THE LIVING DEAD GIRL

France 1982

Run time: 86 minutes

Director: Jean Rollin

AKA: La Morte Vivante

Studio: Films A.B.C

DVD release: Another World Entertainment

As children, Catherine (Francoise Blanchard) and Hélène (Marina Pierro) swore blood oaths that they would always love each other and, who ever died first, the other would follow. Catherine who was first to go and she was laid to rest in the Valmont crypt.
Two years later three men are illegally dumping barrels of toxic waste in the Valmont vault. After they have stabled the barrels they find two coffins, one of them being Catherine’s. They open them to rob the corpses of jewelry and anything else of value. Suddenly a small earthquake makes the barrels tip and the toxic waste run out. This reawakens the dead Catherine who now requires the blood of the living to survive. She leaves the burial crypt and walks home to the Valmont castle that has been put up for sale.
Meanwhile, Hélène who just returned to France from a trip pays the Valmont castle a visit, only to find Catherine and the dead bodies of the waste dumpers, the real estate saleswoman, and her boyfriend. When Hélène realizes that Catherine feeds on human blood, she begins helping her old friend by luring young women to the castle to provide blood, while trying harder and harder to bring Catherine out of her catatonia. Slowly Catherine begins to "wake up" and regains the ability to speak and to recognize the nature of her emotions. She also comprehends that she is an evil living dead girl, and refuses to drink any more blood. She begs Hélène to kill her, but Hélène refuses. Catherine just wants to rest in peace and Hélène, who remembers their blood oath, promise not to leave her, all though she knows what the consequences might be.

I have never been, nor will I ever be a fan of Jean Rollin’s work. There is no doubt he holds a special place in the world of horror cinema with his often awkward but poetic and gothic tales. But I have never been captured by a Rollin film and I know I may offend the hard core Rollin-fans here, but I find his films plain boring. The Living Dead Girl from 1982 is no exception. As with most of Rollin’s films, The Living Dead Girl sits between artistic pretensions and shoddy low-budget filmmaking. Still, you never really know what you’re going to get from a movie you’ve never seen. So despite the other Rollin films I had seen, I tried to keep an open mind. My main problem with this movie was that I didn’t find it interesting at any point. The very slow pace along with the simple and annoyingly tedious story and the one-dimensional characters made me doubt this film early on. Sadly it didn’t get any better as the film progressed. I’m convinced that this story about a re-animate blood drinking zombie girl could have been much better and far more interesting with credible characters that the audience could relate to and care about, a tighter storytelling and more and better fright moments. But in the hands of Rollin it all turns into a tragic love story and he neglects his audience by abandoning any real horror moments. I tried to find the beauty in the story and in Jean Rollin’s famous cinematography, but realized towards the end that random nudity mixed with a few bloody scenes and an overall dull and gothic atmosphere is all this movie contains.

The film’s rather weak and trivial side story deals with Barbara Simon (Carina Barone) and her American friend Greg (Mike Marshall) who is in town taking pictures. Barbara sees Catherine walking through a field and takes her picture from afar. She becomes so interested in her that she starts asking the townspeople if they recognize the girl in the picture. They all say it’s Catherine Valmont who died two years ago. Somehow this doesn’t stop Barbara from tracking down the girl in the picture. Carina Barone who plays Barbara is the absolute worst actor in this film, and that says a lot, as the rest of the cast isn’t the best either. All though the dialogue in The Living Dead Girl is more than simple, delivering believable lines and credible acting simply doesn’t succeed for Barone, and why she was cast to begin with, is a mystery to me.

The Living Dead Girl has some terrible make-up effects that truly ruin the effect whenever they appear, and leave you wondering just what Jean Rollin was thinking. The scenes with the revival of Catherine are executed with some laughable and very bad over-the-top gore scenes with eyes being poked out and a face being melted by toxic waste. It was some of the worst effects work and make-up I have ever seen and I was stunned that they obviously couldn’t make it better. Avid horror fans have seen much better in a no-budget underground film, no doubt about that.
 

Another flaw and one that is simply too glaring to ignore, are the corpses in the Valmont tomb. According to the men that are dumping barrels of toxic waste, the Valmont women have been dead for years. But strangely neither Catharine Valmont nor her mother has begun decomposing at all. I know it’s not Rollin's style and he likes to keep his beautiful actresses beautiful. Still, it’s unbelievable and no one in the film wonders why Catherine and her dead mother still look exactly like the day they died. Rollin also neglects to offer any explanation to this.

If you’re a fan of Jean Rollin’s work, I’m sure you totally disagree with me. But for a horror film this one fails as it lacks any real scary or frightening moments and the atmosphere is more romantic and gothic than dark and lurid. Put this together with some nudity, horrid make-up effects, bad acting and an overall dull and slow storyline and you have The Living Dead Girl.  

DVD:
The region 2 release from Another World Entertainment is the uncut anamorphic widescreen version in the 1.66:1 format. Considering the film’s age the image is surprisingly good, clear and free of dust and scratches. I did detect some ghosting here and there, but it was minimal and didn’t bother me at all.
This original French language version is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and all I can say is that it sounds good, but nothing spectacular here.
Special features are sparse and consist only of a slideshow with stills from the movie, the original trailer plus a trailershow for other AWE titles.

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