So… have any of my Gentle Visitors ever wondered what “Raiders” would be like if you mixed it up with a little vintage Eurosex naughtiness ala “Barbarella”? No? Well, what kind of globe-trotting Catgirl adventuress would I be if I didn’t dig deep in the DVD vault for something a little spicy… a little racy… a wee bit risqué to really show you just how much “Raiders” has influenced films from all around the world. This time out, the 1984 French film “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak” based on… of all things… an odd little bondage/fetish cartoon series. Yep, I kid you not. ;)

Our synopsis goes like this: “Sweet naive virginal Gwendoline leaves her convent school and arrives in China in a box on a quest to find the fate of her lost father who was last seen searching for a rare butterfly in the legendary “Land of the Yik Yak”. Saved from white slavers and a fate worse than death by her loyal maidservant and a devil-may-care adventurer, soon she is knee-deep in trouble. Along the way she and her companions must face pirates, scoundrels, vicious native tribesmen, poisonous desert windstorms, and a lost race of Amazon warriors guarding a volcanic mountain full of diamonds.”

Hmmmm? Yes… I know… Sounds a bit naughty… (Just the sort of film to tease my sweet Carolyn… and convince her I really am a nutty lil’ dweeb for sure. ;) ) but it also sounds really campy and way fun too. So for a bit of jungle adventure fun the way only the French could manage it, let’s all kick back and enjoy the fun together shall we? ;)

At first glance… this might seem an odd choice of film for our March Movie Review Festival, no doubt about it. A French soft porn sex farce based on a vintage bondage fetish comic series from Canada? Hey… why not? I admit it… I’m a fairly open-minded lady who’s not adverse to a little risqué action in my films. Certainly this one looked all light and fluffy and a whole lot nicer than some of the slasher films out there. Mind you… when Carolyn saw the DVD cover on Movie Nite she did raise an eyebrow and give me her best disbelieving smirk of amusement. But she’s a good sport… (and probably figured if it was toooo darn bad, we could probably find some way to amuse ourselves instead… ;) ) so with our popcorn and wine coolers ready we popped it in our player and cuddled in to watch.

However… surprisingly this one actually gets off to a promising start. We begin on a crowded dock somewhere in the exotic Far East, bustling and busy as ships unload their cargoes and various locals, both honest and not so honest, await to receive them. It’s sooooo obviously a set built completely in a huge warehouse sound stage, but while that’s easily apparent, it actually give the whole thing that look of an old vintage adventure film and… at least for me brought back some nice memories of oodles similar scenes from all the old B&W Republic serials I watched as a girl. Without too much more than a few panning shots of the frantic action going on, we close in on a trio of scurvy scoundrels sneaking through the offloaded crates looking for valuable stuff to get their sticky fingers on. What do they find? Why a honking big old crate, fresh off a ship from Paris. Ooo-la-la!! Jackpot! With visions of valuable imported wine, delicate french silk, and all the other riches of Europe in their heads they crack it open only to find… not the choice loot they expected but instead… a girl. Not just any girl, but our heroine, the deliciously pretty Gwendoline (played by a young Tawny Kitaen in her first big screen role) who’s ridiculously shipped herself to this exotic locale in a box just like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Sure it’s goofy… but it sets that delightfully silly tone that let me know at least this one was gonna be a fun little romp that didn’t take itself too darn seriously.

So… what do three villanous scoundrels do with a lovely doe-eyed French girl? Why promptly knock her unconscious and haul her off to sell her to a brothel, naturally. Luckily for poor Gwendoline, her spunky and devoted maid servant Beth (played by the exotically named Zabou Breitman) is soon in hot pursuit of the bad guys only to end up getting grabbed as well. Yep… it’s just that kind of story you see, “Pretty damsels in distress constantly getting kidnapped and tied up”… I mean, it was inspired by a bondage cartoon after all, silly… ;)

There’s the standard bit where our scoundrels bargain for the girls with the slimy brothel keeper, and then… right as we get to the first bodice ripping nudity threatening that proverbial “Fate worse than Death”, the window crashes in and a big honking grappling hook snags the boss by the throat as our film’s obvious hero makes his entrance in proper style. He’s Willard (played by Brent Huff)… some sort of devil-may-care sailor type here to squeeze some money out of the brothel keeper for some unsavory job he did in the past. He’s not really interested in saving Gwendoline and Beth… just in getting his money… but his arrival and subsequent thrashing of the brothel keeper’s minions does give them the chance to make their escape. Strange given Gwendoline’s almost instinctive desire for him at first glance. Guess our boy Willard never saw that Whitesnake video… ;)

There’s that whole initial bit where Willard tries his darndest to get rid of these annoying ladies and the silly quest to find the butterfly once they learn of her father’s death. Really odd given that our boy Willard seems to consider himself quite the lady’s man and here he’s got a really attractive naive lil’ virgin just about squirming with desire to jump his bones. Like he’s in absolutely no way interested in her at all… Yeah, right.

Anyhoo… it isn’t long before our girl manages to trick and persuade our hero to join her quest after ruining some opium deal he had going on with some fairly scurvy pirates. Once she gains the upper hand, it’s into those ever so stylish khaki explorer clothes and off for the steamy reaches of the interior. Where exactly? Why now there’s a question…. supposedly the city we started in was somewhere in China, but just up river there’s this steaming jungle full of vicious blowgun wielding natives called the Kiops. Those guys seem to look a lot like South American tribesmen crossed with Indonesian headhunters. Beyond their lands you then abruptly transition into a trackless desert lies haunted by a deadly poisonous sandstorm surrounding the volcanic mountains of the lands of the Yik Yak. Anybody know where that might be? I sure don’t… talk about “Terra Incognito”. This part of the movie resembles the standard jungle adventure pretty darn well, including a capture by the natives and that neat bit where they carry you to their village tied to poles like venison. Classic….

All along the way, we get those never too subtle French soft porn moments you might remember from “Barbarella”. You know… lame excuses for Gwen and Beth to get naked at the drop of a hat… lots of sex talk, including this weird bit where Willard and Gwen are tied up and he still manages to have “phone sex” with her to calm her down… all without a phone. :)

But… once we get into that final 45 minutes of the story or so, all subtlety goes right out the window. After climbing down into a chasm that Gwendoline says she saw in a dream we are introduced to the Yik Yak themselves, fierce warrior amazon women ruling over one of those super scientific “lost empires” from out of “Flash Gordon”. You know the ones… where everything is all stark white and impeccably clean, all art deco and the like, where our warrior girls all wear these skimpy black leather bikini armor bondage outfits. There’s oodles of bound women slaves everywhere… tied to the walls… trapped in cages… hanging upside down over pools… sliding rather suggestively in and out of crazy metal chimneys and the like. Trippy… really trippy.

Naturally the evil queen (played by Bernadette Lafont)  of these deadly ladies was expecting them, and after trapping them all, decides that Willard will be the victory prize in an amazon mating combat ritual. Gwendoline? Well, she’s too spunky.. to independently minded to make a good subject so she’s just gonna have to die. Along with loyal Beth of course. But just as you might expect, our girl manages to pluck up her courage and escape… find herself one of those leather bikinis… save Beth… and then fight to the death in disguise to save our hero. Easy, eh?

That will tick off the queen of course, but by the time we reach the story’s climax at the erotic amazon mating ritual… both figuratively and literally… D’Arcy, the captive French engineer from her father’s expedition (played by Jean Rougerie) who’s been enslaved by the queen to run her diamond mining operation in the volcano will rig the volcano to blow and bury the lost city forever. Will Gwen, Beth and Willard make it out alive? Will Willard admit his passions for Gwen? Will they ever find that darn butterfly they’ve been searching for throughout the entire movie? Yes, yes, yes… naturally they do. It’s that sort of movie… ;)

So what’s the verdict? Well…. this one turned out to be a lot more tame than I actually expected, with more simple nudity than any really overt sexuality. The “fetishy” bondage stuff might have been pretty risqué by 80’s standards, but wasn’t even as explicit as some of the stuff you get on late night pay cable here in the states. For me, the earlier part of the film played better than the latter half. As a simple “Perils of Pauline” imitation, it wasn’t half bad, although the chemistry between Miss Kitaen and Brent Huff was fairly tepid at best. My favorite character has to be Zabou’s Beth… a brave spunky character with a delightful scene in which she simply bitches out the Kiop tribesmen and slaps their leader silly, so stunning them that our trio almost manages an escape. Hilarious…

We did have quite a bit of fun watching this… laughing quite a bit at some parts, groaning at others, and for the most part giggling a whole lot more than the filmmakers probably intended. It earns a respectable 3 “Meows” out of 5, having just enough campy silly notions combined with a sly wink and naughty plot that seems to have only improved now that our film is sliding into vintage age.

We saw this on the extended unrated European Director’s cut from Severin Films, All region, letterbox and in the original French audio with perfect English subtitles. It also has an English dubbed audio track, but for me it’s hard to say which one was the intended one…as some actors appear to be dubbed better in English than in French while other are the opposite. Either way, it’s a steal for right around 12-16$ US and easily found on the various Amazons around the world should you too want a crazy retro sexy evening’s movie fun. certainly a more tasteful erotic epic than some of the other “Raiders” inspired erotica I bumped across while researching this month’s festival…. trust me. ;)

A Trailer? Oui!! Mais bien sûr! ;)

Time to whisk ourselves off to India for a special “shared review” with our good friend Stephen of “Gweilo Ramblings” to put a proper finish to our March “Thrilling Adventures!!” Movie Review Festival. Our final film? The 2006 Hindi action/adventure “Naksha”. What? Not a Korean film? Nope… thought I’d throw Stephen a little curve this time out and lure him away from our usual movie selections to something a little more different and unusual… and nothing says “different and unusual” like Bollywood…  ;)

Thanks Miyu. You know I am always looking forward to our collaborative blogging, and watching some proper Bollywood fun is always on my to-do list, even if I never seem to get around to it.

The synopsis goes like this: “After the death of an archaeologist, Kapil Malhotra. 20 years later his frivolous playboy son, Vicky attempts to take up his father’s quest to find the legendary Armour of Karna taken by the God Indra in the epic story Mahabharata. However Vicky does not seem to have any clue to meet this challenge, so to proceed he is forced to delve deep into the jungles of India with the help of an ancient map, and his elder half-brother, Veer. Together they will have to join hands to defeat an evil rival Baali who wants to uncover the armour only to selfishly use it to become an unstoppable immortal conqueror that no one could destroy.”

Okie Dokie… sounds like we’re in the right movie for some “Raiders” style action, and Bollywood certainly knows how to do things with their own style, so if nothing else I expect things to get trippy… and hear some catchy music along the way, Hehehe!!. So… without any further fuss, let’s get to it, shall we?

Bollywood films are definitely an acquired taste. They are usually waaaaay long compared to Western efforts…. they enjoy odd continuity shifts and multiple side plots…. and they are all musicals… every blessed one of them. My sweetie Carolyn has actually started to kind of like them, believe it or not… It’s probably the way they love their stories bright and peppy and full of color and music. She’s a real sucker for musicals… and yes… the romantic elements that always seem to creep into a Hindi film too. However, I wasn’t so sure about Stephen. Part of me was secretly tickled when he agreed to give this one a try. Just like when I spring something sweet, spicy, and totally exotic on my friends come dinnertime. Here’s to hoping you enjoy the experience, Stephen… ;)

Part of the reason I have avoided Bollywood in the past is that there are two things which usually turn me off cinematically. Length is a big issue, anything pushing 2 hours is going to seriously have to work hard to maintain my interest. The other thing is… I hate musicals. There are a handful of exceptions. But probably you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Or Homer Simpson’s hand… But, I am willing to give anything a try once or twice :)

Our story gets underway with one of those somber voice overs all ominous and such about the secrets of the Gods and how man constantly strives to learn that which they really shouldn’t and the like. Then we get a look at Dr. Malhotra, archaeologist and scholar who’s on the verge of his life’s greatest quest… the uncovering of the ancient artifacts that prove the truth of the Hindi mythological epic “The Mahabharata”. Only one problem… he’s not the only guy anxious to make that discovery. Nope… he’s discovered just at that crucial moment in his efforts by Baali Bhaiyya (played by Jackie Shroff), once a learned, respected archeologist himself but now only a man determined to find the secret hidden in Dr. Malhotra’s recently uncovered map at any cost… even cold blooded murder. But… before that can happen, Dr. Malhotra seemingly thwarts Baali’s evil ambitions by burning that map and throwing himself to his untimely death from the cliffs near his bungalow in rural Kishanganj leaving behind a divorced wife and eldest son, Veer; as well as his present wife and younger son named Vicky niether with any clue as to the truth behind it all.

Jump forward 20 years, and Vicky (played by Vivek Oberoi) has grown up into a frivolous playboy with no more ambition than to party and waste away his life on wine women and song… (Especially song… Cue the first of many peppy Hindi Item Dance numbers!!)

Now… mind you, they did manage to make the plot excuse that our hero was at this tacky bachelor party for a buddy of his and the whole sequence pretty much cements the overall character of Vicky firmly as a fairly worthless “party guy” and amateur womanizer. Yep. You could say he really rubbed a certain lil’ Catgirl the wrong way… and not just me. We also get a quick intro to pretty Riya (played by Sameera Reddy) who’s a friend of the bride-to-be supposedly crashing the party to spy on her friend’s fiancé… She’s not impressed with our hero… and pretty much tells him what sort of butthead he really is before leaving with the pissed off bride in a torrent of stupid catcalls and misogynistic crap. Grrrrr!! I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again… Neko just hates the way women get treated in most Hindi film… It’s about the only bone I usually pick with them. It’s not that its sooooo annoying in and of itself… It’s that it’s so darn pervasive…. and so mainstream… as if it’s just an ordinary and perfectly normal thing. Like freaking breathing… And the few times a female character is written as strong or self minded, she usually gets marginalized or ignored in favor of the male lead. Unfortunately for us… that’s pretty much the case here.

Breathe… Miyuki… breathe. It’s just a movie. Sigh…

Now funnily enough, it wasn’t the content of this sequence that upset me, it was the utter pointlessness of it. It set up the character of Vicky, after which it really did little with that idea. And the way the females are treated in this film… well I am not going to disagree. I’ll just agree with your rant, otherwise we will never get to the film!

Anyways… Vicky get’s involved in this adventure once his father’s lawyer shows up with some papers to sign before the sale of that old bungalow in Kishanganj. It brings back some nasty memories of his dad’s death for his mom… still obviously torn up about that old mysterious event… so he decides to go up to the bungalow himself to see to things so she won’t have to. Once there, he naturally finds a secret passage and his father’s old stuff about the legend… and… another copy of the vital map. Inspired by all that, Vicky decides to make it his quest to unlock the secret his father was searching for and immediately goes looking for clues. That’s a big honking mistake….

It puts him on the radar for our evil villain Baali… still evil (and now dressed like a real villain instead of a “Miami Vice” wannabee… ;) ) and still looking for that treasure all these years later. His henchgoons locate Vicky… and surprisingly… Vicky turns out to have some absolutely mad ass kickboxing skills. Who woulda guessed? Certainly not the bad guys… they get their butts kicked pretty darn good until in a moment of pure Hindi story slapstick, Vicky gets knocked out cold by an ill-timed swinging door.

He really did have some kick ass skills didn’t he? That came from nowhere! But this was the point I maybe started warming to the movie. I mean.. who doesn’t like to see people knocked out by a swinging door?

After they haul him away… for the natural torture and question session to come… Vicky’s mom decides that only one person can help. Her husband’s eldest son by his first wife, Veer. He’s a “Forest Ranger”, it seems… and luckily Vicky’s mom and Dr. Malhotra’s first wife are on surprisingly great terms. No seriously…. and so with one simple request, it’s Veer to the rescue.

Thankfully Veer (played by Sunny Deol) is familiar with the remote rural area around Kishanganj and apparently a Hindi “Forest Ranger” is kind of a cross between “Crocodile Dundee” and “Rambo”. Darn handy that… especially since Vicky is hanging upside down in a ramshackle bungalow and mere moments away from a bullet to the noggin’ before Veer bursts in through the roof and starts going all apeshit on those villains. Not before they get the map of course…

One quick chase later and it’s off a cliff and into the river for the boys… just the place to run back into our heroine Riya… who it seems is some kind of anchorwoman for a TV show called “Travel India” and is in need of rescue as she’s perilously floating down the rapids in a rubber raft after a photo shoot gone wrong. That’s handy, and awfully convenient considering our boy’s need a raft right about then. Yes…. yes… it’s a fairly stupid and unrealistic way to shoehorn our girl back into the story, but since she’s merely here for eye candy and the occasional dance number, that’s not really too much of an issue, I suppose. It’s a waste of a fairly pretty lady to be nothing more than that in our story, but Hindi audiences do love their romantic side-plots…. even if they aren’t well conceived or even needed. Just roll with it… Sigh…

Stupid and unrealistic. That pretty much covers it. I seriously don’t have words to describe how dreadful this bit of character re-indroduction was.

