| Living Dead Girl Released: 1982 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Vampire Nuts and Bolts: Catherine Valmont rises from the grave a vampire. Now she must try to re-establish her identity inside of her family castle estate. Catherine is at war between her fading memories of humanity and her insatiable bloodlust. Summary: Okay, so we start off with three guys in a white van somewhere in France. These blokes work for some nuclear energy facility and they are dumping off some unwanted drums of toxic waste. They stop outside of an old mine shaft and roll one of the barrels onto a cart. The three go down into the shaft, which opens up into a much larger catacomb. Two of the guys stockpile the container before noticing that there are two coffins lying beneath here. They figure that whoever is buried in them must have some jewelry on them right? So they open up the first, which reveals a very fresh looking middle-aged woman. Next to her is the coffin of her daughter Catherine Valmont. Now while the two workers are busting open the coffins, an earthquake strikes. Conveniently enough the quake succeeds in knocking over one of the canisters. One of the workers stumbles from the shaking and lands in the toxic sludge. The other manages to open up the coffin containing Catherine Valmont. Catherine opens her eyes jutting her fingers straight up into the boor bastards face. With one deft maneuver she scoops out the lad's eyes letting blood spurt all over the place. Catherine gets up attacks the third Frenchman. She jabs her fingers into his throat, and his neck explodes with blood. Keen. Sometime later we meet a photographer named Barbara Simon and her American boyfriend Greg. The two basically spend the morning bitching about one another and talking about their respective careers. Barbara catches sight of Catherine wandering through the fields. (Apparently vampires don't have that sunlight problem in France.) Barbara thinks she looks pretty weird and starts taking some snapshots of her. She is now determined to find out who this girl is. Now we got to Valmont Castle. Mrs. Valmont is selling the property and she shows it off to a few prospective buyers. I guess Valmont must be a cousin or something to Catherine although the viewer is not made privy to this as of yet. Valmont and the couple leave after inspecting the property just as Catherine wanders in. Her memory is obviously a bit faulty and she has trouble figuring out her relation to the castle. She finds an old music box, which brings back memories of her childhood. Courtesy of flashback, we find that Catherine was extremely close to another girl named Helene. The two had made a blood bond with one another and pledged that if one of them were to die the other would follow shortly thereafter. Ya gotta love these wacky French suicide pacts. Later that evening, Valmont returns with her boyfriend. They get nekkid in front of the fire and begin humping the shit out of each other. Catherine is in the adjoining room and begins tinkering about with the ole piano. Valmont hears this and sends her boyfriend Louis to check it out. Once Catherine's presence is discovered she rips the throat out of each of them and begins lavishly drinking up their blood. She drags Valmont's ruined body out onto the front steps of the castle. A short time later, the phone rings. It is Helene who is now an adult and calling upon the surviving Valmont family. Catherine answers the phone but doesn't speak. Instead she plays the music box that had become so special to Helene and she when they were younger. Helene freaks out and instantly recognizes the music. She packs up her shit and heads over to the Valmont estate. As soon as she gets there she finds the body of Valmont and Louis. She is amazed that Catherine is still alive but becomes disconcerted to discover that her friend is mute. Helene washes Catherine down and takes the bodies downstairs into the basement. This is where we learn that the Valmont basement leads to some catacombs, which are connected to the mineshaft where Catherine's coffin lies. Helene finds the bodies of the three workers. Realizing that Catherine is a vampire, Helene offers her arm to her to drink from. Meanwhile back in town, Barbara Simon is obsessed with finding out who this girl is. She shows her photograph to a score of people but they all tell her the same thing; it's impossible that she took a photograph of Catherine Valmont because she died two years ago. Barbara decides to hitch a ride to the castle to see if the person she photographed really is Catherine Valmont. Now while all this is going on, Catherine is clearly suffering. She screams like a harpy and proceeds to squeeze her own tit. I'm not really sure why she does this, but she seems to have this strange loving obsession with her own left breast. She twists her tit about thirteen times throughout the course of this flick. Helene tries to get her to remember her past life, but it is very clear to her now that Catherine is not only a space cadet, but also a vampire to boot. She tries to help her friend out by going into an aviary and killing a pigeon for her. But Catherine shakes her head no indicating that that just won't do. So Helene hits the pavement looking for fresh victims with which to feed her friend. She fakes having