Jean
Rollin's The Living Dead Girl (La Morte
Vivante) is, on the surface, as far removed from his
classic vampire movies as you can get. The story of a young woman
who is revived from the dead via a chemical spill, the film has
not of the trippy surrealism and strange eroticism of his earlier
work, instead presenting a rather more visceral tale that is heavy
on the gore, and where the nudity is less an integral part of
the weird atmosphere and more a part of the film's unfettered
excess.
On that basis, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is
a lesser work. The truth is rather different. For while the film
is certainly hampered by faults – not all of them down to
the director – it remains a truly remarkable work. A movie
of two seemingly incompatible contrasts – ultra-graphic
gore scenes and intense violence, mixed with a strange, melancholic
beauty that is very much what you might expect from the director
of The Iron Rose.
This clash of styles shouldn't work – but for the most part
it does.
Francoise Blanchard is the titular character, Catherine, who wakes
from the dead to off a couple of industrial waste dumpers before
making her way back to her childhood home, a now-empty chateau.
When there, she kills a couple of other people, but when her childhood
friend Helene (Marina Pierro, making a rare appearance outside
Walerian Borowczyk's films) arrives, the zombie girl starts to
slowly regain her humanity. However, she has a thirst for flesh
and blood, and the increasingly desperate and crazed Helene is
determined to find it for her. As Catherine begins to realise
the horror of her situation, she struggles to avoid killing, while
Helene – now the film's true monster – is becoming
more and more ruthless in her efforts to protect and feed her
friend. The story slowly builds to an inevitable tragic ending,
which is amongst the most devastatingly raw and emotional moments
in cinematic history.
Rollin
is helped in this film by his two leads – Blanchard is a
genuinely tragic figure, beautiful yet blank until she begins
to become aware of her condition, while Pierro's decent into madness
is something to behold. Their platonic love affair is all too
believable, and the tragedy of the story is made very real thanks
to their performances. Sadly, the rest of the cast are pretty
poor, especially the English speaking couple crow-barred in by
'American Version' director Gregory Heller, who are painfully
unconvincing and who get far too much screen time. It's to the
film's credit that it can overcome these handicaps, though I fear
some modern audiences might find the performances and some of
the clunky dialogue laughable.
The Living Dead Girl is not Rollin's best –
the bad parts see to that. But it remains a unique film, one of
the few zombie films to be more a melancholic, doomed romance
than an apocalyptic vision (interestingly, Brian Yuzna's Return
of the Living Dead 3 takes a similar direction, albeit
wedded to a more conventional horror story). As such, it's better
than you might expect, and despite its faults, the film remains
a personal favourite.
As with all Redemption Rollin titles, the Blu-ray comes packed
with extras – assorted featurettes and interviews with Rollin,
trailers and a 12 page booklet.
Jean
Rollin's The Living Dead Girl (La Morte
Vivante) is, on the surface, as far removed from his
classic vampire movies as you can get. The story of a young woman
who is revived from the dead via a chemical spill, the film has
not of the trippy surrealism and strange eroticism of his earlier
work, instead presenting a rather more visceral tale that is heavy
on the gore, and where the nudity is less an integral part of
the weird atmosphere and more a part of the film's unfettered
excess. 
Rollin
is helped in this film by his two leads – Blanchard is a
genuinely tragic figure, beautiful yet blank until she begins
to become aware of her condition, while Pierro's decent into madness
is something to behold. Their platonic love affair is all too
believable, and the tragedy of the story is made very real thanks
to their performances. Sadly, the rest of the cast are pretty
poor, especially the English speaking couple crow-barred in by
'American Version' director Gregory Heller, who are painfully
unconvincing and who get far too much screen time. It's to the
film's credit that it can overcome these handicaps, though I fear
some modern audiences might find the performances and some of
the clunky dialogue laughable. 