Why isn’t it needed? Well, for the most part, “Naksha” isn’t a romance film. It’s a “buddy comedy” and “bromance” firmly interested in showing that the familial bonds of brothers… even two half-brothers… is stronger than anything, especially when it comes to revenging dear old dead dad and completing his life work. Somehow… in a very weak and unconvincing fashion… our Vicky will find time to pull off the romantic sparks while completing his quest and bonding with his bro.

But first… there will be some more action…. and singing… and dancing!! With midgets!!

Ummmm? Midgets? Yes!! Because for reasons escaping all possible reality it seems our story would have us believe the northern jungles of India are home to a wild tribe of Hindi pygmies. Fierce primitive crazy lil’ pygmies. Ok…. Hey don’t blame me… they’re on the secret map! Apparently these guys are old friends of Vicky and Veer’s dad and so after a minor misunderstanding, its major party time at the village of the Liliputs.

The whole midget thing upset me way more than it did you. I wasn’t even comfortable using the word “midget”! And I am really not Mr Political Correctness!! More than that, the whole sequence just gave us nothing. Other than the “Crazy Punjabi” dance number that was probably the highlight of the movie for me. Yeah, you read that right.. I actually enjoyed the musical number. Move on please ;)

But…. not too far behind are our villains… catching up fast thanks to Sonia (played by Mridula Chandrashekar) dark-haired sexy hot pants wearing wicked vixen and supposed jungle tracking expert. Yet another potentially really interesting female character relegated to having no real lines… no back story… and seemingly a side job as hot gypsy dance temptress. Sigh…. at least I have to agree with Carolyn that she was pretty darn sexy in her one musical number… but adventurous lil’ me still would have like to also see her get all crazy and “kung fooy” or something at least once in our movie before completely dissapearing from the plot. :(

I’m with Carolyn too. She was rather Hawt!! But I am also with you. She is introduced as some super tracking expert. And yet does little than stand around looking desirable in a “touch me and i’ll break your fingers” sort of way.

She leads Baali and his mercs right to the secret Liliput village so there can be a big ol’ massacre shoot-em up. They eventually think our trio are dead after plummeting off a cliff, just like dear old dad. Nope… just playing dead so they can race Baali to the sacred Mountain temple where the mystical armour of Karna is hidden for our big climax. Well… all except Riya, who seems to have sprained her ankle or something during our big shoot-em up. Really? Sheesh!! C’mon now…. :(

I have no words. Really. Maybe it was her last day filming or something?

So… what exactly is this funky magic armour good for? Well… legend tells us wearing it makes you invulnerable and immortal as long as “the sun shines upon it or the moon’s light bathes it”. Got it? Ok then. ;)

Don’t forget the Armour comes with Earings too. It’s a WMD that accessorizes!

At the hidden temple, things finally start getting all “Indiana Jones”, as we get the usual temple death traps designed to kill all those foolish mortals seeking the power of the armour for themselves. Bottomless abysses… flying blades… evil demon spirits that carry you off screaming to Hindi Hell… you get the picture. They even “borrow” that classic bit from “Last Crusade” where you have that invisible bridge you only find by trusting in faith. All leading up to the big treasure vault.

I rather liked this bit. It was fairly derivative and unimaginative, but for the first time I got some kind of vibe that the film was ramping up to something. Though maybe I just started setting my expectations lower and lower :)

Naturally our villain beats them to the prize… and naturally there’s a smack down slugfest that looks pretty hopeless for the boys until the Hindi Gods pull a last-minute “deus ex machina” to solve things by springing an unexpected total solar eclipse on everybody. No sunlight… no moon light… no magic invulnerability for Baali. Time to kick his butt and bury him under the collapsing temple along with the armour forever. Sounds like a wrap… well almost. There’s the fairly lame wrap to our romance side-plot between Vicky and Riya… but honestly it seemed really unnecessary and “tacked on” and superfluous. OK… now roll those credits. Ummmm? What? One more musical number first? Sigh… Ok… let’s do this thing. ;)

So. How do I call this one? Hmmmm? As adventure films go, its a miss, really. The action sequences and fight scenes are good… really good, actually as it seems Hindi cinema is embracing martial arts stuff with a serious vengeance. But a few cool fight scenes scattered amongst a paper-thin plot do not an adventure make. Marginalizing our heroine role in the story so severely didn’t win any points with me either. The message of “brotherhood’ and solidarity was nice, but got endlessly hammered home in a fairly heavy-handed manner diluting it’s strength. Our villain? Initially goofy looking… in his Don Johnson “Miami Vice” styling white suit, he improved a bit once he got all crazy obsessed and went brooding and long-haired in his ever so stylish duster and boots. Him I bought. Maybe a bit broad and melodramatic, but hey… as the bad guy you get some slack for that. The scenery? Gosh… now that was breathtaking at times. India has some impressive outdoor beauty. No doubt about that.

I guess, given it’s flaws and its occasional flashes of neat stuff, I’d lean towards 3 “Meows” out of 5. The sad thing is, it could have… with a little work, done better. Instead it chose to take the safe route and rely on being merely competent rather than innovative. Not the worst film we’ve looked at for the festival, but certainly not the best either.

The DVD? The usual well made Hindi effort, All Region and letterbox, with a decent “Making Of” featurette, some Trailers and the usual excellent English subtitles I always seem to find on Hindi discs. Want a copy? That’ll be easy, and at that crazy mad low price that Hindi DVD’s always seem to be, right around 10-12$ US or so. Even cheaper if you, like a certain crazy Catgirl import them right from India itself.

In the UK, this one cost me less than £2. So it is hard to be too harsh on it. My subtitles were not as good as yours, but I have had much worse times. I tapped my foot a few times, I enjoyed it in parts. I’ll take your 3 “Meows” and probably go for 2 “Rambles” myself.

Sounds like we are pretty close on our opinions this time out. Wanna read more of Stephen’s musings on this one? Then by all means trot on over to his blog, “Gweilo Ramblings”  for the “flip side” of this special double-decker review… ;)

Yep… I even managed to snag a Trailer for this one… not the best quality, but certainly good enough to maybe get you all excited for your own Hindi flavored Movie Nite… :)

OMG!!!! A look out the window this morning confirms my suspicions…. It’s finally here!! It’s really… really… here!! Spring!!

There are still hunks of black nasty dirty snow and ice lingering here and there amongst the mud but… my goodness… it’s real MUD!! Actual wet gooey mud!! Not dirty snow… Not ice… Not solid frozen dirt!! I’d never have believed I’m actually saying this… but mud… I THINK I LOVE YOU!!! :)

Sigh… I was beginning to think this cold weather would never break, that warm breezes and sunny skies would never arrive to thaw out our arctic wasteland. But… it looks like Spring is finally here.

Anyways… it’s coincidentally this lady’s day off from work (YAY!!!) and so… I’ve picked out a delightfully light skirt to wear today and yes… a warm wooly fisherman’s sweater too, this Catgirl isn’t crazy after all… and I’m getting ready to take a well needed long walk for some shopping and indulgently nice “me” time out and about this afternoon. I can’t wait…. there’s a breeze…. an actual honest-to-goodness warm breeze blowing. I soooooo need to feel it tickling my bare legs…. that will be heaven after these months of cold.

Not to worry though… once I’ve been out for a couple of hours I’ll be back and spend some time with you as well o’ Gentle Visitors updating you all with a good long Diary posting to let you know all about it… and then all you’ll have to do is “Read On!!”  ;)

Ahhhhhh….. :)

I’m back after my outing, and I have to say it was an absolutely lovely day!! I snagged one of my canvas satchels and filled it full of goodies for a light snack as well as the oodles of stuff I like to carry with me for a walk and set out early this morning. Carolyn says I’m soooo darn serious about something as simple as a walk…. teasing me that I kind of treat each one is sort of like a miniature urban hike and in some ways she’s really right. I love walking… Before she moved in with me, it’s how I got around just about everywhere. A walk to work every day… another to go shopping… and evening walks to the local park or movie theater for a little entertainment. Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter…. each season comes with it’s own enjoyment and it’s own challenges when you mostly get around that way. It’s also been a pretty healthy way to keep myself fit and trim and even now that my sweetie chauffeurs me around as much as she does, it’s something I still enjoy. I can even convince her to join me most days for simple jaunts if the weather is agreeable.

And today…. After Winter’s seemingly unending cold, today’s warmth was heavenly!! Sunny and clear… yet cool enough to walk a brisk pace without working up a sweat, a surprisingly warm breeze deliciously caressing my legs and playing with my skirt, teasing me with the promise of more beautiful days ahead. If you were outside hereabouts today it’s hard to believe our forecast promises something entirely different for tomorrow… another unseasonable dip back into the freezer over the weekend. Not something to look forward to at all, but…. at least for today… I have my Spring. Yes!!

Given that forecast, I determined myself to make the most of my day off, and so I spent the greater part of the day wandering on “Walkabout” just enjoying the weather and making the rounds around our little village. First… a visit to the square and a stop by our favorite lil’ coffeehouse to fill the small thermos in my satchel with indulgently sweet mocha coffee. Oh… yes… and to snag a freshly made hot doughnut to go with it… gotta have that. I hadn’t planned on staying for long but ran into Evie, one of Carolyn’s friends from the college and had to chat for a while. I got all the latest gossip from Carolyn’s department and even an invitation for us to join Evie and her husband for dinner out early next week. Carolyn and I don’t really do many “couples” things, spending far too much time by ourselves, so that chance to go out for an evening sounded fun, and so I happily accepted on our behalf knowing Carolyn would definitely enjoy the evening.

After that, I popped over to the park so I could eat my doughnut and sip that wonderful coffee while watching the geese feeding in the newly exposed grass by the water. Even my old nemesis Mister Chipmunk stopped by to say “Hi!!’… Well… OK… mostly for that last nibble of doughnut I had left. With my buoyant mood… he even lucked out and got that nibble too. A truce for now… but next time, my old enemy, the Duel of Wills between us continues. ;)

By then, it was well past 11, and I considered a quick hike out to the college campus to surprise Carolyn for lunch, but despite the warm day, the roads were a bit of a mess with all that mud and so I decided instead to stick to the center of town and do some shopping. I poked my head in our local bookstore to waste a bit of time before deciding to get serious and put together some stuff for a nice dinner surprise for tonight. Mmmmm…. yummm.

That pretty much finished my expedition right there, as I kind of lost myself amongst the stuff at the supermarket before settling on the fixings for a nice Bulgarian style eggplant guvech. Ahhhh... and some garlic and herbed focaccia. A bottle of nice wine to top it off and I was off for home to play in the kitchen.

I’ve got it all working now, so there really isn’t much time for too much more of my boring lil’ day, except to say that hopefully… with the success of my last month’s Review Festival, I’m finally posting more, something I’ve let slide of late. It’s my goal to try to keep that up, so if the Movie Faeries are with me, by Sunday I ought to have a review ready for the recent Spanish Zombie Apocalypse thriller “REC 4: Apocalypse” fresh from today’s DVD delivery that made it to my door while I was out.

Ooooohhh!! And before I go… I’m also happy to report that Sandra has finally been allowed to go home from the hospital!! That news came to us just the other day, and so… if we can squeeze it in, there’ll be at least one more quick trip down to welcome her home and give her big hugs and wishes for her speedy recovery. I’m soooo hoping she’ll be well soon so she can help us celebrate our 1st Wedding Anniversary in May! It just wouldn’t be a party without her!

My kitchen timer is buzzing… gotta go!! Till next time, “Meow, meow, for now!”

April is here (and quickly slipping away from me, it seems…) and it’s time to check back with the Zombie Apocalypse… just to see if it’s creeping up on us or not, mind you… with a look at the recent Region 2 UK release of the Spanish Zombie Apocalypse thriller “[REC] 4: Apocalypse”.

The synopsis reads “Barcelona TV reporter, Angela Vidal, wakes up in a high-security quarantine facility aboard a ship at sea, sole survivor and witness to the horrific events inside the apartment building of the first film. She seems to have only spotty memories of what happened at the end of her ordeal there. But does she secretly remember what happened to her? Is she carrying the virus? Distrust spreads through the freighter while new, even more deadly forms of evil spread even faster among the researchers and crew. Soon that Evil is loose again, but will she survive this new assault or become one of its twisted victims?”

I’ve enjoyed this franchise so far, so it’s nice to get another offering to sate this zombie fan’s need for a little gory fun in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse now that “The Walking Dead” is on its hiatus till fall. Sure… sure.. there’s “IZombie”, but that’s just toooo much of a comedy. Neko wants scary gross zombie fun… ;)

So… will I get it with this one? All signs look promising… so if you wanna know if it’s a gore fest that ought to show up in your DVD player anytime soon, just “Read On” and let a certain crazy movie obsessed Catgirl tell you all about it. ;)

So… the nicest thing about “[REC] 4: Apocalypse” is the return of spunky TV reporter Ángela Vidal (played once again by Manuela Velasco) who previously survived the original film only to end up possessed by the evil demonic parasite that had inhabited Tristana Medeiros at the end of the second movie. Ouch!!

By the start of our 4th film, we find her bloody and terrified… supposedly the only survivor of the outbreak where she gets saved by the final bunch of SWAT guys from the “Grupo Especial de Operaciones” sent in to rig the apartment building for demolition to end the horror and kill the infected before the outbreak can spread. They save her… fighting their way past the crazed remnants of those still inside while the bombs tick down…. and guess what? I’m sooooo proud of my adorable wife!! Carolyn actually remembered those earlier films and blurted out… “Wait a minute!! She’s that TV reporter lady with the evil worm in her guts!!” <3 Awwwwww!! <3 She really was paying attention when we watched them!! I just knew someday I’d make her a fan of my rather goofy movie choices!!

They fade to black…. and then Ángela wakes up in a medical observation room, just like Mila Jovovich at the end of “Resident Evil”. But unlike deserted the Raccoon City Hospital, she’s not alone…. Turns out she’s on a ship at sea. A freighter hastily converted into a quarantine facility where some brainy doctors can try to get a handle on just what the hell happened back in Barcelona before it happens again. I kept thinking… “Any minute now. These poor boobs are gonna turn their backs and Ángela’s gonna go all freaky cannibal on them…. just you wait….” But nope. The doctors do this blood test and seems she’s all clear. Say what? Wait a minute… where the heck did the evil thingee get to then?

Don’t worry… we’ll get back to it later. For now Ángela finds that her two rescuers, Guzmán (played by Paco Manzanedo) and Lucas (played by Críspulo Cabezas)  are on board as well. Seems nobody is going anywhere until they can figure out exactly what they are dealing with… if they are ever allowed to leave at all. That would be the job of the medical team, under Doctor Ricarte (played by Héctor Colomé). He’s convinced they can engineer a vaccine to stop the virus given half a chance… Problem is, he’s a scientist. There’s no room in his brain to even consider the possibility of some kind of parasite spreading a viral “demonic possession”. That’s gonna cost him…

From this point forward, “[REC] 4″ uses its claustrophobic setting to do what most stories like this do. Our heroine and her companions are trapped, limiting everybody’s movements and giving them no chance to escape once that contagion escapes the lab and begins to spread among the crew. Sure it’s an old idea for a horror plot… but that’s because it always works.

