Micitype Pretty Good

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Woodyanders Beautiful deceased heiress Catherine (a strong and expressive performance by striking blonde Francoise Blanchard) gets resurrected as a tormented blood drinking ghoul by a toxic waste spill. Catherine returns to her castle home so she can be reunited with her fiercely loyal and protective childhood gal pal Helene (a fine portrayal by Marina Pierro).Writer/director Jean Rollin not only does his customary expert job of crafting a supremely spooky and melancholy gloom-doom atmosphere, but also delivers plenty of yummy female nudity and oodles of splashy graphic gore (the ref stuff squirts by the gallon from the severed jugulars of Catherine's victims). More importantly, Rollin also brings his trademark haunting and poetic sensibility to the intriguing oddball story, which in turn gives this picture an unexpectedly potent wrenching pathos as the unshakable friendship between Helene and Catherine gets put to the ultimate test prior to reaching an inevitable, yet still devastating tragic conclusion. Carina Barone contributes a lively turn as fiery and pesky redhead photographer Barbara Simon. A really strange, but affecting and interesting variant on the standard zombie/vampire horror premise.

morrison-dylan-fan With having discovered his work during last years October Challenger on IMDb's Horror board,I decided that one of my French fest viewings would be from Horror auteur Jean Rollin. Taking a look at a fellow IMDbers reviews,I spotted a fabulous looking Rollin title,which led to me getting ready to meet the living dead girl. The plot:Looking for a place to dump barrels of toxic waste,two grave robbers decide to put the waste in the crypt of an empty family castle (which since the death of Catherine Valmont has now become a tourist spot.)Putting the waste down,the robbers decide to open Valmont's grave.As they open the grave,an earthquake (!) takes place place,which causes the toxic waste to spill.Hit by the waste,Valmont comes back from the dead.Desperate for blood,Valmont drains the blood of both robbers.Stepping out of the crypt,Valmont starts to walk to the family mansion,in search of her childhood friend Hélène.View on the film:Made with an eye on the US market, (an English version was filmed at the same time,which is now sadly lost)director Jean Rollin & cinematographer Max Monteillet drive the film into an enchanting culture crash,by Valmont's Gothic Horror revival being surrounded by cars,cameras and phones,all of which allow outsiders to enter Valmont's world.Stabbing the movie with rough shots of gore,Rollin impressively makes the lingering effects shots pull open Valmont's feeling of being dead to the world.Weaving the childhoods of Valmont and Hélène in lavish flashbacks,Rollin soaks the film in a decaying fairy tale atmosphere,as elegant tracking shots cover the morbid silence from the Valmont castle,and restrained close-ups unveil the passionate love that Valmont & Hélène have for each other.Whilst being open handed with the gory sides,the screenplay by Rollin & Ralf takes an excellent delicate approach to the love between Valmont and Hélène,as Valmont's realisation over what she is leads to Valmont sinking into despair,and causes Hélène to try and keep Valmont safe from the outside world, until the utterly haunting ending breaks the wall down.Despite being called "Vain" by Rollin, Marina Pierro gives a fantastic performance as Hélène,whose longing love and desire to keep Valmont alive Pierro opens up with expressive body language.Taking on a role that Rollin originally offered to Teresa Ann Savoy,the alluring Françoise Blanchard gives a superb performance as Valmont,thanks to Blanchard's anguished face revealing the sorrow digging into Valmont and the aching,blood- drenched love of the living dead girl.

