finally driven nuts by her. Seems Mira had her committed to a sanitarium where she could be conveniently forgotten by Mira who wanted no reminders of the shameful elements of her past. Naturally, it appears that Maria killed herself…. on the very same night that Mira had her accident….. Yep. No coincidence there….. Right.

So by now we know the ghost is Maria, out for her eternal revenge from beyond the grave, right? Tsk, tsk, tsk…… if you have watched enough of these sorts of movies, like your Favorite Catgirl Princess, you know that there is absolutely only one reason you ever put identical twins in a movie plot. I’m guessing you gentle readers have probably figured it out by now, but here comes the prerequisite warning…..

***SPOILER ALERT!!!***

Yep, it’s a “Hayley Mills” style surprise plot twist, as we figure out that Maria, tired of living in the madhouse and looking like something out of Hansel and Gretel crossed with a bag lady, attempts to use the powers of Black Magic to switch bodies with her sister. Unfortunately, at the very critical moment of the spell, “Mira/Maria” has her car accident and “Maria/Mira” gets beaten to death by another patient at the sanitarium. So it’s been Maria suffering from amnesia all along, and it’s Mira’s ghost not trying to steal away Sophie but save her from her crazy aunt who she knows just has to come to her evil senses eventually….. Okie dokie then…. got it?

Luckily Paul still loves Mira, and finds the crucial video tape from her made on the very night of her accident telling him all he needs to know to defeat evil Maria and save himself and Sophie. Seems all he needs is some ashes…. (thank goodness “Mira/ Maria” got cremated)….and the magic voodoo dollie that Mira left for just such an eventuality. Here the film goes into CG overload for a climax of mystical voodoo goodness. Maria gets defeated….. and Mira’s ghost gets to wish her tearful family a proper goodbye before fading off to Heaven. Everything is right with the world….. or is it? Seems now that Sophie can see, thanks to a miracle operation, she still has her grandmother’s evil spell book…. “Mag-Ingat Ka Sa…. Kulam 2″ anyone?

This one is a simple film….. it reminds me a lot of Indonesian horror films, as there is no explicit violence, nudity or graphic horror here. The plot is simple and workmanlike with no real surprises, but ultimately it works on that level. The cast are all excellent, and fit their rolls well, so all in all, I found the experience enjoyable. The DVD itself is well done…. letterboxed format, all region NTSC with perfect English subtitles for the Tagalog audio track. While not as inexpensive as Indonesian or malay discs, it was well worth the 19$ US pricetag. Although you’ll get no surprises, Neko gives this one 3 “Meows” out of 5 with several contented “purrs” for the excellent disc itself. I could have done worse for an evening’s movie watchin’…. (and often times have… Hehehehe!!)

Naturally, there’s a Trailer for it…. and here it is!

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!

The synopsis for “Monarch” reads as follows:“This is the battle to end all battles and pulse-pounding World War II action and intergalactic intrigue! Defending freedom and democracy is the incredible Yellow Jacket, Army fighter pilot turned winged superhero, now leading America’s charge against Evil! He must battle the deliciously deadly DRAGON FLY and her JAPBOTS, outsmart an infamous Nazi scientist and destroy the demonic DOOMSDAY RAY! Then Yellow Jacket and his team make a startling discovery and must launch themselves into space where they confront the power-mad MONARCH OF THE MOON!”- Written by Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com}

Yep… that about sums it up alright! This one is a goofy hoot with subtly over-the-top caricatures of all the favorite stock roles in the genre. Want a truly ridiculous hero with stupid “super powers” and some cool retro gadgets? He’s in here. Want some stalwart companions that almost seem more like hindrances than helpers? Got them too…. Want stereotype villains that really act like villains without any shades of gray to spoil it? Hey… we’ve got Nazis!! Not enough villains? Throw in the Yellow Hordes of Tojo and Emperor Hirohito dutifully served by femme fatal Dragonfly and her Japbot minions and if that STILL isn’t enough, top it off with some Moonmen!! Ahhhh…. there we go. Now we’re cooking…..

This one is directed by Richard Lowry and was written by Lowry and his friend and collaborator Chris Patton and is an almost perfect homage to the old Republic serials of the 40’s. There are times that you’ll be thinking “Zombies From the Stratosphere” while viewing this one, but other elements creep in as well all gorgeously presented in a deft understated style that strays back and forth from parody to homage without making one too confused as to what their intentions were with this one. Others may have found this mix unsettling, but I feel that if the comedy had been played much more broadly then the charm of the genre would have been lost.