One crazy infected lab monkey running amok later and that just what our cast has to deal with too. Like I say… nothing new… nothing novel… but certainly effective enough to do the job. This time out our girl Ángela has lots more to do too. No longer that “girly” victim we remember from the first two films, she seems to have dug deep and tapped into her own inner strength to become much tougher this time out. She’s determined to survive, even once the medical team recovers the footage from her camera showing that horrible worm thing sliding down her gullet to take up housekeeping in her tummy. Naturally they figure the best chance to make that vaccine is to cut her open and get some DNA from the plague source itself. Problem is… Ángela’s pretty sure the worm has already moved on looking for a better host… and her spotty memories won’t tell her where to. Is she right? Or is she still possessed… and one heck of a demonically evil convincing actress? Time for some “cat and mouse” games as the mercs manning the ship chase her and our two SWAT guys around the boat dodging the rising population of possessed zombies. Oodles of the red stuff flows freely and I can definitely tell you, in the process, I did indeed get my zombie gore fix from this one…. :twisted:

Plenty of people get chomped on… Zombies get shot… get stabbed and hacked… even get chewed to bits by an outboard motor in some gooey hand-to-hand fighting… before the big climax as our heroine and our heroes decide to abandon ship before the obligatory “self destruct” option blows the boat to Kingdom Come. Like I said. Nothing new here. But it’s done with good style and suitable panache as to make for satisfying Zombie Apocalypse storytelling.

So? Our worm/ demon/ thingee? Yeah… well once you figure out that our heroine Ángela really is clean and “worm free”, it’s not too hard to figure out that there really are only two other choices for it to host in… and since it had to happen quickly before they left the apartment when she and that potential victim were alone, you really will easily figure out who it now inhabits. Neko’s not gonna spoil things for you… but trust me, you won’t really be surprised by the eventual “big reveal”….

So how do I rate this one? Hmmmm? Well… as simple as the story really is, its nowhere as original or good as the earlier films in the series. Fair to say that right up front. It’s a reasonably good sequel… but just a basic “zombie story” this time out. Good acting… good setting and cinematography… about the only disappointment was the failure to really expand on the story behind it all. We learn nothing new about the demon… or it’s first host Tristana Medeiros or even what the ultimate goal of the Evil really is. I would have so liked learning some more of that kind of stuff. Still… our ending leaves room for yet another sequel, so who knows?

I guess then I’d rate this one as 3 “Meows”… Good simple zombie action… but sorta “zombie light” overall with a storyline that hits all the expected points but which could easily have been improved by a little more addition of the kind of stuff fans of the earlier films would have liked to see. Sounds about right. Worth a look definitely if… like this crazy Catgirl… zombies are your thing. ;)

The DVD? Well for me, that was the Region 2 UK DVD this time out. Presented widescreen, letterboxed and with excellent separate English subtitles. I picked it up for right around 12$ US, a fine choice should you want, but since then have learned a Region 1 release is soon on the horizon should you prefer something more domestic to feed your DVD player. There are also German, French, as well as Spanish editions out there… all of which lack those crucial subtitles, unfortunately.

As always, I’ve gone ahead and snagged us a “zombie-rific” Trailer to get everybody in the mood for all the “living impaired” fun and games!! Enjoy! ;)

Yep… It’s lil’ ol’ me again. I know… I made some real efforts to get more active last month during our “Thrilling Adventures!!” review marathon…. and I really, really wanted to keep the momentum rolling, but…. all my Gentle Visitors know just how scatterbrained and easily distracted I can get at times. Especially this time of year….. Yep that’s right. With the return of more seasonable weather, I’ve fallen victim to my usual bout of “Spring Fever”. However… with the way the temperatures keep veering wildly from freakishly chilly to almost summery warmth, it’s been anything but a typical Spring hereabouts. Me? I’ve been alternately full of boundless crazy energy and then hit with some serious blue bits of melancholy. Mood swings? Yep… Neko’s got ’em… ohhh… and a nasty Spring cold too. Dang it… 😷

But… a day to myself… (and a nose chock full of gooey snot…) has slowed me down enough to do at least a quick Diary post to remind my regular visitors that I’m still with you. So… if you wanna share some more of the details of my goofy Life, you know the drill by now…. ;)

“But…. Miyuki?”, you ask, “What the heck does any of this have to do with “Magical Girls”?” Shhhhh…. Don’t worry… I’m getting to that. ;)

Now where was I? Oh yeah….. Spring. Gotta say so far it’s been a fairly mixed bag here at the apartment. If this is gonna be the way “Global Warming” plans to treat us each Spring ’round these parts from now on, I can’t really say I’m gonna be a fan. Plainly put, our weather has been atrocious. I’m used to the slow steady way that Winter loses its icy grip as the days grow longer, the winds blow warmer, and Spring gently asserts itself. At least that’s always been my experience. Up till now. Now… it seems… Mother Nature has pretty much lost the cheese right off her cracker and betting on what’s going to happen day-to-day weather-wise is less certain than it’s ever been. Ohhhh… and as far as I’m concerned… that truly sucks.

Not only has the weather gone all flakey and strange, but it’s messing big time with this wee lady’s odd metabolic rhythms too. I’ve always been sensitive to seasonal changes, reacting to the return of warmer times with my ordinary bout of Seasonal Insomnia and restlessness. This year… with the days staying cold longer, it’s pushed that back several weeks. Till now. Worse… With the seesaw of conditions being like they are, I’ve also been experiencing things in a very uneven way. Sometimes I’ve gone a couple of days all hyper and revved up only to crash with fatigue and listlessness with a downturn in the weather. I just can’t seem to get synchronized.

As always… when I’m up and filled with energy… I’m practically bouncing off the walls trying to do things to wear myself out. It was during a couple of days of that when found myself filled with the desire to do a bit of “Spring Cleaning”…. at 2AM in the morning… while my sweetie snoozed away in our cozy bed.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean, when I’m twitchy and unable to sleep, I have a tendency to roll and roam around in bed if I fight it and try to simply sleep anyway. I don’t really get any rest… and usually if I don’t just get up then and there, I just end up waking Carolyn and ruining her sleep too. Nope… not something I like to do to my poor sweetheart if I can avoid it.

But…. what to do with myself at that ungodly hour of the night? Can’t really sneak out to the living room and watch TV unless I want to risk waking her up. No getting up and going for a walk…. Carolyn was horrified to find out I did that once last year while she was sleeping. The idea of me wandering the dark streets at that time of the night… alone… made her very upset and I had to promise her not to do that ever again. She’s probably right. Personally I’ve never been afraid to do it… but realistically it’s probably not a smart thing to do in a town with a couple of colleges and several thousand relative strangers.

OK… OK… well then, how about some light aerobics? Yeah… bouncing around the living room with my mp3 player listening to music… like that wouldn’t wake her up. Sigh…

So… also that pretty much leaves out playing with my nocturnal companion, Ting-ting as well. She’s pretty much game for it, mind you, but even as tiny as she is…. scampering about chasing a toy always sounds like a stampede in the wee hours of the night. Ooooohhh… and she’s pretty vocal about it too. Unlike my kitty Goober, Ting-ting likes to make the most adorable meowing lil’ chirps to let you know how happy she is to be playing. Cute during the day… pretty darn annoying at 2AM.

Trust me. Sitting quietly in the dark is impossible for me when I’m so darn wired. No way… no how. So… that left me with the idea to slip into our spare room to finally do something with some of the old boxes of stuff I store in there. Old clothes… boxes of books and magazines… boxes and boxes of my DVD’s… my camping gear… and… waaaay waaaay in the back corner… my old cosplay stuff from back in college.

Yep. You, o’ Gentle Visitors, have heard of those boxes… the ones filled with all my old costume stuff, wigs, props, and makeup from conventions and Halloweens of old. Yep. I certainly have quite the collection of junk in those boxes…

You know both Neko and her goofy imagination love nostalgia. Those boxes were just the ticket to keep me amused, digging through them and having a nice lil’ bout of “remember when…”.

I unearthed those boxes, one at a time, and quietly hauled them out to the living room to have a peek, just for fun. There was some stuff in there I hadn’t actually handled for 20 years or so. Like my ninja suit!! (Yes… I admit it… this wee Catgirl does have a snazzy black hooded ninja outfit. And some nunchakus… And… I’m smugly happy to say… it still fits even now. So there…). My “Indiana Jane” ensemble… which I’d had out a time or two for Halloween since I first put it together back in college. Along with some nice army surplus stuff I’d forgotten I even bought… just the ticket for something WW2 inspired should I ever want it. Nice….

Several wigs…. including a nice long one the length of my hair the way it was back in high-school. Definitely something I might want to use sometime for a bit of fun sometime. (That one was promptly wrapped in a fresh plastic bag and moved to a nice hatbox to go in my closet… Who knows? ;) )

One nice old flower patterned kimono I hadn’t worn since my senior year in high-school. Ha!! It also still fit!! With some nice sandals and other accessories, it’s got possibilities. Fold that up carefully and set it aside….

And…. waaaay… waaaay in the bottom of the last box, in an old shoebox, something I’ve been looking for a while now. My very first Nekomimi ears and tail! The very ones I wore to my first anime convention back in my freshman year. I’d almost given up on these as lost and gone forever…

These were the “ears and tail” that got me my nickname!! I’d worn them along with a glittery tiara, fairy wand, and ballet tutu to be a generic “Magical Girl” for the convention. Yep. One look at this petite lil’ Japanese girl in costume with kitty ears and tail, and all the anime nerds in my dorm promptly started calling me “Neko-neko”, a name that stuck long after that. They meant it to be “Here, kitty, kitty…” but somehow it got turned into the only Japanese word some of them knew… “Here, Neko-neko…”.

Finding those old ears tickled me to no end. Naturally I just had to run into the bathroom and put them on. Just to see how they looked… Honest. Ummmm… and as long as I had them on, it’s only made sense to put the belt with the tail on too. I mean… they’re a set, right? And hey…. the wand was right next to them…. ;)

Wearing them again and seeing myself in the bathroom mirror, they really brought back some nice memories. Of all those heady, scary first few months in school when I was a newly grown girl on my own for the first time ever and well before the nasty meltdown with my ex, Michael that ended my college dreams. At 42, I do look a bit older… but surprisingly not all that much.

I suppose Ting-ting was fairly confused by mommy’s weird midnight “transformation” into Catgirl… but my “tail” was perhaps the most intriguing of my crazy “new look” for her. It’s hypnotic swaying back and forth from beneath the bottom edge of my pajama top was apparently too much for her to resist… and one pounce later she tore the pink ribbon bow off its end to go tearing away into the living room with her ill-gotten prize in her mouth, me in hot pursuit.

Only to practically run over my sleepy-eyed wife on her way to the bathroom. Yep. Me… a supposedly stable, mature, “grown-up” woman dressed in only her panties and a flannel pajama top, wearing a tiara, fluffy cat ears & tail, and wielding a magical toy fairy wand. That certainly woke her right up…. ;)

I nearly knocked her right over… and we ended up in an awkward hug right there in the doorway. One look at me and she burst out laughing. “Miyu… you never told me you secretly moonlight as a crazy tooth fairy…”

She laughed again… and so did I, apologizing for waking her up. She swore I hadn’t… that she’d just woken up all on her own with a need to pee. Which she soon did, shooing me out of the bathroom to find Ting-ting and rescue my ribbon while she took care of that distraction.

“Can’t sleep again, lil’ kitty?”, she said when she came back out. “I think I can find something to tire you out… if “Magical Kitten Miyu” is in the mood that is…..”. With a playful tug on my “tail” she headed back to the bedroom with a “come hither” wiggle of her finger and her crooked little grin. Oh yes…. my “Magical Catgirl Senses” were certain she did have an idea or two… and my intuition is never wrong. ;)

Hehehe…. and she was right. Carolyn used a few of her own “Magical Girl” powers to find a way to burn off some of my silly energy in a way that left both of us pleasantly exhausted in an hour or so… just in time for the sun to peep over the horizon with the dawn… <3 Thank goodness we both had that day off…. by then I really needed a nice snuggly nap. :)

*****

It’s spontaneous fun little times like this that make me so glad I have my darling Carolyn in my life. She’s not just my wife… not just my lover… she really is my best friend. Someone who actually thinks my crazy whimsically flighty side is fun to be around… not just something to be tolerated. She constantly tells me I keep her young… and very, very happy. Something that knowing makes me deliriously happy too. :)

So then, that’s my current “Life”… Along with the nasty head cold I picked up in the last couple of days… Hopefully it’ll pass quickly, and things can get back to normal once my annual bout of the “crazies” subsides. By then I ought to be back on track, and if there are any “Movie Fairies” that want to smile on this wee lady, maybe I’ll even get back with a Review by this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed… it could happen. ;)

So May has come and with it the bountifully warm days this wee lady has longed for since January. Also with it, of course, has also come my annual bout of “Spring Fever” to make me all wired and hyper and scattered most of the time too. Sorry Gentle Visitors… but that always makes it so hard for me to sit still and concentrate for long either, hence my absence here at the ol’ Litterbox of late. Not that I haven’t been watchin’ movies, of course, but having the focus to buckle down and write about them the last few weeks? That’s been the problem… ;)

However… my recent lack of “attention span” has led me to pay a wee bit more attention to TV than usual and it occurred to me that although I’ve shared my interests and tastes in film and movies, I’ve never really shared any of my favorite TV shows with all of you… What? Really? How have I somehow neglected to do that over the years?

Well that’s an easy thing to rectify… and all without putting a certain twitchy Catgirl on Ritalin…  ;)

My most recent TV fav? Well… that would be the surprisingly fun Lifetime TV series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles”… as if this wacky lady would ever pass up a chance to watch a delightful period piece series with an adorable sociopathic axe murderess as our main heroine. Oodles of fun… just let this goofy Catgirl tell you all about it.

Those of you regulars here at the Litterbox probably have a pretty good idea by now of the trashy exploitative movie goodies I like. My tastes in TV are pretty much the same as for films. Yep. While my dear wifey prefers her sitcoms and romantic dramas, this lady always finds herself drawn to “The Walking Dead” or “Orphan Black” or “Doctor Who”. So was it really any surprise that I’d find myself engrossed in a fictionalized account of the weekly adventures of Victorian America’s most notorious female murderer, Lizzie Borden? Not really… :)

This particular one kind of snuck up on me and I didn’t even know it existed until one particular Sunday evening when Carolyn and I were snuggled up on the couch trying to find some mutually agreeable TV fare to watch. As usual… I wanted something a bit… shall we say… edgy, while Carolyn was hoping for sometime somewhat tamer. Like maybe a nice romantic comedy. Hey… like something you might find of the woman’s TV network Lifetime. Mind you.. I was trying to be a good lil’ kitten when I said “Sure… let’s see what’s on Lifetime. It’s your turn to pick something anyway.”. Hahaha… my poor sweetie… she’ll never make that mistake again…

What we found instead was the premier episode of this new series. What luck… for me, anyways. ;) Based on last year’s Lifetime movie “Lizzie Borden Took an Ax”, the series starts some 4 months after the sensational trial that acquitted Lizzie of the brutal ax murders of her parents. We hadn’t seen that movie… sometime I plan to rectify soon if I can… but you really don’t need to see it to enjoy this new series. I mean… you know the story already… at least if you grew up an American that is. Here the grisly tale of Lizzie Borden is as famous as Jack the Ripper is in his own native England. And just as bloody and sensational.

We all grew up with the infamous children’s rhyme… By modern standards, the infamous ax murders of Lizzie’s parents was pretty tame, but in 1892 they achieved a level of gore rarely seen in Victorian times… especially a crime supposedly committed by a woman against her own parents. The passage of time only served to lend itself to even more speculation as to the truth behind the notorious unsolved crime until by our time the crime itself is hard to distinguish from the rumors and legends that sprang up in it’s wake. And, as always, a good luridly bloody legend never seems to die…

As the series starts, the story gets right to things as well… Lizzie (played by the devilishly pretty Christina Ricci) and her older sister Emma (played by Clea DuVall) are free following the scandalous trial that acquitted young Lizzie of her parents grisly murders. It isn’t hard to see the dynamic of the relationship between the sisters…. and even though she is the younger sibling, Lizzie is the one firmly in charge, swearing that despite the open hostility of the good citizens of their hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts, they will make a life for themselves and prosper together despite the notorious scandal of their parents murders. Easier said than done. After the acquittal, Lizzie and Emma try to secure their inheritance, but their attempts are complicated by claims against their late father by his creditors, now hungry to seize those assets. The bulk of those claims are made by William Almy (played by John Heard), who immediately lays claim to all of their property, threatening the sisters with financial ruin. Yeah…. like our Lizzie’s gonna let that happen…. ;)

Right from the start you have to understand that the series definitely decides that Lizzie is indeed the killer. More importantly… she one of the most delightfully and fiendishly clever sociopaths you might ever want to meet. Christina Ricci is, in this wee Catgirl’s opinion, absolutely perfect for the role, with her talent for blending Lizzie’s facade of eerily disturbing sweetness and vulnerability to mask the cold blooded serial killer hiding inside just below her surface. Creepy… yet somehow so darn adorable. ;)

Another thing… if actual historical accuracy is important to you, this one might be harder for you to enjoy than it is for me. Why? Well… we’re 5 episodes in and quite a few key historical facts have already been suitably trampled into bloody bits in the name of narrative license. But hey…. that’s OK by me. I’d rather enjoy the story as one that’s free to chart it’s own path rather than knowing ahead of time how it’s gonna end. This makes the series more a “re-imagining” of events than a boring docudrama retread of them.

