Unholy Women, a Japanese horror movie played at the unholy hour of 11:45pm on Saturday night. We brushed our teeth, put cold cream on our face, bundled up in our jammies and trundled over to the Roxie for the last Indie Fest showing of the U.S. premiere of this movie. Unholy Women is comprised of three shorts featuring some scary-ass women. Two of the vignettes employed the usual horror movie tropes; knife wielding ghosts, dead children, mothers who have gone bonkers and the always scary, looking-in-the-mirror-and seeing-something-frightening (besides your own bad hair-do) looking back at you bit--that makes us jump in our seat every damn time.

The second short, entitled Steel, was a horse of an entirely different color. A young auto mechanic is asked to take the bosses younger sister on a date. He shows up and finds a hot babe from the waist down, and a lumpy blob covered in a burlap sack from the waist up. We know it's confusing but think mermaid, only from the waist down it's foxy babe, from the waist up, think Idaho baked potato. We were a little jittery after the first short so it was a relief to laugh out loud at the scenes where the baked potato is running into walls and falling down into streams. And then our mood careened wildly to disgust towards the whole male species as the young mechanic, while clearly freaked-out by being on a date with sinister 'tater lady can't resist her hot legs sticking out of a tight black mini skirt and proceeds to go down on her. This is after he's witnessed a big green bug crawling out of her skirt while slyly scoping out the gams in the car. Jeez, we're not sure if this makes us feel better about men or worse. It either says men will do it with ANYTHING--since apparently even bugs in the cooter isn't a deal-breaker. Or, maybe the message is that even a lonely monster can find love (or at least a little nookie) as long as she's willing to tart it up with some red heels and a short skirt. C'mon girls--all it takes is a little bit of effort.

There's something familiar about the plight of Potato Lady--the tragic monster who wants love but can't help destroy the object of her desire at the same time. Which actually isn't a relationship issue exclusive to monsters when you think about it. Apparently, this movie played on Valentines Day too. A good movie for anyone who thinks their relationship is problematic. It's all relative.

By MiHi, contributing