Vomitron_G Even with this being the first and only Jean Rollin movie I've watched so far (and having viewed a couple of trailers from his other efforts), I feel like I already have a pretty good idea of what this Frenchman stands for. While Rollin clearly is in the same league that produces – what many call – Euro-Trash movies, I think he is at least one step above Über-Euro-hack Jess Franco. Rollin at least has something Franco never had: The man's got style.LA MORTE VIVANTE (AKA THE LIVING DEAD GIRL) tries to be a lot of things. One could say it's got some sort or 'arty' semblance or contains poetic visuals (e.g. after Catherine sets free the wounded girl from the catacombs, look at the exterior shot where she stumbles towards the water – the way it is lit, the red boat in contrast with the green grass, the shadows separating that scenery from the concrete of the castle-wall on the right, her white dress reflecting in the shimmering water, the violin playing on the soundtrack). Of course, there's a lot of female nudity at display throughout the whole movie (and for the girls: there's even a male generously providing a glimpse at his ding-dong too). However, Rollin somehow manages to give it an 'arty' touch (e.g. after Hélène discovered the bodies of the dead couple, she walks in on a naked Catherine playing the piano – just look at the shot where she's sitting naked behind the piano, her back facing Hélène), while in any given Franco movie you can't do anything but pass it off as cheap sleaze.But all the possible merits this movie has, can't prevent you from feeling you are indeed watching a trashy Euro-Horror flick. The acting is barely tolerable, the editing is rather rudimentary and on top of that, the pacing becomes a bore sometimes. From the two main female characters, only Françoise Blanchard (as Catherine Valmont, the Living Dead Girl) manages to do a decent job. Her performance can easily be described as eerie, disturbing and captivating. Marina Pierro (as her life-long friend Hélène) on the other hand, fails to deliver. She comes off as uninspired and emotionless. During close-ups, it even looks like she's heavily drugged. Her gazing eyes made it look like she was on morphine during the entire shoot of the film. I might have gone a bit easier on the girl if she would've at least shown her voluptuous roundings unclothed, but she even failed to deliver that. The subplot with the foreign couple (both amateur-photographers in their role, and poor actors in the movie too) doesn't even lead to anything. In fact, they're quite annoying: All they do is argue about everything up until the point you just wish they'd break up and disappear from the movie. Well, actually… Them being in the movie does lead to something. While you might think that, with all their investigating, they will play a pivotal role in the plot, all they accomplish in the end is… getting themselves killed. Which leads us to the next thing this movie has to offer: The gore. Bloody gruesome activities happen on a regular base in LA MORTE VIVANTE. And while the blood-splattering, eye-popping, gut-munching, skull-splitting (by axe), throat-ripping (etc.) is all very enjoyable, the on-screen execution of the effects often leave a lot to be desired (i.e. you can see just a little too easy that it's all fake).So, yes, there's not much in this movie that really works well. Except for the drama-part between the two girls (and that's a strange thing to say for a sleazy gore-flick). The relationship between the two of them, and how it evolves, is very interesting and keeps me from calling the movie over-all boring. It's intriguing how things change between them, even in such a manner that by the time the movie ends, the roles of protagonist and antagonist have somewhat shifted. Catherine needs blood and kills, yes. But when the story progresses, she develops a severe aversion towards her actions. She becomes repulsed by them, so much even that she doesn't want to live (or should I say "be undead") anymore. Hélène, on the other hand starts providing her with fresh victims and near the end even starts killing anybody who comes too close to discovering their secret. So the drama between the girls is what almost makes this a good movie. That, and the ending. Now, I myself saw it coming even before the first act of the film was finished. The ending's predictability could be a big 'thumbs down' for the movie in general, but I must say I didn't feel all that negative about it. The execution of that final scene (starting from the events at the water, the shocking gore footage – for once looking realistic, Blanchard's performance, to the final frozen frame) is what saved the ending. And then the end-credits scroll the screen while a darkly ominous drone colours the soundtrack. A solid ending to a rather weak movie featuring one of the most ridiculous opening-sequences ever in horror history (which I failed to mention earlier in this review).

The_Void Prior to my viewing of 'The Living Dead Girl', my only taste of the master of erotic vampire films, Jean Rollin, was the low quality and overall less than brilliant 'Lips of Blood', and because of that I wasn't expecting great things from this movie. However, to my surprise this is a surprisingly good movie! The Living Dead Girl hinges somewhere between a love story (between two women, no less) and a very gory zombie flick and while it could easily have gone wrong, Rollin has created a film that will both shock, amuse and even touch you, and that's not something that can be said of many zombie movies! The plot is like an early blueprint for the underrated second sequel to Return of the Living Dead, and it follows a toxic spill that brings a dead heiress back from the dead. Naturally, being a zombie she brutally murders everyone in the vicinity, but it gets really interesting when we find out that before death, she and a friend were very close, and now that the heiress is back from the dead; the old friendship can be rekindled.On a technical level, The Living Dead Girl isn't all that great, but considering the low quality of the picture, it's not all that bad either. The script is rather trite, and the film is also rather oddly paced, as it starts off like any other silly zombie movie, only to mature into something much more interesting later on, which may annoy some viewers. The acting is surprisingly decent, which is good because one doesn't watch this sort of movie for great performances, so when there is one or two, it's a treat. The characters are definitely underdone, but the actresses make the best of them. Rollin makes best use of the actresses too, with numerous nude scenes, which help the erotic element of the movie no end. The lesbian undertones also help to up the sleaze level, which is fine with me! Finally, there's the gore, which is both striking and excellently done. Despite being over the top, it still manages to be realistic and the French director has proved that he isn't one to hold back the bloodthirstiness of a movie with this picture. On the whole, it's not for everyone...but if you like erotic horror sleaze with lots of blood and nudity; see this movie!