Nope. This story is a bloody “Grand Guignol” style of Victorian penny dreadful brought to life each week. Seriously. Each episode so far has featured at least one… and often two… grisly killings by our Lizzie. Despite the cunning and clever way she covers her tracks, had the real Miss Borden ever been quite so homicidal I doubt she would have avoided the gallows to reach the ripe old age of 66 as she actually did.

Mr. Almay becomes her first new victim… first paralyzed by a wickedly big hatpin to the base of his skull and then beaten into a pulp with a pair of leather gloves… stuffed with horseshoes. Ouch!! Luckily… she’s able to solve another of the sister’s recent problems… the sudden return of black sheep half brother William (played by Andrew Howard) … by pinning this murder on him and then staging his suicide by drunken hanging. Two birds with one stone… how handy!

So then, does this mean that nobody stands in our tiny little killers path as she murders her way to her dream of wealth and social redemption? Ah ha… in any story like this, there’s always somebody to do that, silly. Lizzie’s main nemesis takes the form of famous cowboy Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo (played by Cole Hauser), based on the actual notorious historical figure of renown…. although again, in real history, the two never ever met. He’s here looking into the murders of the Bordens at the bequest of a mysterious client and soon becomes convinced Lizzie may be the most dangerous and cunning psychopath he’s ever encountered. He’s probably correct. Our little Lizzie certainly is one rabid little hellion when you get in her way…

The relationship between them is deliciously macabre… as they dance around each other, each trying to find a way to deal with the other. Siringo is a blunt man, used to dealing with killers by simply shooting them dead… but Lizzie’s far more subtle than he and probably smarter as Siringo soon learns once they actually start their duel of wills. The two play well off of each other, but I’ve a real feeling one of them won’t survive the first season if things continue as they have so far. Remember… the series is named after her, so my bet is on Lizzie to come out on top. Poor cowboy… I’ve really got a feeling things are going to end very, very, badly for him. Lizzie is soooo gonna mess him up.

My sweet Carolyn finds my weekly amusement at Lizzie’s homicidal antics surprising… “Miyuki!! Why are you rooting for her? She’s evil!!” Oh yes…. my goodness, she is. But somehow that’s OK. For some inexplicable reason, you just sort of want Lizzie to win. Part of the reason is that most of her victims are actually deserving of their fates. Greedy Mr. Almay…. grasping and contemptuous of the two sisters and the ruin he plans for their lives. Worthless thieving half-brother William… who even resorts to the foulest blackmail to seize a chunk of the family fortune. Spencer Cavanaugh (played by Frank Chiesurin) drug addicted playwright and conman who thinks he can scam money from Lizzie with impunity. Mr. Flowers (played by Jonathan Banks) … local mob boss and pimp who dismisses Lizzie as any kind of threat and thinks her ripe for blackmail himself. Nasty neighbor lady Mrs. Kenney (played by Martha Irving) who beats her adorable little dog for no good reason… Yep. People like that you want to see get theirs…. in as messy a way possible. Our girl Lizzie? Only happy to take them out and simplify her life.

Now… not all is good of course when a sociopath decides to simplify things in her life. Some innocents will suffer too along the way. Like poor maimed streetwalker Adele (played by Kimberly-Sue Murray), befriended by Lizzie on a whim only to later be buried alive and then cruelly killed to throw off suspicion from Lizzie regarding the death of brutal Mr. Flowers. Or another “friend”, stage actress Nance O’Keefe (played by Jessy Schram) who figures out that Lizzie killed her brother Spencer and tries stupidly to handle our lil’ psycho all on her own. Turns out being Lizzie’s enemy leads to a nasty quick end… but being her friend doesn’t exactly guarantee your health and well being either.

If the whole story sounds like an almost continuous murder spree of nearly apocalyptic levels, you’d be pretty darn close. For me at least, that’s half the fun… trying to figure out just how many people are likely to meet their fate before the hour slips by. Realistic? Nawwww… but certainly fun. In fact, that’s my general feeling about this one. It’s silly… it’s overblown… generally unbelievable and improbable… but boy is it a hoot. Christina Ricci makes it all look so much ridiculously fun. All done with an sense of style and panache that keeps me tuning in for more of it’s guilty pleasures week after week. That’s all this lil’ lady need for some mindless TV fun…  If you can, give it a peek, and maybe it’ll tickle you as well.

You’d like a Trailer? Hey… no problem!! ;)

Ahhhh… Although our weather hereabouts is still goofy with its recent bout of crazy unseasonable temperature swings, at least our local colleges have all graduated their students and things are winding down for me work wise. At last… “Yay!!”

My workload has dropped back to reasonable levels, thanks to the new kitchen help we hired a while back… all trained now and able to shoulder their own fair share of the day-to-day tasks that used to bog us down at the restaurant. So…. with any luck, I should be able to get back to posting more regularly again soon. Also, “Yay!!” :)

Nice to get my “free time”back again. Boy, does a certain lil’ Catlady deserve it too… So with that in mind, I thought I’d spend my idle Friday afternoon bringing all my Gentle Visitors up to speed on my recent goings on. Hint… hint!! Somebody and her sweetie just had an anniversary to celebrate…. ;)

Well… actually last week was our 1st Wedding Anniversary, but unfortunately it fell right in the middle between all the frantic crazy stuff that accompanies our local colleges as they do their big graduation weeks. Busy, busy time for both me and Carolyn, so although we did celebrate things, this is really the first chance I’ve had to catch my breath and write about it.

It’s really been one whole year!! OMG and it seems like the time just whizzed right by. But you know something? Even though we’ve settled into a comfy married life, it hasn’t become boring, routine, or mundane. After a year, we still have “It”. That giddy, “butterflies-in-your-tummy” almost indescribable feeling when you realize how much you simply can’t imagine life without your soul-mate by your side… and that she feels the same way about you. I get to have that… every… single… day. <3

So… how do you go about celebrating something as magical as all that? Hahaha!! By reveling in all the myriad of ordinary everyday little things that make it so special. ;)

So in perfectly ordinary boring fashion as our Anniversary rolled around both of us managed to do this simplest of things. We both took the day off. Even though May is usually my crazy time at work and I really shouldn’t have… But sometimes you have to slow down and enjoy life… other wise it passes you right by. That made it possible to share waking up together on a chilly morning all wrapped up in my favorite wooly army blankie, cuddled close together to share the warmth. Well… at least that was the plan… my sweetie of course was already awake by the time I opened my eyes, just lying close and watching me sleep like she does sometimes. Finding her there like that, keeping watch over me, always makes me feel so darn special and earned her an extra sweet good morning kiss.

And… **ahem**…  seeing as we didn’t have to rouse ourselves for work, it wasn’t hard for us to decide to enjoy some impromptu sunrise sexy fun-time before deciding how best to spend our day off together. Gotta have your priorities straight after all. ;)

The rest of our day? Well… with nothing pressing for either of us to attend to and nice weather promised for our day, we decided to slip away for a quick day trip to the city. Some shopping… some lunch… an afternoon at the movies… and then a long leisurely ride back home so we could stop hither and yon as the mood struck. Nothing wild or crazy… just a whole day of “us” time. I don’t know how that sounds to you, o’ Gentle Visitors… but for me it was perfection itself.

We took the long way back, swinging east through the mountains to see the sights now that the trees are all greening up and stopped at a couple of touristy little places to stretch our legs along the way. There were a couple of places we wanted to see… especially since it’s looking like we’ll actually manage another week off together late in the summer for a camping trip and I wanted to find a nice locale to explore, someplace I haven’t been before where I could bring Carolyn and make memories that would be “firsts” for both of us. Oooohhh… and someplace not toooo darn primitive this time. My sweetie loved her last trip with me, but the near brush with Hurricane Irene when we went to Silver Lake in Vermont was a bit tooo darn “wild” for her. Well… that and as game as she is for sharing the “wilderness experience” with me, she never likes not having a proper toilet somewhere close… Hehehe!! I still giggle every time I think of the first time I sent her off into the bushes with a roll of toilet paper and my trusty lil’ gardening trowel… ;)

For this time out I’d love to rent a little cabin next to a lake somewheres since we’ll be able to do a whole week this year, as that would be about perfect for her, but for me a nice snug lean-to with a decent firepit would suffice. I just love cooking over an open fire and cuddling in a sleeping bag on a cold clear night in the woods. But… there’s time… so we’ll see how it goes.

All in all we had a very relaxing day alone together.  It was late by the time we got home but both of us felt invigorated and happy and even the prospect of getting back to work couldn’t dampen our moods.

Pretty boring stuff… but trust me, sometimes it’s the quiet times that mean the most as long as you have the right person to share it with. Anyways, that was our anniversary… and now that Life has slowed down for us both at work, hopefully we’ll have more time to spend on the couch watching movies again so I can get back to some reviews soon. I have quite a pile of films to watch… both China and Malaysia have been particularly good to a little Catgirl of late, but I’m thinking I’m gonna have to jump my latest shipment from the UK right to the top of my list. Yep… crazy Aussie zombies and and Mad Max car chases… “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” a crazy lady reeeeaally wants to watch you soon!! So, if I can tease my loving wife into it, expect that in the next day or so. Till then, “Meow, meow for now!!”

Well. May is fast fading away, but if I can rouse my lazy butt, I do believe there’s still time for one or two reviews. ;) So then… how about some Zombie Apocalypse action from the Land Down Under with the 2014 “Zombies meet Mad Max” mash-up, “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead”? I’ve a rapidly growing “To Watch” pile teetering precariously on the stand next to our TV just aching to get viewed, but somehow I just knew this one would find it’s way right to the top when it finally arrived from the UK. Your favorite crazy Catlady loves her zombies after all…

Our synopsis? Easy peesie!! :“When a freak cometary shower strikes the Earth releasing toxic contamination that turns everyone around him—including his wife and daughter—into marauding cannibal zombies, everyman mechanic Barry arms himself to the teeth, soups up his car, and hits the road in order to rescue his sister from the hideous experiments of a deranged, disco-dancing mad doctor and his cadre of military goons.”

Flesh eating undead… evil insane villains with an unknown agenda… crazy road raging heroes on a mission of vengeance… and all that “Vrooom!! Vrooom!!” post-apocalyptic car action we all know and love. Sounds pretty darn good to me. (But then my tastes in movies do lean towards the utterly “craptastic” end of the spectrum… ;) ) What are you waiting for, o’ Gentle Visitors? let’s get right to it then!!

I’ve been aware of this particular one for a while now and I figured I’d bump across the Aussie Region 4 DVD first, but as unlikely as it sounds, the UK Region 2 was my first crack at it. Yay for Amazon.UK!! :) So, a quick import across the pond and I’m good. It’s due out in a few more places in the next few months… including here in the US… by jiminy I couldn’t wait for that. No way, no how.

Being an Australian film, I knew my sweet Carolyn would be glad to find out I wasn’t going to inflict yet another weirdly subtitled horror goodie on her. That always makes “movie nite” soooo much nicer for the both of us. ;)

So what’s the poop on this one then? Ok… Ok… the Zombie Apocalypse rolls around, this time brought on by all these cometary fragments showering down on poor ol’ earth and bringing with them some sort of nasty contamination that kills and reanimates all the people who breathe it in as those super fast crazy ass zombies we all love to hate. Well… it “zombifies” almost everybody that is. Wouldn’t really have much of a movie if it killed off everybody now would we? If you are lucky and happen to have A-negative blood type you are immune to whatever it is messing stuff up. As luck would have it, our film’s hero Barry (played by Jay Gallagher) is just such a person. Bad thing is… his wife Annie (played by Catherine Terracini) and little daughter Meganne (played by Meganne West) aren’t so blessed. When the outbreak starts and they try to make their getaway both of them soon turn and he’s forced to nailgun his loved ones to death. Ewwww… that’s the sort of nasty event almost designed to send a man over the edge, almost guaranteeing he’ll follow them to the Great Beyond out of sheer remorse. He almost does it too… except for one thing.

His sister Brooke (played by Bianca Bradey). She’s alive too… and also immune to the zombie contamination. Problem is… she’s been kidnapped by some sketchy paramilitary goons to be the subject of some fairly insane medical experiments at the hands of some wacky mad scientist guy (played by Berryn Schwerdt). With his sister in dire peril, our Barry postpones his date with the nailgun and teams up with some other survivors… first another lone survivor like himself, Chalker (played by Yure Covich) and later on with Aborigine Benny (played by Leon Burchill), and fellow mechanic Frank (played by Keith Agius). They decide to track down the army guys and free Brooke… but there’s a problem. The weird contamination that has created all the zombies has messed up fuel sources. Nothing will run on gasoline, kerosene, or diesel of any kind. In fact… none of those compounds will even burn anymore for some goofy reason. But… in true exploitation fashion, our heroes discover that zombies are super flammable… and breathe a gas that burns like the dickens. It isn’t long before our industrious trio knocks together a good and proper Mad Max style armored truck that runs on… you guessed it… zombie power. here’s where things get fun… and super goofy… as they roar around the outback in search of the soldiers and their mobile electric laboratory truck.

Ummm… Ok… but then what the heck does mad Scientist Guy want with Brooke? Is he working on some sort of cure? Trying to come up with an antidote? Heck if we figured it out. In true Mengele style, his secret “experiments” seem to mostly consist of listening to bad disco music and injecting Brooke’s brain with honking big syringes full of freshly harvested zombie brain goo. Yep… it’s pretty icky. But… as a trade off for all the bondage and terrible medical care, at least eventually Brooke sorta “mutates” and becomes “half zombie”… pretty darn immune to being shot or stabbed…. and able to use some sort of crazy telepathy to summon and control other zombies. Ooooohhh!! You just know that’ll be handy….

Yes… yes… it’s a given that eventually Barry and the boys will show up towards the end of the movie to save our girl Brooke… There will be some fighting… most everybody will die… lots of zombies will run amok… our crazy Doctor will get his… and then feisty brother and spunky almost-zombie sister will reunite to save the day. No surprises there. Heck, they even set things up for the eventual “sequel’ that you know will show up in a year or so. It’s just that kind of “by-the-numbers” sort of movie.

That would tend to make you think I didn’t dig this one all that much. Nothing could be further than the truth. As simple lil’ unpretentious films go, this one ain’t half bad. It certainly was a better film by far than “Zombie Fight Club”…. But… in much the same way, it suffers from some of the same flaws as that film too. What we basically have here is a number of really neat zombie ideas all strung together to make a whole story. Unfortunately… while a lot of those ideas are real gems… the overall film feels like it’s just that. A bunch of unrelated ideas that only happen to share the same script. That and the usual lack of any real attempt to explain almost any of those plot elements. That was the most annoying thing for this wee Catgirl. I mean…. what exactly was the comet all about? Did it kill all the animals in the world too? Or just people? And how come the Mad Science guy was all ready for it with his mobile lab and goon squad? Was there an announcement in “Popular Mad Science” magazine? Even Carolyn noticed that one…. and she wanted to know why… if the crazy Doc knew it was going to happen beforehand… where were the regular army guys? You know… the “no-so-nutty” and evil ones? Wouldn’t they have been roaming around the countryside in their own snazzy electric jeeps doing whatever army guys do when the shit hits the fan? Apparently not. Oooohhh…. and why does Aborigine Benny… who’s supposed to be immune… turn into just another crazy cannibal zombie when bitten? I though the zombie thing was an airborne contaminant you had to breathe not a virus or disease. Why at least, doesn’t he become a “smart” zombie… like Brooke? Heck if I know….

Still… even with these gaping holes in common sense, there a real energy and wacky vibe here to that mostly works. It’s an Apocalypse I could believe Crocodile Dundee would somehow inhabit. It’s screwy… it’s gory…. it’s hallucinatory and strange… but it’s certainly fun.

Even with these flaws… I still had some fun watching it all. I’d even probably give that “sequel” a look if it eventually materializes with the further adventures of Barry and Brooke. I just hope next time out they try a wee bit harder to make it all more sensible. Or at least lay down the rules of their version of whole “zombie apocalypse” and then stick to them. A little consistency goes a long way towards making even the silliest notions work.

