Originally posted on 7/11/20
This is definitely not your usual killer zombie movie, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you usually expect or demand from a killer zombie movie.
If you expect them to actually be good movies, then you may be out of luck. But if you merely expect them to be perversely entertaining, indigestibly icky, and sometimes downright disconcerting, then REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD GIRLS (Severin Films, 1987) might be right up your cemetery path.
There's a plot running through the whole thing--something about a greedy tycoon named Alphan (Patrick Guillemin) who hires an equally unscrupulous goon to illegally dump all the super-toxic waste that his plant churns out--that the filmmakers really spend a lot of time and effort developing until finally the living dead girls show up to get the blood 'n' gore party started.
But since director Pierre B. Reinhard and writer Jean-Claude Roy's previous work was largely in the field of porn, the pre-horror stuff includes a pleasing degree of titillation and nakidity as Alphan's secretary Brigitte (Véronique Catanzaro), who's quite a looker herself, hires attractive prostitutes to help her engage in blackmail and other schemes.
One of these is the contamination of the local milk supply which in turn creates the titular dead girls (those poor, milk-drinking lasses) who end up rising from their graves for some of that good old living dead girl revenge against Alphan, Brigitte, and just about everyone else who's even remotely involved with these dastardly doings.
This means that the film is a dizzying hodgepodge of industrial intrigue, sexploitation, and the goriest murder sequences (courtesy of the living dead girl trio fresh from their industrial waste-soaked crypts) that SPFX artist Benoit Lestang (THE WAX MASK, MARTYRS) could muster with his limited budget.
Such effects include some very cool-looking zombie masks for the girls, some shocking skewerings, a disemboweling or two, and something involving a pregnant woman that I don't even want to go into.
(In one scene, we actually get to see what it looks like when zombie girls decide to sexually molest a hapless victim.)
Director Reinhard keeps it all chugging along with a modicum of skill, somehow making his French production resemble a low budget Italian horror with what felt to me to be a distinct HORROR OF PARTY BEACH vibe during the largely unconvincing yet strangely riveting horror sequences.
The Blu-ray from Severin Films is uncut and remastered in HD for the first time in America. Audio is in French and English mono with English subtitles. Extras include an amusing interview with SPFX artist Benoit Lestand and writer Jean-Claude Roy, an interview with director Pierre B. Reinhard, a more SPFX-intensive interview with Lestand, and a trailer.
REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD GIRLS, despite its less-than-stellar production values and tendency toward what I'm compelled to describe as "cheesiness", is not only a pleasant diversion (pleasantly morbid, that is) for the undemanding horror aficiando, but has the distinction of ending with one of the most brazenly stupefying plot twists that ever had me scratching my head in utter consternation.
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