Writers: Jacques Ralf, Jean Rollin
I can't think of many film directors that go about ruining great ideas with such enthusiasm as Jean Rollin. His films always feature interesting scenery (you know, country, nature, old castles, that sort of crap), vampires, zombies, some kind of implicit or explicit lesbian romance, gruesome killings etc... and all of them are mind numbingly boring. Honestly, I don't remember ever watching one of his movies without wishing to be somewhere far away, like Siberia or something.
Takes this one for example - there's this castle somewhere in France (I guess) and it contains this crypt where some people are buried. But lo! - some thieves accidentally spill some toxic waste in there and all of a sudden this young girl comes to life (you know, she was kinda dead before that, hence the title of the movie). There's also this dead old woman who for some reason doesn't come to life, despite being treated with the same toxic waste. So what does our newly alive friend do? Well, naturally, as in all Jean Rollin films, she has to drink blood to survive (even though she's actually dead - notice the paradox?).
But there's a "twist" - long time ago, this living dead girl was involved with some other girl, they were great friends, blah blah blah, actually I think Rollin implies that they were lovers, but of course we don't see any hot makeout session to convince us. Anyway, the zombie (vampire?) girl telephones her "friend", and she immediately comes to the castle and starts picking up unsuspecting victims to feed her friend/lover. This leads to some hilariously cheesy killings, but in between them Rollin insists on torturing us with some zombie lesbian introspective drama crap which I'm sure nobody gives a crap about because there are simply no steamy lesbian scenes to keep us interested. "Oh, I'm alive!". "Oh, I'm dead!". "Oh, life is so cruel!". "Oh, death is so cruel!". I mean, as Guns 'n' Roses would say - back off, bitch! We don't care!
As this semi-lesbian "drama" never develops into anything substantial, our only source of entertainment are the horribly directed murder scenes. Lots of people die and near the end of the movie I think some of the main characters (an irritating photographer and her even more irritating jerk of a boyfriend) also die and I think that the living dead girl decided that she's dead after all, but don't hold me on that, I don't remember the ending too clearly. I've already forgotten many things that happened here, and if I'm lucky, I think I might be able to completely erase this movie from my memory by the end of the year. You can do your part by not watching it in the first place. If I ever find a Jean Rollin movie that's not completely worthless, you'll be the first to know.
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