So I suppose then I have to honestly give “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” a respectable middle of the road 3 Meows out of 5. It’s a first film for Australian writer/producer brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner so I’m inclined to cut them some slack. They obviously like zombie films …. that’s easy to see. There’s even some real raw talent to in the way they steered this odd little crowdfunded film into being as good as it is too, and I’m thinking with a little experience, these guys might just have some interesting ideas for next time out. Time will tell.

Should you want a look, this one is pretty easy to find as well… and along with the Region 2 UK release, it’s becoming available in pretty much another half dozen countries and Regions in the next few months or so. So… Gentle Visitors, if zombies are your thing, it’s definitely worth a quick look see. ;)

Trailer? Yep… with all the over-the-top crazy Zombie action you might want… enjoy!! ;)

Time for another Review… a really waaaaay overdue one… and this time out, yours truly has herself another goofy “Hopping Vampire” tale from good ol’ HK, the 2014 Horror/ Comedy “Sifu Vs. Vampire” by prolific HK genre producer/ director Wong Jing. Expecting some more of the riveting Jiangshi horror we saw in “Rigor Mortis”? Ha!!! I said “Wong Jing”… so leave all expectations of serious Asian horror right by the door as you enter… Wong Jing don’t play that way… ;)

Our synopsis goes like this here: “Small time gangster Nicky and his friend Boo get the assignment of a life time, to threaten Charlie Jiang, a feng shui master into exhuming the corpse of the great grandfather of TV station tycoon Kelvin Chow. A new burial is said to bring Kelvin great fortune and prosperity but things take a turn for the worse when his great grandfather’s corpse turns into a deadly Vampire King and is let loose inside the TV station while a show about zombies is being filmed. Soon our heroes are up to their necks in both trouble and the hopping dead!”

Yep. From our trailer, looks like we’re going to get all the retro Jiangshi antics we HK movie fans know and love. Hopping Vampires… Taoist Vampire Hunters… a lovely romantic ghost girl… and two hapless boobs to scream and run around like idiots. Yep. They seem to have all the usual bases covered. So what the heck are you waiting for? Neko’s ready to spill the beans if you’re ready to “Read On”, o’ Gentle Visitor. Let’s get hopping!! :o

Ahhhh… good ol’ Wong Jing. If you’ve watched as many Hong Kong films as this wee lady then it’s a given you are already familiar with him,HK film’s answer to Roger Corman. Like Corman, Wong Jing has an undeniable talent for cranking out oodles and oodles of the goofiest, most exploitative films you’ve ever seen. Some good ones… and of course a whole lot of bad ones… but darn it if they aren’t mostly pretty darn good little moneymakers when it’s all said and done. For the most part they are pretty darn entertaining too… as long as Asian flavored “cinema junk food” is your cup of tea, that is. They certainly are mine… ;)

With all that in mind, I approached this particular film with the comfortable notion that I wasn’t going to get any real attempt to stretch my expectations to anything approaching “Oscar” worthy film making. Yep… I just wanted a quiet evenings movie watchin’ fun on the couch with my sweet wife… some giggles… perhaps a little rolling of the eyes, at least on Carolyn’s part… and maybe a whole lot of the goofy HK hopping vampire action I remember with fondness from the old 80’s and 90’s HK vampire films I watched back in college.

Yep. Can’t say my expectations were too far off either. What we get is a silly “buddy comedy” featuring two wannabee Triad gangsters, Big Nicky (played by Ronald Cheng) and the “Beavis” to his “Butthead”, his hapless Afro coiffed sidekick Boo (played by Philip Ng with, to me at least, an uncanny resemblance to Indonesian horror star Rizky Mocil). Oh yeah… it’s gonna be one of those sorts of movies… ;)

Anyways… the boys are about the absolutely worst gangsters in all of HK. Somehow though, they are actual working members of Triad Boss Brother Snake’s (played by Tony Ho) mob. Part of me figures they aren’t tooooo darn high up on the scale of minions, but hey… who says all Triads are created equal? As our story begins, we get one of those neat lil’ “Wong Jing” scenes… as the boys become tasked with saving their boss from certain death at the hands of his wife, who’s managed to get herself possessed by demons while engaged in a bit of “sexy fun time” with her hubby. He’s desperate to get her exorcised… as well as keep her from eating his… errrr… ahhhh… “tender bits”. Nobody else in the gang has any ideas about what to do and only Nicky and Boo are dumb enough to want to get involved in the hopes of raising their reps with the Boss. Waaay over their heads, the boys manage to do something lucky and call in Taoist feng shui master Charlie Jiang (Yep…. say the name reeeaally slow… then the pun will slap you in the face…) to do do job of clearing her up. Thankfully for the goofy duo, Master Jiang (played by veteran actor Yuen Biao) and his tough disciple Lingxin (played by “Coweb” star Jiang Luxia) are the real deal and in a downright wacky sequence that would have been right at home in any of the old “Mr. Vampire” movies they drive away the evil demons and saves the Boss. That makes our boys look like heroes… well… OK... maybe not exactly heroes, but at least not like the incompetent slacker boobs they really are. That put them in the position of being the Boss’s new “go to” guys when anything weird pops up. Like when rich TV executive Ah Keung (played by Kelvin Kwan) wants to arrange the unearthing and relocation of his grandfather’s burial site. Yeah…. seems his family’s fortunes are all the result of his dead ol’ granddad sucking up all the “luck and fortune” from the graves of those buried near him to benefit his bloodline, and now that it’s all exhausted, his personal fortunes depend on moving grandpa’s corpse to fresher digs where he can get back to stealing all that good karma from a whole new group of fellow corpses. Uhhh… OK. Ummm… Yeah… I guess that sounds like a plan. (Actually… it was right about this point in the movie where my sweetie gave me the first of those eye rolls and a “You’ve got to be kidding…” look. I guess the folklore is a bit goofy sounding if you aren’t Chinese… ;) )

Grandpa is a Jiangshi of course. I mean… apparently he was a real a-hole of a gangster when he was alive, and being dead only let him become even more greedy and evil. Naturally dealing with him now represents a whole mess of nasty risk… so of course the boys want the help of Master Jiang. Problem is… he’s already been involved with this once before years ago when he was his father’s apprentice and that attempt went horribly wrong resulting in his father’s tragic demise so naturally he wants nothing to do with it. However…. he is interested in our hapless duo thanks to a lonely ghost girl (played by Michelle Hu) who’s become smitten with Big Nicky. Nicky is clueless of course… he only knows that the mysterious beauty is inexplicably interested in him… but Master Jiang knows that a forbidden romance between ghost and human will only lead to misery. But hey… when has the threat of Divine Retribution ever stood in the way of True Love? ;)

Yeah…. yeah… so anyways, there’s a lil’ “Chinese Ghost Story” thrown in to our story right about here to lighten things up… but hey, since our movie is supposed to be all about vampire fighting and without Jiang to move Grandpa to his new digs, Ah Keung has to resort to hiring evil Taoist master Leopard Man (played by Ricky Yi) to do his dirty work. As it happens, he’s also the villain that has our pretty ghost’s funeral urn and her ashes, thus tying all our subplots together conveniently. You just know he’s gonna screw things up, set grandpa loose and pretty soon there will be a veritable plague of the undead to deal with. Now we’re talking….

The climax of the film takes place at the TV studio as the recently “vampirized” Ah Keung and his Granddad prey upon everybody there creating a veritable horde of hopping undead for our heroes to battle in proper CGI fashion. It’s an OK battle… with less of the hard fighting action I expected of a film featuring Jiang Luxia. Seems somewhat of a disappointment to have such a talented martial artist on hand and not utilize her more… oh well… Naturally all ends well and evil Grandpa gets destroyed and Big Nicky and his ghostly crush get to marry with the usual off color Wong Jing style humor for their wedding night. :)

So then… what’s the verdict? That’s a real question. By most standards this one is a typical low budget hopping vampire romp, but all the fancy CGI in the world didn’t really lend it any of the charm of those older films I remember so fondly. As a “Wong Jing” film it’s second rate at best… having a few shining moments of his trademark humor, but again…. nowhere near the equal of some of his classic earlier efforts. 6 of one… half a dozen of the other…. I suppose that’s really where this one sits then. Squarely in the middle, with a mere 3 “Meows” out of 5. Neither good enough to rise to the top nor terrible enough to sink into obscurity. Sometimes that’s how it goes. But at least it was a reasonable evening’s HK hopping vampire fun “old school” style… even if my sweet Carolyn still doesn’t think the goofy image of hopping corpse is actually scary. ;)

Leave you without a Trailer? Never… ;)

Time for another nostalgic trip back to a certain wacky Catgirl’s innocent childhood and a “Lil’ Kitten Classics” review of one of those films of my youth. Our subject this time? Why the 1983 Space Opera 3D epic, “Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone”. 3D? But… but… “Miyuki,” you ask, “Ummm… Don’t you reeeaaally dislike the eye wrenching torture of 3D movies?”. Yes, Gentle Visitors. Yes, I do… But as a wee girl, this particular one showed up at my local cinema in the early 80’s as one of that decades glut of such 3D films during the effect’s attempt at a revival back then. It was the legacy of those 80’s films that pretty much convinced me just how much I despised this particular film special effects gimmick.

Our synopsis? Ok.. ok.. just hold your horses, we’re getting to it. :) “In 2136, an intergalactic bounty hunter named Wolff answers a distress signal that leads him to the plague-ridden planet of Terra Eleven, where he teams up with a spunky orphan girl named Niki to rescue three shipwrecked women from the evil clutches of the sinister mutant cyborg dictator Overdog and his twisted minions.”

Yep. Nothing amazing or novel about this one. It pretty much celebrates the two-fisted pulp scifi serials of an era bygone combined with the post-apocalyptic feel of an Italian “Road Warrior” rip-off. Still, back then it really did make a certain lil’ kitten one happy, happy lil’ girl one hot Saturday afternoon.  However, you do have to realize I was all of 10 years old  the summer this one came along…. ;)

So… wanna hear about it all? Then hitch up your blaster, boot up your trusty android companion, and buckle up for the jump to hyperdrive and by all means… “Read On”!!

Yep it had been a while since I saw this one. But… as with all those crazy films from my misspent youth naturally as soon a a DVD for it became available, your truly had to grab a copy for her collection. That was a few years ago… but digging through my boxes of DVD’s the other day this one popped up and gave me a chuckle. So… that night, with a naughty lil’ smile, I casually remarked to my sweet wife, “Oh, Carolyn… I thought we might watch an old Molly Ringwald movie tonight. It’s been ages since I’ve seen one. Sound good?” ;)

Hehehe… I just know she was thinking “Breakfast Club” or “Pretty in Pink” or maybe “16 Candles”. Silly, silly Carolyn… she knows me better than that. Cue the theme song!! ;)

For the 1980’s, this was a pretty low budget B movie effort, but by goodness, looking at it you’d never know that. It was a film released by major studio Columbia Pictures, and actually had some pretty darn good actors and actresses scattered throughout its 90 odd minute run-time. That wonderful theme song was the work of Academy Award-winning composer Elmer Bernstein… the guy who also did the score for “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Ten Commandments”, and “The Great Escape” among others. Definitely an A List kinda guy. “Spacehunter” most definitely isn’t in the same league as those films, but it sort of shows the odd way that studios made their main income back then from relying on simple B movie films to bring in the majority of their profits at the theater rather than the way currently only big budget “blockbusters” seem to be seen as profitable and worth getting made today. And in this lady’s opinion… that’s a shame.

There was quite a bit of hype for this one back in the day, as it was the first of another wave of 3D films that staged a comeback right around then. Yeah… yeah.. I know… it had been tried originally back in the 50’s with those terrible red and blue paper glasses. Yep. The ones that combined those tinted images into a stereoscopic illusion that also made watching them an exercise in squinting at a blurry darkened film that occasionally surprised you with an effective three dimensional image. When you could actually see it that is. This time out it was gonna be different. That’s what the TV ads promised anyway. You still had to wear the dorky ill fitting paper eyeglasses, but this time the two images were combined from polarized elements that eliminated the freaky tinting you got from the older 1950’s Anaglyph 3D method. Problem was that the tradeoff for the lack of sickening color tinting was that the image was much darker and far less vivid. Luckily, “Spacehunter” was for the most part, a really brightly shot film… thank goodness. Back then my little eyes were much stronger… and I didn’t need glasses most times, so it actually sorta worked. Although I remember it did give me one heck of a headache by the time it was through. Anyways…

We start off our story with a big ol’ starliner traveling through the swirling gaseous rings of a double star system, the Crynos Nebula. Before you know it, freaky space lightning… “condensing nebular gasses”… make the big ol’ scoop engines blow up. Then there’s that whole “Titanic in Space” moment as sirens sound and everybody runs for the “space lifeboats” before the huge explosion wipes everything out. (Psssst!! Lil’ Miyuki was tickled by the idea that you could tell it was the future ’cause everything in the movie was called “Space something”…”space ships”, “space lifeboats”, “Space Garbage men”. ;) )

Well… most everybody on that big old ship dies. Except for the one lone mini shuttle that gets free before the huge boom. They zip along to the nearest “E-Type” planet for a crash landing. Yep. You guessed it… “E-Type” means Earth like. See? Just like a certain lil’ kitten, keep reading and you’ll be a futuristic space traveler in no time too… ;)

Naturally the three survivors on board happen to be some kind of hot bikini/ fashion models or something and now they need rescuing. Bad. Why? Because the only E-Type world near their cruise liner was the quarantined off limits plague colony planet Terra XI. Ummm… OK… now that’s a whole lot of suck. This is where even lil’ ol’ me knew our movie was gonna be kinda simple. We never even get names for these ladies. The DVD credits list them as Meagan, Reena, and Nova (played by Deborah Pratt, Aleisa Shirley, and Cali Timmins respectively) but other than running around in their tight little gold lamé spacesuits and screaming a lot, we don’t get much from them in the way of character or backstory. Not that they need it. They’re mostly here to be the “damsels-in-distress” for our film’s hero Wolff.

Right after they crawl outta their shuttle, some freaky mutants snatch them up and then we fade out and switch to our stalwart hero on board his space-cruiser busy harvesting “space junk” when the distress call comes in over the com. There’s a reward for the girls. 3ooo Mega credits. That’s a whole freakin’ lotta “space money”… even lil’ Miyuki knew that. So before we can say “Boo!!”, our hero Wolff (played by Peter Strauss) and his sexy robot girl friday, Chalmers (played by Andrea Marcovicci) fire up the engines and whoosh off to the forbidden world.

It’s a short movie… so that trip takes maybe a minute before our hero swoops in and lands somewhere in the dusty desert wasteland that seems to make up the majority of the planet. Yep… just like those goofy planets on “Star Trek”… They hop into a cool moonbuggy kinda jeep thingee with a raygun turret and roar off in search of the girls after burying the spaceship for safekeeping. Cool huh? I certainly thought so at the time. Watching it again… I still have to admit that the “Scrambler”… as they called it… was a pretty sweet ride. Even today, grown up me doesn’t have a driver’s license, but if I did, I know I’d want to drive something cool like it. Hmmm? Wonder how many miles it gets to the gallon?

Again they spend about a minute before running into the guys holding our trio of beauties (Hey… it’s short movie… they got no time to waste making with the long traveling montages…) and they seem to hang out on some goofy steampunk pirate-ship train combo thingee. Yep. I kid you not. Anyways, before they can do anything some of those motorbike riding mutant post apocalypse heavy metal warrior dudes show up and start shooting the crap outta stuff. They want the girls too. (I mean… doesn’t everyone?)

Wolff jumps in and tries to get to the girls first. but the wasteland raiders are pretty darn mean guys and faster than anything they’ve killed most of the fighters on the pirate ship train and snatched the girls off using rocket propelled hand-gliders. Shades of “Flash Gordon”!!

We lose Chalmers here… as her robot butt gets zapped silly by a stray laser blast… apparently they couldn’t actually afford an actress of Andrea Marcovicci’s status for too darn long… and our hero is pretty much on his own after some fairly weird dialog discussions with the pirate train guys. They all talk like crazy “space hillbillies” you see. Some kind of local slang that lets us tell them apart from all the “Earthers” like our hero. Kinda dumb, but again, lil’ Miyuki thought it was cool…. ;)

Ok… Ok… so… well these guys are no real help, so Wolff goes looking for the survivors of the Medical Relief Team that got dispatched from Earth back when the plague started. They are all pretty much dead… except for those that “went native”. Or their children… Like the plucky little scavenger waif Niki (played by a 14 year old Molly Ringwald) who Wolff meets after she tries to steal his cool jeep.