The film itself is presented as a series of 6 episodes, with the prerequisite “cliffhanger” endings just as one of those old serials would have been, all with impressive titles like “Pyramid of Despair” and “The Doomsday Ray” each ending with grisly death yet re filmed at the beginning of the next one to allow our heroes to escape at the last moment, sometimes very implausibly….

The cast has loads of fun with this script…. I just loved the story of Yellow Jacket’s secret origin. The exchange between Yellow Jacket and his young sidekick, Benny, is hilarious…. They just don’t write dialog like this anymore.

Benny: How did you get those swell superpowers, Mr. Yellow Jacket?
Yellow Jacket: Well, Tommy, two years ago when I chasing Krauts over Germany, I was shot down and hunted like a dog. When they caught me I was beaten, tortured and subjected to inhuman experiments. I was injected with various toxins and venoms. I had sick animals bite me. I couldn’t stop screaming for weeks. I guess the Nazis were using me as a guinea pig for a serum against…ah, who knows. The point is, it backfired on them. One day, when they were electrocuting me, something happened. I gained the uncanny ability to speak to the yellow jackets!

The sidekicks themselves are just perfect for the film. We have Sally… pretty USO “Girl Friday” to the gang, none too bright… or coordinated… but certainly perky. Her no-nonsense twin sister, Maxine…. (not hard to see who got all the brains in THAT family). Young Buffalo Scout Benny…. who looks a wee bit old for his age…Hmmmm? Then there’s gruff, rugged Army liaison Colonel Slate looking just like he stepped out of any number of old Black & White war movies of the period. Last but not least, drunken pilot Randy to fly them around and trusty genius Professor Montgomery Wright, to handle all the “sciencey” stuff that makes Yellow Jacket’s brain hurt…. hehehehe!!!

This one was fun, plain and simple. While there will be those who dismiss this offering as silly and derivative, I think that they wont be the real audience for it. It’s a “cult” film… made for a “cult” fan audience that’s all willing to overlook it’s few flaws for the the nostalgic ride though a cinema style that didn’t depend upon acting… or special digital effects…. or even coherent scriptwriting… they just want action and goofy implausible heroism that tastes soooo, soooo good and doesn’t leave any nasty doubt as to who the “good guys” are and who are the “bad guys”…. Refreshing…..

If this isn’t enough…. you get a second feature as well!! “Destination: Mars!” is a nifty lil’ black and white parody of those awful 50’s Sci-fi epics like “Earth Vs The Flying Saucers” crossed with “Devil Girl From Mars” and more than a sprinkling of “Plan Nine From Outer Space” for extra added flavor. If this alone doesn’t have you wanting to take a peek, well then….. you probably didn’t want to see “Monarch of the Moon” either…. Hehehehehe!!!

The synopsis I found reads: “Sexy Martian women control the fate of Earth, sending a robot army marching through suburbia! With the human race soon facing imminent extinction, a Doomsday inventor builds a devastating new weapon of mass destruction, a bungling police officer gets sucked into a spaceship and a young couple is rudely interrupted on an intimate picnic. Laser guns are blazing in the thrilling final showdown between Earth and the mysterious Red Planet! From Dark Horse Entertainment , Destination Mars! perfectly captures the B-movie flavor and fun of such 1950s sci-fi classics as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Forbidden Planet. Whether you’re a sci-fi fan or if you just love to laugh, you’ve got to see Destination Mars!”

This one was ok….. not anything special, but it does the job of entertaining you. I liked “Monarch” more, but then Neko-chan just digs those dumb ol’ serials…… Still, given that I got both films for the price of one, I just couldn’t go wrong giving it a look see…… and neither would any of you…. Neko gives Dark Horse Comics and Image Entertainment 4 big “Meows” out of 5 for doing a bang up job on this collection. But don’t just take MY word for it…. give a lil’ look-see at these videos for yourself!

First up, the Trailer for “Monarch of the Moon”, courtesy of Youtube…..

And the Trailer for “Destination: Mars!!”, enjoy!

This should finally end the drought of new material that has gripped the “Litterbox” throughout all of October and let me start posting again without wrestling with the java interface WordPress uses for management.

First up, the long awaited review of “Monarch of the Moon/ Destination: Mars!” that I had promised before my terrible virus attack/ computer crash….. Hopefully there are still some of you out there waiting for this…… I’m done work this afternoon, so let’s get to it….

Like as not, until I decide to go on that diet of Ramen noodles and Dr Pepper for about a month, I wont be buying a new computer, so I’ll have to struggle along with the prehistoric “loaner” that a friend lent me to keep Internet access.

