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| MOVIE
REVIEWS |
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The Living Dead Girl (1982)
[ La Morte Vivante ]
| TAGLINE |
| Seule, Hurlant Sa Démence Dans La
Nuit... |
Hot French babes! Full frontal nudity! An axe to the head!
A person in flames! Lots of blood! You think that these
things would add up to a pretty darn good zombie movie wouldn't
you? Well you would be wrong, at least in the case of this
bizarre and often ridiculous story of friendship that goes
beyond the grave, brought to us by the great nation of France.
I was going to make a sarcastic jab at the French movie
industry...but nothing is popping into my head at the moment,
and frankly, I don't feel like thinking of one. So here's
the place where you insert your own joke. Now back to the
review. I had gotten this movie thinking, or assuming rather,
that it would be in English. Now here's where you insert
your own little joke about me thinking that a movie from
France would be in English. Well the joke's on you, because
it was in English, at least most of it was. It threw
me for a slight loop because for the entire beginning of
the film, it uses subtitles, but once you get to the main
characters, it changes to English. Confusing at first, and
it doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it is.
The movie starts out with some inept Frenchmen bungling
the storage of some toxic waste goo. It's underneath a building
where there happens to be a coffin containing a dead girl
by the name of Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard).
You know what comes next...the waste is spilled. Oops! And
since everyone knows that toxic waste awakens the dead,
bad things happen. These guys weren't the sharpest knives
in the drawer.
The story unfolds as Catherine makes her way back to her
home, which is on the market to be sold, and gets in touch
with her best friend named Helene, from her "alive" time.
Of course Helene comes right over, only to find her friend
naked and killing people. I know what you're thinking, "A
naked zombie? There's no doubt I love zombies, but come
on, I don't wanna see that!." Well that's simply not the
case because this zombie is one hot dead chick. She gets
my vote for the Hottest Dead Babe Award. We get to see all
of her in her full frontal glory.
Jean Rollin decided that for this movie, dead people don't
decompose. After 2 years of death, Catherine's still lookin'
good. Maybe they had some makeup budget problems so this
was the easy way out. Actually, it was to make their illogical
story seem more credible. Had Catherine looked like a Fulci
creation, Helene obviously would know she's dead. Instead,
Helene just refuses to believe that her friend has risen
from the dead, even after she sees Catherine feeding on
the blood of humans. Helene seems to think that she's just
going through some kind of phase because she actually helps
Catherine to feed by going out and murdering people. Alright,
stop right here. Maybe it's just me, but this is friendship
taken way too far. You have to draw the line somewhere and
in my book, killing people so your friend can feed on their
blood is where the line is drawn! I don't care if you are
"blood" sisters!
That's really the story in a nutshell, there's not a lot
to it. Her friend is helping alleviate her pain by getting
her fresh blood. The side story is some lady photographer,
named Barbara, becoming obsessed with finding out Catherine's
identity because she saw her walking in a field back to
her house. The climax of the film comes when the photographer
finally finds her, but what happens next I won't ruin for
you.
The case can be made that The Living Dead Girl isn't
even a zombie movie at all, and you could make some very
good points on why it's not. One being the fact that Catherine's
preference is the blood of her victims, not the flesh, and
we don't get any indication that she's into brains either.
Director Jean Rollin has a history of making vampire films,
so this could be just another of his offshoots on that vampire
lore. The bottom line is that she's undead either way you
look at it. I prefer to put her into the zombie category
for the simple fact that she's awoken by toxic waste, an
oft-used movie method of zombification.
I can't complain about the acting on this one, it's actually
acted out generally well. The gore is in full force and
they do a good job. For me, the movie would have easily
been an average film, if only the story hadn't fallen so
short. So many things just didn't make sense and I simply
wasn't able to overlook them.
| RATING |
 
(Out of 5) |
| DVD
RELEASE DATE |
| November 11 1999 |
| DEAD KEV'S ADVICE |
| While this movie follows often defies logic and
common sense, its saving grace is that Françoise Blanchard
makes a fine looking zombie. If you dig "hot" zombies
(that's probably the only reason you like Return
of the Living Dead 3), then watch this film. Those
gorehounds out there should enjoy this one a bit.
However, those looking for a quality story should
look elsewhere. |
| ZOMBIE LESSONS LEARNED |
Things you shouldn't do for your friends no matter how much they need it:
1. Cover up their murders
2. Let them feed off your blood
3. Kill strangers for them to suck the blood out of |
| DIRECTOR |
| Jean
Rollin (Zombie Lake,
The Grapes of Death) |
| WRITERS |
| Jean
Rollin |
| Jacques Ralf |
| PRODUCER |
| Sam Selsky |
| CAST |
CHARACTER |
| Marina Pierro |
Helene |
| Françoise Blanchard |
Catherine Valmont |
| Mike Marshall |
Greg |
| Carina Barone |
Barbara Simon |
| Fanny Magier |
|
| Patricia Besnard-Rousseau |
|
| Jean Berel |
|
| PRODUCTION COMPANY |
| Les Films ABC, Films Aleriaz, Films
du Yaka |
| STUDIO |
| Image
Entertainment |
| COUNTRY OF ORIGIN |
| France |
| RUNNING TIME |
MPAA RATING |
| 91 mins |
Unrated |
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