car trouble in order to get someone to stop for her. A driver stops and offers to take Helene back to Valmont Castle to pick up some petrol (We call it gasoline over here. But you know the French…they gotta bastardize ALL of our hip trendy sounding words). Catherine pounces on the meal ticket and does that whole throat-stabbing thing. She also goes to great pains to make sure she delicately rips out the ladies intestines. Cool. Shortly after her mid-afternoon treat, that interfering nosy bitch Barbara shows up. Barbara talks to Catherine and tries to get through to her. Helene discovers this and doesn't take kindly to pesky French broads busting up into her shack. The two women wrestle around a bit and Barbara flees the castle. No, I'm sad to say that no boobies flop out during the bitch-fight. Catherine starts freaking out saying that she wants to die. That night, Barbara finds Greg at a local fair. She tells him of her experience at Valmont castle. Greg probably could give less of a shit what this dizzy bitch is involved in. As the two talk they find Helene wandering through the crowd. Barbara points her out and the two try to track her down. Helene meanwhile, has found her next victim. She invites a young woman back to the castle whereupon she locks her in the basement/dungeon. She ties her to a pole and begins slicing her belly up with a long blade. Catherine watches on in horror. Helene is getting ready to feed the little piggy to Catherine when she hears a ruckus upstairs. Yup, you guessed it; its that bitch Barbara again. Helene runs upstairs to intercept. Catherine meanwhile can't abide what she has done and can no longer accept her friend's 'gifts'. She frees the screaming wench from the pole and lets her go free. Helene chases Barbara and Greg up on to the battlements of the castle. She stabs a lit torch into Barbara's face setting the ho on fire. The flaming ho wails about and pitches her ass off the battlement into the moat. Greg tries to stop Helene, but she slings a medieval battleaxe into the poor chap's face. (Ahhh…the convenience of living in an old castle. There are battle-axes aplenty lying all around the joint!) Helene goes back to Catherine to look after her. She finds Catherine trying to drown herself in the moat. Helene rescues her and pulls her back on land. Catherine finally convinces Helene that she is truly dead. She is NOT a living person any more (Helene has problems accepting this apparently). They recall their vow made years ago when they pledged that if one were to die, the next would follow. This movie ends pretty much how I expected it to. Catherine decides to take one last victim, and of course it's Helene. In an extremely over-done scene, Catherine begins savagely eating Helene's throat on the steps of the castle. She really digs her meal too because she is voraciously tearing at little strips of flesh and blood is spurting everywhere. What happens to Catherine after this point is unknown. Acting/Dialogue: Okay, I'll warn you ahead of time, this is a foreign flick. Rather than crappy dub over work they resort to just using sub-titles. If you're the type that gets turned off by reading a movie, then you'll probably not dig this film. But to be honest, the dialogue is rather empty anyway. You can pretty much follow everything that's going on even without the benefit of sub-titles. The actress who plays Helene is kind of wooden and she hardly ever emotes. But she does supply a couple of decent scenes when she tries to play off a 'normal' person who is constantly scheming against her peers. The characters of Barbara and Greg are completely annoying and are at best ignored. If you have a DVD player, just chapter-scan past their scenes. You won't miss anything. Gore: Typical schlock-gore at its finest. The gory bits in this film are a hard pill to swallow, but they're a lot of fun nonetheless. This is actually one of the more violent vampire flicks that I have seen. What makes it so is the excessiveness of the gore. Catherine mutilates a victim's throat and there is so much blood that it actually comes off as kind of comical. Overall the wet works are pretty fake looking, and they appear similar to the kind of stuff that you are apt to find in a Lucio Fulci movie. Guilty Pleasures: There's an ample supply of boobies found here and to be honest, what Euro-trash horror film would be complete without them? If you ever wondered what a Frenchman's pecker looks like; we have that too. The Good: What makes this film interesting is that director Jean Rollin really put a lot of heart and soul into this picture. This is a completely angst driven movie and a lot of the drama is played out through Catherine's body language. I like watching her wrestling with her own memories desperately trying to recapture her humanity. The highlight of the film though is the dynamic between the two female leads. Helene is so dedicated to her friend that she is willing to do anything to ease her suffering. She more or less figures out that Catherine is a vampire and she has no reservations about killing small animals or even humans as a means to appease her. But what Helene doesn't seem to get is that Catherine doesn't WANT to be fed! She's disgusted by what she is and the revelation of her own existence causes her great pain. What makes this