In the meantime, it seems that my Imagehost for all my old reviews has lurched back into existence after a 2 month absence and with it all the posters and pics for my old reviews….. Now is the time for you all to check them out dear Readers… and I’ll try to make it up to you with at least some new material as it’s possible to do so in the next day or so.

“Legendary and irreplaceable Queen of horror films, actress Suzanna, saddens the nation with her passing.

Suzanna, aka Suzzanna/ Susanna Martha Frederika van Osch (she was of mixed German/ Dutch/ Javanese/ Manado blood), born in Bogor in 1942, known as the Queen of Horror (Ratu Horor) died of diabetes related complications on 16th October 2008 at her home in Magelang.

Suzanna began acting in the 1950’s in straight roles, but is eternally remembered for her horror and mystical films, beginning in the 1970’s, like “Bernapas Dalam Lumpur” (1970), “Beranak Dalam Kubur” (1971), “Pulau Cinta” (1978), “Ratu Buaya Putih” and “Ratu Ilmu Hitam” (1981).

She retired in the early 1990’s but made a couple of comebacks, in 2003 on the television serial “Selma dan Ular Siluman”, and most recently this year in the film “Hantu Ambulance”, in which she was visibly ailing.

She is survived by husband Clift Andre Natalia aka Clift Sangra and stepson Rama Yohanes, and daughter Kiki Maria, from her previous marriage to Dicky Suprapto.” - courtesy of www.indonesiamatters.com blog

At least she left us all a wonderful legacy of horror and fantasy film to enjoy, and if she’s lucky, she’ll live on forever through the magic of those films……

I’ve been too busy to go shopping for a new one yet…. but it’s on the top of my priorities list now…. A friend thinks he can wipe the old one’s disc and reformat it with a new OS but it’s a project for in the future. Almost feel like I should burn some incense for it…..

Anyhooo…. I’ve got a review in progress for “Monarch of the Moon”, and I’ve seen a couple of others that I’ll try to get in shape soon, but no firm promises as to when…. I feel I’ve disappointed people far to often to make one of those…..

This is turning out to be the crappiest Halloween month ever for this lil’ catgirl……

This time out, it’s the Indonesian fright fest “Tali Pocong Perawan” or “Dead Virgin’s String”. Yep.. another of those Indo ghost stories, this time by way of the Malay release by PMP Entertainment.

The synopsis reads as follows:“Nino is a weird guy with a strange personality. Unlike Nino, his brother Aldo is a more outgoing and popular guy. Unsurprisingly, it is easy for Aldo to be with any girl he likes, notably a pretty girl named Virnie. Nino who behaves awkwardly also has feelings for Virnie. Unbeknownst to Aldo and Virnie, Nino often peeps at them together inside the house in intimate moments. This continues until Nino finally decided to steal Virnie away from his own brother. While surfing through the internet, Nino discovers a legend about strings that are taken from female virgin corpses. This certain string has a power that can attract the heart of any women. The way the string must be obtained is by using hands to dig out the grave of a female virgin and then taking off the cotton string by using the mouth. All these feelings of love that Nino has for Virnie, blinds him into thinking not clearly. He finds a virgin corpse that has recently been buried. After getting this mysterious string, he mixes it into the water that is intended for Virnie to drink. Will Nino succeed in stealing Virnie with the string’s power?”

Hmmmm? A creepy Peeping Tom…. schoolgirl suicides…. evil Internet magic lessons…. and floaty shroud covered ghosts…. Yes indeed, Neko’s soooo gonna watch this one. But is it worth it? You’ll just have to “Read On” and find out, now won’t ya?

The supernatural threat in this one is the pocong. It’s an Indonesian/ Malaysian folklore ghost that always appears wrapped up in a dirty white burial shroud and haunts people mercilessly. The Indonesians love these kind of films… but Neko just ends up scratching her lil’ noggin. What’s so scary about the pocong anyway? He (or she… they always have a unisex bag/person/mummy thing going on so it’s really hard to tell one from another…) just seems to follow the victim around popping up at times to surprise them but never actually seem to do anything particularly dangerous…… It drives the Indonesian people absolutely batshit crazy with fear but this lil’ Catgirl can’t truly see what all the fuss is about. I mean…. the Kuntilanak twists your head off. The Sundel Bolong rips you to shreds. This guy seems…. well… kinda tame in comparison. If we have any Indonesian readers here at the ol’ Litterbox please chime in and let Neko in on the secret of it’s scary nature cause I’m just sorta clueless here.