She’s mouthy… she’s smelly… she’s larcenous… and adorable in her own ragamuffin way. Naturally she weasels her way into joining Wolff as the token “native guide and scout” that all these stories have. She tell s him the girls have been grabbed by Overdog (played with over-the-top gusto by a heavily made-up Michael Ironside), the leader of the Zoners, a bunch of mutant freaks that rule the shithole that Terra XI has become. He pretty much terrorizes the Scavs… the human colonists who are now the wretched nomadic descendants of the original Earth Colony here. They have a big ol’ fortress. I mean… don’t the evil guys always have a big ol’ fortress? Ahhh… and she can lead him safely right there. Yeah. Sure she can… ;)

First there are the quick encounters with some more crazy mutant monsters… a nest of albino fat cannibals… a freaky dragon serpent monster… some vicious amazon “piranha women”… and an old rival of Wolff’s, Terran Sector Chief Washington (played by Ernie Hudson).

Eventually… and far faster than you might expect, we get to the Zoner Fortress of Doom where our heroes can survive the deadly “Maze of Death” (Think Thunderdome crossed with the obstacle course from “American Ninja Warrior” as designed by the serial killer guy from “Saw” and you’d be pretty close) and then battle the cybernetic monster that is Overdog to save the girls and make it out alive as the Fortress goes all “KA-BLOOOIE!!”.

Along the way, our gruff loner Wolff comes to care for spunky lil’ Niki, who also sorta starts looking at him as a father figure… Awwww… You just know they are gonna bond and eventually become a team. It’s just that kinda movie.

Yep. We’re not talking some really amazing story scripting here. It’s a really just a bare bones B-Western kind of plot transplanted to Outer Space. You’d never see this kind of simple B Movie released by a major studio these days, that’s for sure. “Guardians of the Galaxy” is kinda like it’s great great grand child in a lot of ways but with a waaaaay bigger budget and aspirations of being something more than simple Space Opera. Here the plot is thin… the characters cardboard and two dimensional stereotypes from oodles of old pulp comics and stories. But still. They are kinda fun. In that dumb way old “Flash Gordon” serials were. You’ve gotta have some childhood whimsy to enjoy this, but as a grown-up lady, I still enjoyed seeing it again after all those years. So did Carolyn, who spent the film laughing a whole lot and picking on me something terrible for even having a copy of this in my collection. I just wish it had still been in 3D… then she’d have understood. ;)

All in all. I’d have to give “Spacehunter” a fondly remembered 3 “Meows” out of 5. For a dorky film that plays like a Saturday morning space cartoon, it definitely took that tiny budget and tried to make it go big. The effects are good… the scenery and sets well filmed… and it’s loaded with actors and actresses that definitely make you feel they are having a good time with some fairly atrocious lines. Heck. That’s all this lady needs for some Summer movie fun. If it were to pop up some night on late nite TV, I’d say go for it. Mostly for the laughs… you won’t be disappointed.

I know… I know… By now you are all on the edge of your seats and wondering “Mistress Neko!! Please, please, pleeeaaase say there’s a Trailer for this one!!” Well.. you betcha there is. ;)

So… I know, I know…. I’ve been pretty much MIA of late at the ol’ Litterbox and haven’t been posting like I should. Again… Sigh….

I wish I had a single good reason for it all, but mostly I’ve found myself spending practically all my free time these last few weeks with my darling wife instead of on my own personal stuff. It’s amazing how much fun we’ve been having together…. almost like we did waaaay back in college. Our recent wedding anniversary really reawakened that sense of fun and companionship for both of us just like we had back in those days when we were young and crazy and completely carefree with the whole world waiting for us around every corner. It’s just soooo darn hard not to want to “play hooky” with my best friend every single minute of every single day….

Still, I do want all my Gentle Visitors to know that their Favorite Movie watchin’ Catgirl hasn’t given up on things hereabouts. There will be more posts soon… but first, I’m happy to announce that we’re taking off for another Adventure. A whole week’s Wilderness Hiking excursion to the mountains of New Hampshire. Yep. That’s right…  EEEEEEHH!!! Yes!! We’re Finally Goin’ Camping!!  :D

So that means we’ll be out of town starting tomorrow, but should be back from our adventures come August when hopefully… all revived and refreshed… I’ll be able to get back to being more active around here. (And maybe even with some wonderful tales to share of our experiences out in the Great Outdoors…)

Till then, stay well, and “Meow, meow for now!!”

My freaking goodness… It’s like my brain is stuck in the mud of late. I had soooo hoped to be all fresh and revitalized by our recent vacation that I’d finally shake this lethargy that’s gripped me for the last month and let me buckle down and get back to stuff here again. But despite being in a relatively good mood… with lots of energy and no real Life problems I still just keep find myself just running on empty lately when it comes to getting anywhere at the Litterbox.

Why the heck is that? Darned if I know. By now most of my Gentle Visitors must be firmly convinced I’m just chucking in the old towel or something. All I can say is that’s definitely not the case. I’m just mired in some crazy fugue or something. Bear with me… I’ll shake this mood somehow…. Goodness, I’m so neurotic at times…. :???:

If that happens soon, hopefully I’ll stop messing around doing my “Diary” post for our vacation… writing and re-writing it over and over again… and it ought to be the next thing I accomplish. Just when… now THAT’S the real question.

Yep… you aren’t imagining things. Just when you probably thought this wee Catgirl had completely disappeared off the face of the earth, I’m back. I’d love to be able to say I’ve been away because I got sucked through an eerie warp in space/time into an alternate dimension where a plucky Magical Catgirl Princess was desperately needed to stave off the horrors of the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse and bring peace and love to a alien world that had lost all hope….. But no such luck. Interesting things like that never seem to happen when you want them to. Too bad…. I’ll bet the amazing stories of my adventures would have been darn pretty sweet too…. ;)

Instead, all I can say is that I think that I’ve finally shaken the crazy funk that came to live in my head these last two months and I’m ready to get back to things here at the ol’ Litterbox once more. As to what it was… who the heck knows? Certainly not lil’ ol’ me… I’m more than a little goofy and neurotic at the best of times, this is just probably another crazy bit of the essential “me” bubbling up to the surface to say “Hellow”.

Anyways… I’ve got today and tomorrow off from work, and Carolyn is busy, busy, busy with her work now that college is back in session, so I’m going to try to do a couple of more posts while I’m fired up. Those of you who missed me…. keep your eyes peeled. ;)

Till then!

Seeing as I’m finally back on track from a looooonnng dry spell, how about we get back to things with a movie that’s been a looooonnng time in making it’s way to my DVD player? Sound good? Well then I guess that means it’s finally time for another trip to the Gothic wilderlands of old Russia and a look at the super late to actually get released, long, long, looonnng delayed, always just out of reach, never thought I’d actually ever see it, Russian remake of the 1967 classic fantasy film, “Viy 3D”.

Our synopsis? OK… OK… it goes sorta along these lines: “Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods somewhere in the hinterlands of the Ukraine. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world.”

Can’t tell you how long this one has teased me from afar. How about since waaaay the heck back around 2005 or so? Yep. This particular film has been kicking around in some fashion or another for well near a decade before finally seeing a release in it’s home country of Russia, let alone any sort of DVD that yours truly could lay her hands on. I had figured that would eventually turn out to be China, Thailand, or maybe Malaysia…. but nope. Just when I’d about forgotten to keep checking around for it, it turns up at my local Walmart under the somewhat goofy and WTF? title, “Forbidden Empire”. Oh well… no passing up a gift of the Movie Fairies… But was it worth the wait to see? One way to know, right? ;)

Our story starts out promisingly enough with what I’m assuming was one of the original scenes filmed for this one waaaay back in 2005. In it, we see a couple of peasant girls and their friends by a suitably spooky lake doing some sort of pagan fertility festival thing where they float some candles to celebrate something. Just what, I’m a little vague on, but luckily that doesn’t really matter because pretty soon all heck breaks loose as a hulking horned unseen “thing” causes one of the maidens to plunge into the lake and begin to drown. One of her friends shows up looking for her and gets scared absolutely shitless by her friend grasping at her from the waters of that creepy lake. Before they can both die, the monster pulls them from the seething fog-shrouded water and leaves them beneath a tree set ablaze by a lightning strike. When the next day rolls around, our rustic villagers… looking like most of those Slavic mobs from any old horror movie… find them. The dark haired beauty, Pannochka (played by Olga Zaytseva) is near death… able only to gasp out some cryptic last wishes to her father before expiring and her blonde friend Nastusya (played by Agniya Ditkovskite)… well she’s now a gibbering imbecile, her mind shattered by the horrors of their supernatural encounter. The grungy local priest starts throwing around the words “witch” and “Satan”… and heck you just know that’s gonna get all the peasants undies in a bunch. Wow… so… now that’s a pretty snazzy beginning for our story, right?

Then we hang an abrupt left. We’re suddenly in England where stuffy Lord Dudley (played by Charles Dance) bursts into his daughter’s bedroom to interrupt a bit of sexy funtime with our film’s apparent hero, traveling cartographer Johnathan Green (played by Jason Flemyng). Ummmm? Huh?

Yeah, yeah… unfortunately this movie likes to do that. Much of that I’m thinking is due to the long production time this film spent being made. Years worth, in fact…The result tends to make it feel like two different films crudely stitched together throughout from footage shot years apart at times and using two entirely different scripts. The result is at times jarring. The feeling you get is that the story started out as a straight classic horror movie, then got “re-imagined” at some point as a kind of “Van Helsing” meets “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” sort of horror/action mash-up. Why the Russians figured they needed an English hero for their Gogol inspired story is beyond me. Maybe they were thinking of the purely box-office possibilities for foreign film sales? If so, it’s an unfortunate and clumsy choice, story wise in this wee Catgirl’s opinion…

The bulk of our story then follows our logical, scientific cartographer as he takes his steampunk carriage stuffed with the latest in map making tech deep into the uncharted expanse of the wilderness beyond even the Transylvanian reaches of Europe and into the dark “Terra incognito” of old Russia. Here he becomes involved in the wierd goings on surrounding the death of Pannochka, her supposed “witchcraft from beyond the grave” and the truth behind our mysterious “beast with seven horns” who may… or may not.. be the Devil himself. There’s a local priest stirring up trouble, a definite power struggle between him and Pannochka’s father the local Boyar, lots of mistrustful peasants just waiting for someone to convince them to commence the sharpening of the ol’ farm implements and lighting those pesky torches. It all should be a pretty fun story, right?

Sigh…. unfortunately for me, it all kind of fails though, falling through under the sheer weight of a plot too darn crammed full of neat ideas and almost uncomprehendingly complicated plot notions to work well on any level. Does it want to be a straight adventure story? Ummmm, sort of. But our hero isn’t actually interested in becoming that deeply involved with any of the locals to form any real friendships or connections. Ok then. Does it want to be a straight up horror story? No, not really, all the great special effects aside, it teases about that more than seeking to scare anybody successfully. A pity, there are some really great possibilities here for that kind of thing.

Neko can’t really go into great detail as to what exactly is happening without ruining it but good for you, o’ Gentle Visitors, so let’s simply say the big “twist” upon which the whole story depends is ultimately a disappointing one, and one you and I have had forced on us plenty of other times by horror movies that don’t really want to be seen as horror stories….

Don’t get me wrong. This movie was actually worth a look. Worth the long wait as a great horror movie? Nawwww… Still, the images and ideas that sit at it’s core could easily be mined by others for some seriously good filmmaking if anybody was in a mood to give a knockoff a try. That film I’d probably enjoy a whole lot more. Your own experience may differ. This lil’ Catgirl? I’ll stick with the 1967 Soviet original.

The DVD itself wasn’t too bad. I wish the film had included the original Russian language audio option, but “Forbidden Empire” as it’s inexplicably titled here in the US, comes only on Region 1 DVD in a dubbed to English version. It’s widescreen, and thankfully free of all the 3D hijinx that would have probably ruined the experience completely for me and Carolyn. In cdue consideration, I can only award “Viy 3D” a paltry 3 “Meows” out of 5, mostly for the look of the film itself and some of the scenes that captured the charm of the original 1967 film and threw w in the special effects to make them work even better.

Not exactly the sort of film I’d hoped to see after waiting 10 years, but hey, at least I got to see it finally. Gotta take your victories where you can I guess.

Still think I could be wrong? Wanna see it for yourself? The have a peek at the Trailer, it’s a pretty one, that’s for sure…. ;)

(Sorry I’ve been sooooo darn tardy getting back for this but it seems I’m still feeling oddly out-of-sorts for some unknown reason… Honestly I just don’t know why… and that despite the title of the post, you aren’t going to get much of what it promised. My apologies in advance, but I’m going with this Diary post exactly the way it came out.)

So… the days are getting shorter, the nights colder, and the leaves are doing their annual colorful display and you all know what that means o’ Gentle Visitors? Yes, indeedy! Your Favorite Catgirl’s most creepy holiday, Halloween is almost upon us! Yay!

I know my mental lethargy has continued to keep me in it’s headlock of late but I’m hoping the fun I usually try to enjoy this very scary time of year will be the trick to break me past it and get my goofy butt motivated again. As always, I’ve been thinking to do my traditional Halloween Movie Festival Review series, and this time out our subject is “vampires”…. those blood drinking creatures of the night that have crept into just about every culture’s collective subconscious to become one of the universal critters that just about everybody knows and fears. Yep… oodles and oodles of movies, That’ll be the just the ticket for moi! ;)

What, you say? What else have I been up to these last couple months of relative obscurity? And what other “Tricks & Treats” might I have in store for this most creepy of months? Well… if you wanna know all that, you have to “Read On” and see just what sort of stuff a certain goofy lady’s been up to with all her free time then won’t you? ;)

Well although I haven’t been as chatty and available around the ol’ Litterbox as I usually am, I haven’t exactly been a big ol’ lazy slug. Nope. Our local colleges are back in session for the Fall semester and as it always is, business at the restaurant has swung back to our busy period again. Yours truly has had my hands full getting us back into the swing of things, hiring our seasonal kitchen help… part time dishwashers and prep people to fill out our ranks. Never a task I really enjoy, but oh so necessary. It’s meant for one or two additional shifts a week for me as I take care of the paperwork and details of running a kitchen. That alone pretty much filled up my August, and as always Carolyn was busy too at the college. Most of our free time? Well… my adoring wife and I have taken to spending lots of that being much more social than homebody lil’ me is usually comfy with.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m not some sort of introverted loner, “crazy-catlady-in-training” or anything like that, but know I definitely tend to prefer spending most of my time with small groups of close friends rather than being around crowds of strangers. Carolyn, now. Yep. She’s most definitely a social butterfly. Probably due to the fact that she’s always been comfortable meeting all those strangers. Not surprising given all the activities she did growing up. Cheerleader, swim team, debate club and the like. Now, me… I’ve always preferred those activities I could pretty much pursue all by myself. Anyways… now I find myself trying to share in those very social activities that my sweetie really enjoys, and I normally avoid like the plague, as much as I can. Especially since she’s always been so willing to do all the stuff I like… some of which I just know bore her silly.

So, rather than 3 or 4 nights of movie watchin’ on the couch a week, we now get out for drinks, dinner, and dancing a couple evenings instead. Being officially married has given Carolyn the comfort she’s needed to relax in public and stop worrying about what people might think about us doing all the stuff other couples take for granted. Her biggest secret is all out in the open for the world to see and so finally she’s dropped the invisible facade she’s always kept between herself and everybody. It’s wonderful how happy it’s made her and I would never think to rob her of the chance to spread her wings and fly, luxuriating in the feelings of freedom that it’s brought her. So of course I want to be right there with her and share in her new expression of herself. Of her expression of “Us”…. even if I find enjoying it myself a bit of a struggle at times. Darn it!! I’m rambling… and that’s not what I wanted to write about this time out.

Sorry… This is exactly the sort of thing that’s happened these last couple months when I sit to write and try to Blog. At this point I normally get all annoyed and delete things and start all over again, or just plain stop altogether and then promise I’ll get back to it when my mood improves. Except that doesn’t seem to happen. It’s like being trapped in a loop. Grrrrrrr!!!!