relationship so intense is that you learn that Catherine is not really a monster. She's just a poor (rich) girl thrown in to a totally fucked up circumstance. Helene on the other hand slowly evolves into a true villain whose focus does not seem to extend beyond the comforts of her friend. As I was watching this, I thought for sure that Rollin was going to go the lesbian-vampire route with these too. After all, they were EXTREMELY close and they were awful touchy-feely throughout the course of this movie. However, rather than take the easy and more libidinous route, Rollin preferred to illustrate them as two women who shared a (platonic) intimate past together and had grown to love one another in a sisterly capacity. In retrospect, I actually appreciate this approach to the characters' dynamic more than if he had simply turned them into a pair of carpet-crunching neck slurpers. By avoiding the overtly cliché lesbian route, Rollin succeeds in creating a much more intense drama with Helene and Catherine. There are thematic qualities going on here, which are a lot more complex than what you would typically find in your indie Horror flick. I always get a kick out of seeing how different screenwriters handle the vampire mythos. Firstly, I have to question whether or not Catherine is really a vampire or if she's just an attractive looking zombie. As far as vampires go, practically all of the old mythology is thrown out the window. Aside from the first five minutes, she doesn't really need a coffin to sleep in. We see her sleeping in her normal bed several times. She also doesn't have an aversion towards sunlight. Barbara snaps a picture of her in the middle of the day. Catherine doesn't have the obligatory vampire fangs and as such doesn't bite people on the neck in order to open a wound. Rather, she has long pointed fingers with sharp nails, which she uses to puncture the front of her victims' esophagus. From there, the body basically becomes a water fountain and Catherine is free to drink at her leisure. So if you are a traditionalist, and you rent this movie believing that you will find fangs, crucifixes and Romanian accents, you will be very disappointed. The castle itself is really cool looking. It's your typical gothic architectural style with some smatterings of medieval thrown in for good measure. I actually would have liked to have seen more of it. The castle has a lot of personality and I really would have loved to learn some of the history behind it. The Bad: The worst parts of this movie are the characters of Greg and Barbara. Not only are they about as annoying as a hemorrhoid on a Saturday night, but they are completely useless as well. At first I was led to think that they were going to be fairly important towards exposing Helene's plot. But ultimately, they served as being little more than additional victims. Not that there's anything wrong with upping the body count and thereby cleansing the gene-pool, but for as much screen-time as these two losers had, I thought that they were going to contribute a little more. The ending was also a tad unsatisfactory. In many ways, it works well albeit predictable and it's a nice way to cap off the Helene sub-plot. But I would have liked a little more sense of closure following Helene's death. What does Catherine do after she bites Helene? Does she try and commit suicide or does she try to eke out a life inside the castle? Do people ever find out about her victims? Will Catherine ever be discovered? Will Catherine begin massaging her right breast rather than her left? These are things that MUST be accounted for! I realize that in the long run, these are questions that are really quite arbitrary, but as there is not going to be a sequel to this flick, I would like to have known what happens to Catherine at the end of this movie. Catherine's origin is also a bit ambiguous. On the surface, it would appear that it was the toxic waste that turned her into a vampire. But this doesn't make a lot of sense. The toxic waste never even touched Catherine's coffin. It didn't even come near it. So we are to assume that she was turned into a vampire prior to the beginning of the film. But that opens up an even new line of questioning. Who turned Catherine into a vampire? For all the flashbacks she was having, surely she would have remembered the one who turned her right? And what about Catherine's mother? In the beginning of the flick, we find her coffin lying next to that of her own mother. As the lid is removed we find that her body is likewise perfectly preserved. This would indicate that she too is a vampire. However, she never rises from her coffin and no future mention is made of her. Is Mom the one who turned Catherine? Why didn't she rise from her coffin as Catherine did? And why in the name of hell are the rich inheritors of the Valmont estate buried in some cave underground? Wouldn't they be buried in a regular cemetery or mausoleum somewhere? Too many questions. Overall, Living Dead Girl is an interesting flick detailing the rise and fall of our own humanity and dedication. It's definitely worthy of viewing at least once, but I don't see a lot of re-watchability potential here. Great Lines: None. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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