Be that as it may….. this one starts out promisingly. Nino lives with his brother Aldo, all around nice and normal guy. Nino, however, is just one really creepy guy. The obsession he has with his brothers sweet girlfriend Virnie is downright crazy considering Virnie’s best friend has the biggest crush on this geek. Does he notice that? Nope….. Instead he just decides to possess Virnie by whatever means he can…. even Black Magic. Luckily there seems to be a folklore tradition about female corpses in Indonesia possessing just the right magic mojo within 40 days after death that means Nino can brew himself up a love philter to bewitch Virnie and make her love him. Sounds familiar… after all they do pretty much the same thing in Thailand and China in movies like this. If Nino had been paying attention, he’d know just how stupid an idea this truly is.

Anyway, thanks to the Internet, he finds a multi part tutorial on just what to do…. starting with a little grave robbing to steal the thong that ties a dead virgin’s shroud together. First… he blows it trying to break into a morgue looking for such a trinket. Luckily for him, just such a girl committed suicide just this week, hanging herself from the roof of the local college. Here I have to wonder about Nino’s reasoning powers… after all there is usually only one reason girls hang themselves in these sorts of movies…. and it usually isn’t because they are virgins…… That in itself would tend to make one think Nino’s sure fire plan is doomed, but he completely misses that thought.

After evading the two doofuses assigned to guard the grave during that crucial 40 day period, he gets the string…. in a particularly nasty way….. by untying it and removing it from the grave with only his teeth….. Eeeewwwhhh!! He brews up his potion, slips it in Virnie’s morning orange juice, but fails to get her to drink it. Yep, a lucky spill on her part saves her, although Nino doesn’t know that of course….

When Virnie fails to show any romantic interest in him he loses it. Here’s where he betrays his ignorance but good, by destroying the string, burning it to a crisp in a fit of frustrated anger, only to find out on the internet site that under no circumstances must you ever do that…. unless you want the ghost of the virgin to become a pocong and haunt you. What? You mean Nino didn’t read the entire Black Magic lesson on this before starting? What sort of idiot starts casting evil spells off the internet without reading the whole thing first? By now…. Neko just wants to see this creep dead. Thankfully, the pocong is on the job and it’s not long before Nino is seeing the ghost everywhere. Unfortunately, this is also where the story bogs down…..

The pocong is just… well… er….. sort of boring. The most active thing it manages to do to Nino is vomit a few worms on him. Not even cool flesh devouring “Corpse Worms from Hell” either… just plain ol’ worms. Somehow, Nino still goes insane…. eventually killing himself to escape the ghost. You’d think that would be the end of it. But you’d be wrong……

See, this is where Indonesian films sometimes lose it…. Seems that the pocong wants to haunt Aldo and Virnie too. They can’t figure out why…… they haven’t angered any spirits, or have they? Well…. in a totally stupid plot “tack on”, it seems that Aldo completely forgets about his last girlfriend…. the one he dumped for Virnie and that threw herself off the roof committing suicide. Somehow, despite the fact he claims to have been her best friend forever, he missed that little news flash. Nobody seems to have mentioned her funeral or anything…. some BFF…..

This lapse in common sense and continuity aside… the ghost starts haunting them too with the same lame tricks. It finally drives Aldo to attempt suicide to pay back the girl for the wrong done her. By now, Neko doesn’t really care…. and neither would you. Let’s just say it all gets wrapped up satisfactorily but without feeling logical.

Neko has to say this one was disappointing. Well filmed… well acted…. with some nice makeup and effects, but just too badly written to make simple sense. Neko can only give “Tali Pocong Perawan” a lame 2 “Meows” out of 5. Perhaphs if the pocong was scarier…. maybe I’d give it one more “Meow” but somehow I doubt it. The Malay disc by PMP entertainment is excellent… with good separate english subtitles, a letterbox format and a nice price of 6$ US or so direct from Malaysia. If you want to see this one, this is definitely the way to go… trust this girl.

Sigh…. Neko wants scary!! Where are you o’ Kuntilanak, when I need you!!

There a Trailer available, and as always, I leave it here for you to get a lil’ look see for yourself!

It didn’t just redirect me and hijack my homepages…. oh no… nothing THAT simple. It also blocked access to any useful tech sites I might need to find removal info…. as well as blocking Spybot and AVG from updating. It also just about completely destroyed my entire Registry, the Windows Installer, totally unregistered ALL File Types in the system and brought this lil’ Catgirl to tears before I finally managed to stop it’s destructive rampage.