*******

Alright. So OK… I took a break for a while. Took a short walk, went to the coffee shop, had a warm steamy cup to straighten out my thoughts, and came back home again. But I’m not gonna just “delete” and start over. Not this time. Even if this isn’t what I started out to write. So… better or worse… here goes.

If you’ve been around the Litterbox for a while o’ Gentle Visitors, then you pretty much know I write in a very “stream of consciousness” way. I always have a general idea what I’m ready to write about, but I normally do it by just doing it…. I just write. Whatever thoughts come to mind just as I’m thinking about them. It may not be the best way to do things…. but it has always felt more “real”. Like having a conversation with somebody. Problem with doing things that way is that sometimes the thoughts and ideas that bubble up aren’t the ones you want at that particular moment. Like now. Now I can’t stay focused. Can’t feel inspired and motivated. Can’t understand… why. Even when I’m given super happy news from one of you, o’ Gentle Visitors, that has me so very giddy and especially pleased today.

What the heck is wrong? Why am I so unsettled and unmotivated and so trapped in that loop? Seriously. I literally have no reason to be this… “unsettled”. That’s the best word for it. I’m not unhappy. Not afraid of anything. Carolyn has noticed something, I know she has. Sweetheart that she is though, she hasn’t pushed me about my odd mood. Probably just assumes it’s one of my seasonal mood swings. That’s what I thought it was, and maybe it is. If so…. compared to the insomnia I get in the Spring, it’s a whole lot more annoying.

One thing I’m pretty sure of… it’s not Depression. Clinical or otherwise. I mean, I’m certainly not gloomy or sad or unhappy in any way. Chemical Imbalance? Heck… I’m not a doctor. Seeing mine soon might be a definite idea though…

Ummmm. OK. Still rambling. Definitely not what I want. The damn “loop” again…

I could keep this up all day, but I’ve a sense I’m gonna get nowhere fast. Here’s where I have to really decide whether to post this or not. Reading it back, it definitely makes me sound a little crazy. Not the impression I want to give about this.

Deep breath. OK. I’m going for it. Anyways…. really, really, really sorry if this isn’t the post you expected, o’ Gentle Visitors, but it seems it’s what I got this time out. Please don’t get all worried or whatever…. I just need to somehow figure this out, figure out what’s really bothering me, and everything will be back to normal. That’s the goal. That will happen. Somehow.

Till then, “Meow, meow for now.”

Well… weird funk or not, it’s time this wee lady forces herself to get with it and get back to what we do here at the ol’ Litterbox, and that’s reviewing all the goofiest horror movies any other self respecting lady would pass up in a heartbeat. It’s October… and as promised, we’re celebrating Halloween with my annual Halloween Movie Review Festival. This time out… vampire movies, and what better way to start than with my first ever Cambodian horror movie, 2004’s “vampire-witch with flying head” film, “Nieng Arp”?

Our synopsis? Ok… “In the middle of a long night, a young woman and her boyfriend are confronted by a group of gangsters on their way home. The girl is then violently raped and her lover is killed by the brutal action of the cruel gangsters. During her loss of consciousness, she later is possessed by an old vampire witch because the saliva of a witch’s head accidentally fell on her mouth, immediately making her part of the next generation of Arp ghosts. After becoming an Arp, she takes vengeance on the gang that raped her.

A group of students come to her house, discovering her true identity by unlocking several secrets in the basement under her lonely villa. One by one the students are killed by the Arp. However, all of the female students are spared. One male survivor does escape and manages to find a new way to be rid of the evil spirit of Arp and thus save his lover, who happens to be the Arp’s daughter, from inheriting the curse of the Flying Vampire”

Oooohhh!! Sounds like a winner. Right? At least it certainly did waaaay back when I first heard of it about a decade ago. However, Cambodian DVD’s are about as difficult for me to get here in the good ol’ US as they can be, so actually finding this one was a major undertaking. But… as with all things, that just means your Favorite Catgirl has to be patient. If I’m lucky, a film like this eventually finds it’s way into my grasp. Just this month, it finally did, English subtitles and all. So now… if you are curious about just how good Cambodian Horror films might possibly be, then just “Read On” and let this obsessive Catgirl tell you all about it. ;)

Well… although I usually prefer to find a DVD… or at worst a VCD… to be able to actually see this one I ended up encountering a Youtube video with embedded English subtitles. Not the best choice for viewing I admit, but given the scarcity of Cambodian DVD’s in my neck of the woods, sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. The nice thing? Well, it meant I’d watch this one by myself on my computer without having to subject my sweetie to what I had the sneaking suspicion might be a rather… **ahem**… primitive bit of film-making who’s appeal would be it’s sheer novelty if anything else.

One look on a quiet afternoon while my dear wife was at work convinced me I’d definitely made the right choice. Let’s be charitable, and simply say that apparently Cambodia’s film industry is still in it’s infancy… and that the “baby” has some serious growing to do. ;)

Story wise, we get a fairly simple plot, thank goodness. It’s set in modern Cambodia, out in the rural reaches of Battambang province. We start off as a young peasant girl struggles with the pain of going into labor, much to the annoyance of her neighbors and family. Seems she’s made the poor choice to have her baby on the one night that the local opera troupe is giving a performance. Seriously. She’s moaning in terrible pain, and obviously in need of help, but the only dialog we get is just how much missing that opera performance is cramping her mom’s style. Sheesh!!

She has the baby… but all this commotion has drawn the attention of this creepy old woman who turns out to be an Arp… yes, a local version of one of those crazy flying “vampire head witch” thingees like the pennangalan from Malaysia or the krasue from Thailand. It shows up after dark to swoop into her room and eat the baby, maybe snack on some menstrual blood or whatever. This is when you know the film is seriously cheesy, giving us this badly video superimposed woman’s head clumsily moving through the air with all the grace of a bad high-school Halloween prank. No… wait a moment… high-school pranks have gotten pretty darn sophisticated these days since computer skills have improved among our nation’s youth… this, on the other hand, is soooo much worse. Not even worse in that “so bad and stupid it’s quaint” way either…. this wee Catgirl just means the “special effects” on display really… and I mean really… suck. Not kidding ya…. No better way to say it. I just guess Cambodian audiences have way lower expectations, as this particular film is actually a huge box-office smash there. Seriously. ;)

Anyways… our vampire hag gets driven off by the villagers, and wounded by a spear which sends her and her drippy innards flying off to our next scene… Here, lovely local beauty Maya and her boyfriend are walking home from that big opera show they mentioned earlier when a group of nasty local thugs waylay them in the lonely jungle, kill Maya’s boyfriend and then proceed to violently gang rape her. After they leave her lying unconscious in the jungle to go do whatever it is nasty thugs do to celebrate a thing like a gang rape, the vampire hag crashes into the trees above her and some of it’s icky essence drips down into Maya’s mouth. Apparently that’s sufficient to pass along the curse of the vampire….

Sixteen years pass, and we catch up with Maya, who now lives with her daughter Paulika in the same village and who now transforms at night into our title monster to fly about seeking her vengeance on the thugs who killed her lover and violated her. Okey dokey then… all we need is some teenage victims to pad things out and we’ve got us a horror story, right?

Don’t worry. Right on schedule we get our requite college students on holiday to picturesque Battambang to do some school study on the ancient Khmer ruins in the area. We get the standard stereotypical group. Our handsome hunky hero Satha, his best buddy, the requisite gay guy… sigh… and two or three girls including the “brainy one” with a crush on our hero, her best girlfriend the “pudgy one”, and another one who just tags along to be an extra victim when the plot starts to drag. Names? Do you really think you need them? No, no, no… just move along… trust Neko, you’ll thank me. ;)

So of course, the gang needs a place to stay here in rural Batammbang, so naturally they stop by Madam Maya’s and get offered free lodging so long as they behave themselves and promise never to go into the basement. Oh… yeah… like that’s gonna stop them….

Anyways… in between Maya’s nightly jaunts to find and kill those gang guys, we get a chaste lil’ love story developing between pretty Paulika and hunky Satha, all the while our other kids keep seeing the creepy vampire head flying here and there. More terrible video compositing and a practical effect worthy of a groan or two: a truly awful dolls head with what I presume to be real intestines stuffed into it all hanging from a wire swung about enthusiastically by a boom guy. I tell you, Ed Wood would be sooooo envious… Hehehehe!!

The story drags…. None of the murders is particularly inventive or even scary. Our group of amateur “Scooby-Doo” wannabees can seem to figure out they are in danger until Maya get’s the idea they “know too much”. Weird given that she could easily have avoided “those meddling kids” by simply not allowing them to stay at her home. But… I guess we wouldn’t have had much of a movie then.

Well… do we at least learn any of the folklore behind our title monster? Ummmm? Not really. Pretty much the Arp wants to just fly around at night waving it’s innards about until some brave peasant figures out that if your guts are just hanging there it’s pretty easy to mess you up by using any of the standard pointy weapons of death to whack them. No silver weapons or sticky rice needed. I kid you not.

Whew…. how this movie managed to pad it’s run time to over two hours is soooo beyond me. I seriously was about done by the time I was half way through this snooze fest. But… I’d been searching for this film for over a decade, so your Favorite Catgirl bravely soldiered on till the well overdue and ultimately stupid finish. So then, did the evil Maya get her revenge? Do Satha and Paulika survive to live happily ever after? Do you even care?

Gotta say. I like trashy movies. But this one was the “Bataan Death March” of horror movies… an experience I’d never want to live through again. It just… plain… stunk…. My sweet Carolyn owed me some serious sweet kisses for sparing her this one… and promptly paid me in full after I told her how terrible it was. ;) This film earns a paltry single “Meow” out of 5, earning that one only by virtue of being so utterly silly that it will make almost any other movie I ever watch seem like a masterpiece by comparison. Thank you, o’ thank you, Youtube for making it possible for me to see this one without the indignity of having to actually buy it in any format. Sorry Cambodia, but it’s the truth…. Maybe there’s a worse film out there…. and I hear Nigeria makes some truly wretched ones…. but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to look long and hard to find that film.

Trailer? Not bloody likely for this one… However, as I said, the entire film is actually currently available at Youtube, at least until somebody complains, I suppose, so if you are so inclined, why not pop over there and give it a watch? But remember… it’s bad, and not in a “good” way.

“Bodiless Vampire” (2004)”

Well…. I’ve certainly been a lazy unfocused unambitious and downright blue mess of a Magical Catgirl of late. As much as I tried to shake it off and basically pretend it didn’t worry me, I couldn’t make it go away. Couldn’t make it stop. It really… and I mean reeeaally… started to scare me. Was I slowly going crazy? Was it some kind of depression? Was it gonna get worse? I had no idea. It wasn’t until my sweet Carolyn cornered me one evening last week as we slid into bed and let me know she’d noticed my uncharacteristically odd mood and wanted to know what was bothering me. Annnnd… I kinda lost it. Yep… started crying and couldn’t explain to her why I was so moody and sluggish and confessed finally that I thought maybe I was losing it. Going all loony tunes… “Cray-Cray”… whatever. Not understanding why I felt so weird all the time was the worst thing in the world. Now…. apparently Carolyn really was serious about all that “for better or worse” thing when we got ourselves married, and after letting me cry myself stupid she did what she does best and told me to stop trying to fight this mood all by myself and get some help. So, I plucked up my courage and went to see my doctor the very next day. After a few tests…. some good news… apparently I’m not going insane. Nope. Apparently Mother Nature has just decided it’s time for yours truly to enter the wonderful world of Perimenopause.

Ummmm? “Perimenopause”? What the heck is that exactly? I certainly had no clue. Now I do…. and if you want to know all about what goofy hormonal hazards this wee Catgirl has slid into the by all means, “Read On”…. (Heck… while I’m feeling chatty I might even get around to updating you all on my other recent Holiday antics… ;) )

So…. Upside is my doctor is pretty sure I’m probably not going to sink into an endless morass of depression and inactivity… or go all postal and start wasting mimes…. The downside of course, is that entering this phase of my life means that full blown menopause is probably right around the corner in the next few years, something no woman has ever looked forward to. Sigh….

Right now, apparently my symptoms are mostly mood swings and mild depression and alternating insomnia and sleepiness. Basically my hormones are all out of whack and my body is seeking to find that new balance I’m destined for. At first I was kinda surprised… I mean, I always thought I’d be in my 50’s before I had to worry about any of this stuff, but apparently at 42 I’m pretty much right on schedule for this. I’ve always had a particular sensitivity to seasonal changes, temperature shifts, and the like and my doctor tells me it’s not all that surprising that subtle hormonal shifts would also affect me deeply too. So what that means is that super sensitive silly lil’ me has noticed what is for most women an almost unnoticeable preparation for the “Main Event”. Oh, yay… the way this one has snuck up and grabbed me I just can’t wait for that to happen….

So…. it’s a few minor dietary changes, a bit more exercise and physical activity and an understanding that this sort of thing is likely to be an occasional addition to my quirky moods and personality. In fact, the doctor assures me I’m likely to throw this funk off fairly soon and be back to “normal”. Like as not I’ll merely be subject to these sorts of unexpected mood swings and insomnia one in a while and maybe a few other symptoms as I get closer to actual menopause. All in all, it’s been a huge load of my mind. I’ve honestly not liked the weird “disconnected” and “blehhhh” feelings I’ve experienced these last couple months. I had quite honestly begun to feel like a stranger in my own body and mind and that was a scary, scary thing. You may have noticed, o’ Gentle Visitors, but this wee lady really likes to have a good clear understanding of “me” and what makes me tick at all times. When I don’t have it, my neurotic side tends to assert itself.

I should be pretty happy…. after all my symptoms seem to be pretty mild…. no “hot flashes”, no incontinence, no nasty cramps, no sore places, and my menstrual cycle seems quite happy to keep chugging along just like it always has, although the doctor tells me that’s likely to change in time. Carolyn was relieved to hear there’s nothing really terribly wrong with me and even teased me again about me being the older of the two of us. That didn’t last long when I reminded her how close we are in age… oh yeah… it’s gonna get her too. Hah!! Didn’t think of that did she? ;)

Anyways…. that’s that. I’m really sorry to have to dump all this kind of personal stuff on all my Gentle Visitors, I know you usually drop by to share less weighty things but given how flaky I’ve been round here I figured it was only fair to explain why I’ve been so darn absent.

*****

So then. Enough discussing how I’m passing the “best by date” for my lady bits. Let’s move on to some of the usual Litterbox goings on.

How’s Halloween going for me then? Well, as you might guess, my lack of ambition and drive has pretty much shot that in the gut too for this year. Most of that was the result of the worry and fear I’ve been living with and trying to deny, and now that I have all that explained, I’m determined to push through and get back to my usual fun self again.

I realize I’m way behind on the month’s festival, but I’m still gonna try to squeeze in a couple of reviews this week, our first for the modernized lesbian vampire schoolgirl take on “Carmilla”, 2011’s “The Moth Diaries”. You can expect it sometime by tomorrow evening, once I polish it up a little and embed the pictures when I get home from work. Carolyn’s gonna be busy so I’ve the evening fairly much to myself for a change.

But what about Halloween itself? I know, I know… it’s less than a week away. No time for any big fancy plans for this year, but I’m hoping we’ll still be able to find some nice costume party to attend or at least plan a nice evening out dancing and partying at our favorite bar. Always a good time. Guess we’ll see.

Hmmm? Well. It’s late and my sweetie has already headed off to bed, so I suppose I’ll leave you all here and go join her for some quality cuddle time… so till next time out, “Meow, meow, for now!!”

Time to get us back on track here for our Halloween Fright Film Review Festival before we turn from pumpkins to jack-o-lanterns. This time out, how about some lesbian vampire schoolgirl antics with a peek at 2012’s “The Moth Diaries”? Hmmmm? Lots of virginal nubile young women and the always popular supernatural lesbian vampire threat from beyond the grave. Hey… it’s worked pretty well since “Carmilla”… so why not give this old idea one more try? ;)

Our synopsis goes like this: “As she begins a new semester, Rebecca is suspicious of the new girl at her boarding school, Ernessa. Darkly pretty and mysterious, she easily comes between Rebecca and her dearest friend Lucy straining their intimate friendship. But is Rebecca just jealous of Ernessa’s blossoming bond with Lucy, or does the new girl truly possess a dark and terrible secret desire to steal away not just Lucy’s heart, but her immortal soul as well?”

