Title: The Living Dead Girl (1982)
Director: Jean Rollin
Cast: Marina Pierro, Francoise Blanchard, Carina
Barone, Mike Marshall
Review:
My first experience with a Jean Rollin film was
Zombie Lake (1981), and obviously, if you have seen Zombie Lake then you know
that wasn’t the best place to start. Zombie Lake is a terribly boring Nazi
zombie flick. I’m guessing Rollin wasn’t too proud of that one since he worked
under the ‘J.A. Lazer’ moniker for that film. Calling a Rollin film ‘boring’ is
a common reaction amongst those who experience his films, because Rollin often
times went for dreamy atmosphere and slow paced scenes with little dialog.
Personally, I dig this kind of storytelling, the kind that relies more on stories told through visuals alone rather than dialog. ‘La Morte Vivante’, a.k.a. The
Living Dead Girl, a.k.a. Queen Zombie, is an amazing film told through this type of dreamy, slow paced little dialog type style, which fit this film perfectly. I’m trying to watch
a lot of Euro horror these days and catch up with all of these horror films
that I haven’t seen and I have to say, so far, I’m really diggin’ some of these
films. The Living Dead Girl is a fantastic lesbian vampire/zombie film, why did
I dig it so much?
Story revolves around Catherine Valmont and her best
friend Helene. They are two women who grew up together and lived through
various experiences during their childhood, like becoming blood sisters; the
old childhood ritual where two kids cut themselves, unite their blood and
become friends for life. One promises the other that if one of them dies, the
other will follow. Well, Catherine ends up dying and she is buried in the crypt
of her very own castle. Lucky for her that an earthquake spills a vat of toxic
chemicals near her coffin and the toxic mist brings her back to life! Catherine
and Helene reunite, but is Catherine the same old Catherine? Nope; now
Catherine is a member of The Living Dead! What’s Helene to do?
The Living Dead Girl falls in the same category as
films like Hammer films The Vampire Lovers (1970), Harry Kumel’s Daughters ofDarkness (1971) and Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983); these are all lesbian vampire
movies that for whatever the reason are all excellent horror films, very
artful, very well shot, well acted and interestingly enough, they never forget
to be horror films. The Living Dead Girl also falls in that strange middle
ground between a vampire film and a zombie film. The same thing happened to me
with The Revenant (2009) and Deathdream (1974). I simply couldn’t tell if these
films were zombie films or vampire films. For example, The Living Dead Girl
starts out with two grave robbers, stealing jewelry from the dead. While they
are down in the crypts, an earthquake erupts and a toxic spill brings back
Catherine Valmont from the dead. This opening sequence quickly brought to mind
Return of the Living Dead (1985) which also starts out with grave robbers and
chemical spills. The title, The Living Dead Girl also suggests it’s a zombie film;
in fact, one of this films alternate titles is ‘Queen Zombie’. But then, as you
watch the film, you see Catherine Valmont acting more like a vampire with her lust
for human blood. Just like a vampire, she hates animal blood and must feed on
warm human blood. But then she feeds on human flesh with the voraciousness of a
zombie, so yeah, to me, this is one of those films that falls in that strange
place that mixes vampires and zombies, though there were moments in which the films hints that its more of a vampire film.
As I watched this tale unfold, I couldn’t help
relating the dynamics between the characters of Catherine and Helene with that
of the passionately in love characters in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987). In
both of these films we meet characters that are willing to do anything for
their objects of affection. In Hellraiser, we meet a woman willing to bring
victims to her lover who’s just escaped from hell, so he can feed on them and grow
a new body. In The Living Dead Girl we have a very similar structure, Helene
starts bringing victims for Catherine so she can feed on them. She knows she’s doing
wrong, but she does it anyway, to please her loved one. Earlier I mentioned that
The Living Dead Girl portrays a lesbian love affair, but in truth the lesbian angle
is only implied. One gets this idea because Helene and Catherine are so passionate
for each other, willing to go to such lengths to please each other. They never
kiss or become intimate, but one gets the idea that they have because of their
obsession and obvious love for each other.
The Living Dead Girl is awesome for the same reason
that Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness was awesome, it mixes the art house film
with the horror film. The Living Dead Girl has these beautiful shots, haunting
imagery but at the same time it doesn’t forget that it’s a horror film and
suddenly, it takes outs its claws and reminds you. Yes my friends, I’m happy to
inform that The Living Dead Girl is a distinctively savage horror film.
Catherine Delmont has these long finger nails which she effectively uses to
kill her victims; wow, some awesomely gruesome moments awaits, in fact, right
from the get go you’ll be treated to some gruesome mayhem. In the end, it truly
surprised me that The Living Dead Girl was directed by the same guy who made
Zombie Lake, funny thing is both of these films were made months apart, how can a director go from crap to awesome in the blink of an eye? Ask Jean Rollin, because he knows how to do it perfectly well! This film is so superior! Francoise Blanchard does a great job as
The Living Dead Girl, she comes off as someone disconnected from being a human,
a tortured soul coming to terms with what she is becoming; a character that’s becoming
more and more instinctive and animal like in nature. And speaking of animal
like, this film has one of the best and most savages scenes I have ever seen of
a living dead feeding on a human being. It is such a savagely graphic scene, definitely
one for the books! This scene alone makes it worthwhile to seek this one out,
but in reality, the whole film is awesome. The only downside for me is that
some of the performances don’t come off as natural or particularly good, especially
when it comes to the actors portraying the Americans tourists, but for me this
was a small hiccup in an otherwise great film. Highly recommend this one!
Rating: 4 out of 5
I think Rollin just did Zombie Lake so he could finance this film.
ReplyDeleteBut that would mean that Zombie Lake was made with making money in mind, and how did they think that such a boring film was going to make money? Well, maybe all that T&A in it would do the trick...
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I agree, sometimes directors do make a commercial film so they can make the film they really want to make, like Rodriguez making those Spy Kid's movies so he can go on and make Sin City.
There was just the right amount of girl saying to other girl "here, let me wash your breasts in the moonlight" in this movie.
ReplyDeleteI suppose there could never be TOO much of that. If there could, Rollin would have tried.
Yeah, that scene was pretty cool, though I still think the lesbian angle was suggested, in that scene Catherine was so out of it that she wasn't even able to bathe her self, you could see it as Helene simply nursing her friend back to health.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the symbolisms in some scenes, for example, that scene where Catherine feeds savagely on a victim and suddenly Rollin splices in a scene of a vampire bat crawling through the walls of the castle, I thought that was a nice touch, this was one of the visual cues I was talking about that hinted at vampirism in the film.