So now I’m sitting in the ruins of my data… with minimal internet access and most programming completely unusable. If I can… I’m going to be spending most of tomorrow repairing the carnage. Then we’ll see if I can finally get back to normal. So if I’m missing for a couple days, at least you few loyal readers will know why……

Why… why… poor lil’ me?

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?

Those of you familiar with other Korean Fairy Tale/ horror crossovers like “The Red Shoes” and “Cinderella” know that these modern adaptions are never quite what you expect… being only loosely related to the stories they retell. Such is the case here. The cute kids aren’t exactly what you’d expect… and most certainly aren’t the ones in the most danger throughout the film. That position goes to Eun-soo (played by Chun Jeong-myoung), who has an unfortunate car accident way out in the middle of nowhere while arguing on the phone with his estranged girlfriend. Hurt, groggy, and confused he wanders off the road and into the forest where he gets found by a young girl, Yeong-hi (played by Sim Eun-kyung), right out of “Little Red Riding Hood”. She takes him to a strangely beautiful house nestled deep within the wood, where her seemingly loving family warmly receives him.

There is something creepy and curious about this house, which used to be an orphanage, the “Happy Children’s Home”, it’s just too sugary and sweet and…. “gingerbready” to be real. But does Eun-soo figure that out? Naaahhh….

It’s a Victorian/ 50’s style mishmash crammed full of toys, porcelain dolls, enough fancy cakes and other sweets to induce diabetic comas, and weird bunny-print wallpapers….. (and Neko never did figure out the constant bunny related imagery scattered throughout the film….) all displayed in gorgeously saturated colors that hide eerie shadows just around the edges. The kids themselves are just not right…. The eldest, Man-seok, has a dangerous temper totally out of place for a child, while his sister Yeong-hi sleepwalks and youngest sister Jeong-sun repeatedly tortures and destroys her dolls. The parents are charming in a “Leave It To Beaver” way and just cater to the kids so much that it just tells you that beneath their seemingly happy facade they are hiding something…… something disturbing and wrong. To make matters worse, the parents disappear almost as soon as Eun-soo arrives, leaving a cryptic note asking him, a total stranger, to look after the kids until their return… yeah… right.. Not gonna happen, you just know THAT.

He tries to leave. But it’s just futile. The forest is deep and dark….. with a labyrinthine quality that defies his every attempt at escape…. The kids tell him it’s no big deal. They beg him to stay with them, to be their “uncle”…. and to stop worrying about his girlfriend and the baby she’s having. Then it begins to snow…. trapping him but good.

Another couple happen along…. also the victims of an “unfortunate car accident”. The kids start to work on them as well…. convincing Eun-soo that the missing parents might not even have been the kid’s parents at all. Worse…. the “wife” is scheming and larcenous and the man acts more like a sociopath than the Pastor he professes to be. Now poor Eun-soo has to balance the problems of escaping from the kids with his desire to protect them from these two unwholesome characters.

By now… you’ve probably figured out we’re firmly in that old “Twilight Zone” episode where Billy Mumy had those creepy uber-powerful psychic powers going on and built himself the “perfect” family. Yep…. that’s pretty much where we’re going all right, but “Hansel and Gretel” does go there with a couple of nice twists…. and more than a few scares. So Neko isn’t really put off by the plot similarities….

There are some truly crazy elements here…. like the endless maze that is the attic, bigger inside than the whole entire house and perfect for getting so lost in that even the kids can’t find you. A secret door to nowhere out in those dark, dark woods holding every secret that ever happened here at the “Happy Children’s Home”…. A flashback to the 1950’s featuring a character scarier than any child eating witch….. a psychopathic child molester running the “Orphanage from Hell” itself….. Oh!! And even an honest to goodness visit from Santa Claus. Yep…. I didn’t see THAT one coming…..

Well…. if you want to know how it comes out, you are going to have to just watch the movie yourself, Neko’s not gonna spoil it for you. The good news is that this one is really, really worth the time and effort. Neko gives “Hansel and Gretel” a firm 4 “Meows” out of 5 with quite a few contented purrs for doing yet another excellent job telling a creepy, memorable story in a very artistic and polished fashion. I liked it a lot, and wished I’d managed to show this one for “Movie Nite” instead of “The Deserted Inn”……

The Korean disc is excellent in it’s production values, if a tad pricey, with perfect subtitles and plenty of extras to ooooh and ahhh over. It’s Region 3, NTSC and available now in a two disc special edition. The Singapore release is available too… but beware, I’ve read conflicting details on it at different sites that make it sound as if the english subs might or might not be included.

And, yes, naturally there’s a Trailer… silly!