Vintage old private school… lots of precocious nubile girls on the cusp of womanhood… creepy goings on all surrounding the stereotypical mysterious beauty from old Europe… who may or may not be a blood drinking creature of the night. Yep. Sounds like oodles and oodles of horror movies this wee lady’s seen before. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but will “The Moth Diaries” do that old story something novel or new? Let’s all find out shall we?

So it’s pretty certain we’ll be on familiar ground with this one. We start out as our film’s heroine Rebecca (played by Sarah Bolger) arrives back at her private boarding school for the start of a new semester with her best friend Lucy (played by Sarah Gadon) and all of the other girls she’s befriended since the tragic suicide of her poet father landed her here some two years earlier. She’s happy to be reunited with them all and at first all seems happy and normal until the arrival of darkly mysterious English exchange student Ernessa Bloch (played by Lily Cole). Almost immediately Lucy is drawn by the new girl and her fascination grows, creating a rift between her and Rebecca who’s reaction to Ernessa is one of suspicion and distrust.

At first, this seems to be nothing more than petty jealousy at the growing loss of Lucy’s exclusive friendship, but as the story unfolds, more and more inexplicable things seem to convince Rebecca that something is very, very wrong with Ernessa… something dangerous and evil. Sounds like we’re getting ready for some serious spooky stuff, right?

Well… errrr… ummmm… not really as much as a certain lil’ Catgirl would have liked. Instead  of giving us the standard undead hi-jinx you might expect, things at this point proceed in a fairly “non-horrible” sort of way. In fact… they kinda plod along like the plot of one of those soap opera style teen dramas on TV. You know the ones I mean… Girl has friends… new cool mysterious sexy girl transfers to school and right away disrupts the clique stealing away all the first girls friends and causing all sorts of drama and catty bitchiness to ensue. Ick!! I lived through far more than enough of that kind of stuff in High School myself… I certainly don’t need it invading my vampire movie!! But darn it… that seems to be the main idea here. Sigh…

Ok…Ok… so maybe the movie thought it would be “different” if it tried to be all “Psychological” and maybe make it seem like our heroine might just be tip-toeing on that ever so delicate edge between sanity and… well… not sanity. I mean… supposedly there’s the whole understated and pretty underdeveloped subplot that maybe Rebecca might have taken her father’s suicide to heart and now secretly toys with the idea of following his example. Except that the story never makes our heroine broody and dark enough for that kind of subplot to seem credible. Well… so what if maybe it’s a “Psycho-sexual” examination of Rebecca as she’s becoming aware of her growing desires and her latent lesbian attraction to Lucy? Again… not really all that good a fit, despite the addition of hunky English teacher, Mr Davies (played by Scott Speedman) to serve as a counterpoint to any of that stuff. She seems interested in him in that goofy infatuationary way schoolgirls in these movies always seem to be for sexy older teachers even though for me, that whole plot element seemed awfully creepy. Apparently he’s just in the movie to give them an excuse to introduce the “Carmilla” story to our heroine as a possible catalyst to her probable mental issues.

Mostly that’s the whole problem with this one. It’s just not certain what kind of movie it really wants to be. It’s a fairly tepid horror movie…. hardly any blood or gore (Except for a dream sequence in which Ernessa slits her wrist and becomes a proverbial fountain of blood in the school library…)  or even any of the expected vampiric bits you’d think we’d get. No fangs… no bats… no girls with puncture wounds on their necks… just a lot of “wasting away” stuff and a couple of story notions that make Ernessa seem more like a ghost than a vampire. Like her one spooky scene where she’s able to walk through a solid glass window without opening it. Or maybe not… remember, this movie keep making you wonder if what we see isn’t all just some hallucinations in our possibly crazy heroine’s mind.

Well… is it one of those psychological dramas about adolescent alienation and social maladjustment? If so, it kinda really doesn’t succeed in that either. Grrrr…. well… at least it’s got all that risque titillating lesbian subtext going on to hold our story together, right? Ahhhh… wrong again. Although there’s one scene in which our groggy heroine awakens, covered in blood from what seems to be a really heavy menstruation only to look for help from her best friend and discovering her naked in her bed with Ernessa. It’s never made clear whether that was an illicit lesbian fling or a nocturnal vampire feeding attack…. who knows? Worse… it might even have been nothing more than a disjointed nightmare sequence jammed into the tale with no resolution or connection to anything else. Auuugghhh!!

Sigh…. through all this Rebecca slowly gets abandoned and separated from her supposedly close knit group of friends, one of which dies… accidentally in a fall… two of whom leave school for various reasons… and Lucy who basically dumps her closest companion to hang with Ernessa even as she sickens and dies from either vampirism or an eating disorder, take your pick. (Weird by the by, that the school would expel one of the girls for a single disciplinary incident, but not immediately have Lucy’s parents come to retrieve their gravely ill daughter at the first sign of her becoming sick… Nope. Not credible at all…)

In general, by about the last half of this one, I was pretty darn ready for them to wrap things up. It’s a shame too, because the film gets the visual elements just about right, and the casting choices were good as well, particularly Lily Cole as Ernessa. It all looks so right. Unfortunately it all sounds so wrong.

I’d tell you how it all wraps up, but that would ruin just about any chance you’d have if you still decide to give it a watch for yourself. Let just skip right to it then. For being a fairly “PG” rated film masquerading as an “R” rated one, with ill-defined story goals and fairly uninspired logic and no real conclusion I give “The Moth Diaries” a fairly well deserved 2 “Meows” out of 5. Should you want to see it, it fairly easy to find on most regional DVD formats, but I’d recommend you catch this on on cable TV where it probably belongs. Yep. That’s that.

Trailer? Hehehehe… would this wee Catgirl ever fail you? Never, my Gentle Visitors… ;)

Even though the snow is oddly absent round these parts, a peek at the calendar tells this wee lady that Christmas is right around the corner. As always, my sweetie and I are making our annual pilgrimage to Sandra’s so we can both bask in the warm glow of family for the holiday. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be gone for the whole weekend, but before we headed out I figured I’d break my streak of “silent running” to wish all my Gentle Visitors, on both our behalves, all the best for their very own holiday celebrations this season. <3

Yes, yes… I know…. I’ve been really missing hereabouts for the last couple months, but my recent personal hormonal spasms have been really rough and left me pretty wiped out and totally without either inspiration or ambition no matter what I seem to try. I’ve been hoping to thrash my way through it and get back to sorts but apparently… darn it… it’s pretty much transformed me into about the laziest, most procrastinating doofus when it comes right down to it. Grrrrr!!

Hmmmph!! Well… one way or another… I plan to shake this all off. Maybe Santa will sneak up and smack me upside the head and get me motivated, but even if old Saint Nick fails to do so, I’m determined to start paying attention to things ’round the ol’ Litterbox again once we return from our break.

No promises… (You all know how I always seem to fall through on those…) but I have really missed my blogging and my many Internet friends and want sooooo soooo badly to feel all goofy and normal again so I can share with you all once more. That’s my “New Years Resolution” for 2016 I guess….

Anyways… my bestest wishes and a big Holiday Catgirl Hug to you all and “Merry Christmas to All!!”

Well, Carolyn and I are back from our visit with Sandra and her family for the Holiday, and although our Christmas was a green one, it seems the snow and the cold (and the ice… wouldn’t wanna forget the ice… Brrrr!!) have finally found us here at home to finish out 2015 under a blanket of the frosty stuff. Naturally taking a couple days away from work meant that I’d be a busy, busy Catgirl for the first few days back home catching up on all my responsibilities. However…. I’ve missed my all my Gentle Visitors, and thought I might spend a quick post catching you all back up on things before 2015 slipped completely away from me. Even if my “inspiration” and “creativity” are still a bit dim these days….

So… ready or not… here goes!!

Ummmm…. yep… if ya wanna know what I’ve been up to these last few months that means ya gotta “Read On”, silly!! Some things never change…  ;)

Hmmm? So what exactly have I been doing away from the Litterbox all this time? Well… mostly wrestling with my newly arrived Perimenopause symptoms and trying to get a handle on them. My gynecologist assures me that I’m in the early stages, but whew…. I can’t even image what they will be like once they really get going. Lucky lil’ me, it seems, is just super sensitive to any hormonal changes and so I’m noticing my reactions much more acutely than most. She gave me a checklist of what I could expect, and I’m only experiencing a few…. thank goodness… but those are just a hoot. For those of you interested…. here the whole kit and kaboodle of fun my doctor says I might expect to see “coming soon to a theater near me”.

• Irregular cycles, shorter intervals between cycles (every 24 to 26 days instead of every 28 days) Thankfully, not yet. I’m as regular as usual, although since Carolyn and I moved in together, my period has slowly shifted later in the month as hers crept earlier until now both of us are nearly in sync most months. Mine is actually shorter in duration than hers and I’ve always been far less crampy and miserable than she is usually. Lucky me! ;)
• Skipped menstrual cycles (cycles every two to three months, then bleeding for two full weeks, rather than a normal flow each month) Also nope!! Thank goodness… this one just sounds like a real pain….
• Hot flashes. Haven’t really noticed any yet… Keeping my fingers crossed!!
• Night sweats. Also nope.
• Trouble falling or staying asleep. Ahhhh… now we’re in familiar territory. Quite a lot actually. Since I have a history of Seasonal Insomnia, I never noticed this one as being unusual even though this time out it lasted lots longer than it normally does and has been messing with me big time. My doctor says my normal Insomnia is probably always been linked to the seasonally triggered hormonal shifts that everybody experiences… apparently goofy lil’ me just feels it so much more intensely than most other women.
• Mood swings and/or irritability. Ha! Oh hell, yeah…. Neko has been an emotional, cranky… errr… ummmm… “bitchy”…. lil’ lady at times over the last couple months. I just figured it was because of the lack of sleep… This is that symptom that most had me thinking I might be going crazy…. I owe Carolyn big time for putting up with me at my worst.
• Depression. Yep. Definitely got this one… I thought it was just my occasional melancholy self coupled with those mood swings and aggravated by the lack of sleep. Nope… more crazy hormones making me feel everything too intensely. Grrrr!!! At least it explains my sluggishness and lack of motivation stifling my creativity.
• Breast tenderness. Thankfully no… My little breasts are happily fine and irritation free. ;)
• Decreased libido (sex drive). Happy to say no problems in this area. For me, “Sexyfuntime” is still both sexy and fun and just as frequent as always. In fact my mercurial mood swings actually mean that… on occasion… I’m actually extra flirty and affectionate. This one Carolyn actually noticed before me… and says she has no trouble dealing with. The naughty minx… <3
• Increased fatigue, which may cause difficulty concentrating or memory problems. Yep. Just thought I was tired. There are times I lack focus and feel “stuck in the mud”. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten simple things either… which given my earlier Depression seems to snowball into that whole cranky and irritable mood thing when that ball gets rolling.
• Vaginal dryness; discomfort during sex. Nope. Not yet… so far all is good with the “Lady bits”…
• Urine leakage when coughing or sneezing. Eeeewwwhhh!! Thank goodness no… this one sounds super gross and embarrassing. If possible I’d like to pass on this one entirely. Heck… I’ll even be happy with the last one instead…
• Urinary urgency (a pressing need to urinate more frequently). Peeing all the time? Seriously? Annoying, but thankfully not yet an issue. Still…. my offer above still stands. If I get to choose, I’ll gladly accept more frequent visits from the “Tinkle Fairy” rather than that whole leaking thing….

So then. What have I been doing to combat all these annoying symptoms? My doctor suggested a few changes to my diet… less sugar, caffeine and alcohol. Wait a minute…. less caffeine? But…. but…. Neko just loves her steamy morning coffee!!! Unfortunately I have to cut back on my coffee…. apparently coffee makes me wired and bitchy now…. so it’s only one cup a day from now on. Waaaahhhh!!! :'(

I have to get more omega-3s to battle the depression… that means more fish and nuts… no big prob. Neko loves her fish. ;) More beans and soy to enhance the ol’ estrogen receptors…. Sounds workable. Heck… sounds like I’ll be able to manage these pretty easy.

Ahhhhh… and exercise!! Gotta stay active… Yep. Gotta get the blood flowing and make all that endorphin and serotonin bubble around and keep the ol’ brain happy. That led to Carolyn finally getting her wish… those kickboxing classes she’s always wanted us to try. ;)

Warrior Princess Neko was ready for the challenge… but alas, although it certainly was a workout, after a few weeks of classes we discovered it was something I’d never really enjoy. I liked the exercise… even the whole “working the bag” thing, but practice sparring was far to stressful and intimidating for me. Even against Carolyn. I’m far too timid and hesitant to make any real progress. Fighting a total stranger makes me nervous and shaky and I’m too worried about actually hurting someone (or being hurt either…). And…. actually kicking my sweet Carolyn in the head? Even slow and careful? Nope… just can’t do it. Even if she coaxes me and tells me it’s OK to try. Even though I know we’ve both got gloves and pads and whatnot… I just struggle through the practices and it leaves me shaky, sore, and miserable by the time we’re done. Not really what we’re shooting for. Ahh, well…. at least I got a sweet lil’ pair of purple silk Thai kickboxing workout shorts out of the experience. Carolyn enjoyed the sport though…. and it bums me out that she decided not to continue the classes without me. She says she wouldn’t have fun without me there, but I still feel bad about disappointing her.

But exercise I sorely need, so instead of Kickboxing, we lucked out and got invited to join a Volleyball team the beginning of the month made up of some women from Carolyn’s college colleagues. Now… that I could enjoy! I’m tiny, compared to everybody else on the squad, but surprisingly… I’m actually pretty darn good at this! Tai Chi has helped me get really fit, trim, and flexible and that’s translated over to this sport really well. The play can be fairly aggressive at times, but never intimidating or scary for me at all. Had I known how much fun this was I’d have been doing it years ago. Finally… a “beach” activity I actually enjoy!! We play now, twice a week, on the off-nights from our Tai Chi classes right up at the gym on campus. :)

That has meant less evenings at home, of course, but worry not o’ Gentle Visitors… I haven’t completely given up “Movie Nite”. We usually squeeze in a movie or two each week, so don’t expect my reviews to come to a halt with all this new “extracurricular activity”. In fact… with luck I ought to get another one up by Friday. But, no promises…. ;)

Ummmm? Christmas you say? Hahahahha!! Don’t worry… I’m getting to it.

With Christmas falling on a Friday this year, both of us got to take more than enough time to make a good long visit with Sandra and family a real possibility. The weather was kooky, and when we left on Thursday it was in the mid 60’s with the warmest breeze blowing making it feel more like late fall than winter. We didn’t see a speck of snow the entire weekend until Sunday afternoon, when the weather turned suddenly and we were forced to head home early to beat a threatened blizzard and ice storm coming up from the south.

Sandra and the clan were happy to see us as always, and we were happy to see that she’s up and about and fully recovered from her nasty accident just like it never happened. She and the kids are back to normal and everybody was excited to see us again. With the lack of snow, most of our wintry wonderland outdoor activities were on hold this time out but we found ways to fill our time nicely. We even managed to slip in a family “Movie Nite” with a few DVD’s from my “to watch” pile that Carolyn selected before we left. Maddy and Adam always get a kick out of seeing some of the quirky foreign movie “gems’ that their Aunt Miyuki collects and we didn’t disappoint them this time out. Expect a review based on a couple in the next few days… ;)

There was a new face to see too. Maddy has a new boyfriend…. and he got to visit Christmas day. My goodness. I can’t believe how quickly they’ve grown up. Maddy will be starting college next year… she’s almost a woman now (and becoming the eerily spitting image of her mom in the process, but with Alan’s dark hair…). Sandra says this one is pretty serious too… Maddy made a big point of wanting him to meet Carolyn and I, her favorite Aunts. It was so sweet the obvious way she wanted our unspoken opinion on him. Daniel seemed really nice too and it’s nice to see Maddy find someone special to learn all the things a young girl needs to learn about first romance. I just hope this one turns out the way she deserves… Fingers crossed!

All in all, it was an excellent visit and both of us were feeling really happy and refreshed by the time Sunday rolled around and the weather forecast made it sound prudent to head back to stay ahead of the final arrival of Old Man Winter hereabouts. The storm turned out to less impressive than it was talked up to be, but better safe than sorry, eh? We definitely learned something from Sandra’s accident….

Well… that leaves us here in the last week of December 2015… and a new year looms ahead. Hopefully it’ll be a good one, but either way your Favorite Catgirl plans to try to make it the best she can, and hopes that all you will do the same. So, until next time “Happy Holidays and meow, meow for now!!”