I'm not super familiar with director Jean Rollin's films, other than the fact that they are usually pretty surreal, lush-looking, uh... French, and not afraid of the nudity. And The Living Dead Girl fits right in with that (rudimentary) understanding of the man's work. And now, I'd probably add disturbingly gory in a low-fi way to that list. But it all comes together really well here.
The Living Dead Girl kicks off with a couple of shady fellows trying to stash some barrels of chemical waste in an underground chamber. They must moonlight as grave robbers as well, because one of them knows that a wealthy mother and her daughter are there - not buried though, their coffins are just sitting in an adjoining room. So they break into the graves and begin stealing riches from the bejeweled corpses. Then a tremor knocks over a barrel of waste (with a convenient tap on the side), which starts to leak out. Unfortunately for the grave robbers, it's the kind of chemical waste that brings the dead back to life! Only the daughter however - she's in her 20s and is strangely un-decomposed, considering she's been dead for a couple of years. She can't really talk or anything - she just wanders around with a blank stare and kills people (her zombie powers allow her to just jam her fingers into people's flesh). She makes quick work of the grave robbers and begins to wander back to the nearby castle where she grew up.
Once she gets there, our dead girl Catherine is reminded of Helene, her dearest friend from long ago (in the flashbacks I assumed they were sisters). Conveniently, Helene happens to call and Catherine picks up the phone - she can't talk, but plays "their song" from a music box she just found. Helene knows something is up and rushes off to the castle, and is shocked to find that her friend is still alive. (She's also shocked that she's covered in blood with two nude dead bodies next to her.) The rest of the film revolves around Helene trying to help her living dead friend who hungers for flesh, and Catherine coming to terms with what she is as she slowly regains her mental capacity.
An since the movie would be pretty boring with just these two, we also get a bickering couple (a French woman and an American man) who happened to take a picture of Catherine shortly after she had risen from the grave. They are photographers, and are very much taken in by her unique look/expression. They want to take more pictures of her, so they try to track her down. These two are not really well-integrated into the film (they are introduced and then forgotten about pretty quickly - to the point where I said "oh yeah, those guys" in their second scene). But at least they propel the plot, as they present an outside threat to Helene and Catherine.
And overall, the film is pretty enjoyable. Much like The Battery from a couple of days ago, The Living Dead Girl is an unconventional and rather artsy take on the zombie genre. While it has its fair share of gore and gut-munching, at its core it's about the relationship between Catherine and Helene and the lengths they will go to maintain their bond. And to be honest, the story isn't really anything that special - it's really the vibe that Rollin creates that steals the show. There is a slow moving, quiet beauty to parts of this film. Shots linger and really take their time to develop (I think some would say it's boring), and it's a surprisingly quiet movie - there is next to no music on the soundtrack. But the overall quietness makes the (numerous) screams of agony and gore that much more disconcerting.
It's got a lot of qualities that people who roll their eyes at "art" films would probably hate. Not a lot of action. Soft lighting. Artsy nudity. (To wit - on imdb the first two plot key words are "blood" and "male frontal nudity," which is just ridiculous.) The cast is very attractive, but the aim seems to be both titillation as well as showing their vulnerability. And of course, subtitles. Interestingly, according to imdb they shot an English language version of the film with the same cast - Rollin would shoot his stuff, and then the cast would shoot the same scene in English under the direction of Gregory Heller. This version of the film is lost. Neat! (Although I find no other info on this Heller guy, so maybe it's all a bunch of hokum.)
But despite it's art-house appeal, it's without a doubt a horror film through and through. I was pretty surprised by the amount of gore in this thing. Catherine can kill her victims by simply jabbing her fingers into their skin. And just as shots will linger on one character gazing longingly at another, they will also linger on Catherine gnawing at a person's flesh. At first, you think "oh, that looks kind of corny," but the way the camera fixes on it makes things a little uncomfortable. It gets pretty messy - and Rollin is a big fan of blood pumping and/or spurting out of wounds. Even though it's more low-fi than the some of the American zombie films of the time, it works well. And the horror scenes are also the only time the film gets loud - the victims tend to scream in agony for longer stretches of time than I was expecting. One death (involving fire) is just kind of goofy, but otherwise the horror aspects of the film are well done.
The two main performances are pretty impressive - Francoise Blanchard (Catherine) and Marina Pierro (Helene) have the unenviable task of making an unreal situation seem plausible, but they make it work. Blanchard is especially good - as she gets to start the film as a blank slate, gains consciousness, and then slowly learns that she despises what she is. It couldn't have been an easy performance (if she's not emoting she's either nude or killing someone), but she does a great job.
Ultimately, The Living Dead Girl was an enjoyable film for me. It's well acted and directed and has a really fascinating vibe to it. It's an interesting example of a film that somehow manages to be both grindhousey and arthousey at the same time.
I would recommend this film.
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