La revanche des mortes vivantes

The French and movies about the living dead don't really seem to match together very well, do they? Remember "Zombie Lake"? Well, "Revenge of the Living Dead Girls" is almost as awful as that one, only it wasn't so fortunate to hoard a gigantic cult status and became pretty much forgotten over the years. Nevertheless, this is entertaining bad cinema in case all you're looking for is no-budget exploitation, sleaze and a handful of repulsive gore sequences. The film opens like standard zombie guff, with three recently deceased teenage girls coming back from the dead after toxic waste has been spilled on their tombs. The girls immediately go after the management of the local dairy factory since poisoned milk caused their deaths to begin with. Or at least so it seems, because the whole factory hangs together by fraud, conspiracies, scandals and bribery. There's a fairly ingenious plot-twist near the end but, until then, all we get to see is terrible acting, pointless red herrings and completely hilarious dialogues ("a little bit of necrophilia never hurt anyone"). The gory scenes, albeit amateurish, are effectively nauseating and offensive! Some woman gets her eyes poked out by high heels, another one poor soul gets a sword inserted in her vagina and THE most stomach-turning moment involves a totally random but incredibly bloody miscarriage in the shower. That was just too much! Proceed at your own risk...

In THE REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD GIRLS, the milk supply has been purposefully contaminated with toxic waste by an unscrupulous ne'er-do-well. We watch as various women drop dead before our eyes after imbibing the white poison. It's all part of a big cover-up!

Oops!

The same chemicals are eventually dumped in a cemetery. The very cemetery where said victims were interred! You guessed it, they quickly rise from their graves seeking vengeance!

The fetid females go on the expected rampage, slaughtering those deemed responsible for their undead condition.

While not the greatest zombie movie ever made, it does feature some rather disturbing scenes of violence perpetrated against the living...

A terrible ultra soft core porn / horror, exploitation film. Deserves attention because it is so bad. Thrill to the awful camera work! Be amazed at the end car stunt sequence which defies all logic! Be shocked at the sequence where an actor looks directly at the camera and laughs, flouting the rules of continuity! Love the wretched story line!

Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1987)

*** (out of 4)

Ohhh...how I love a good French horror and this one here offers up three beautiful French whores. Incredibly bizarre, surreal and sometimes disturbing film that sounds dumb but manages to pack quite a little punch. A company, not wanting to pay for their chemicals to be dumped properly, put some into a truck of milk, which eventually kills three girls. The girls then return from the dead to seek bloody revenge. There's a lot of political overtones that get somewhat tiresome but the real reason to seek this film out is due to the incredibly violent and sexual nature of the film. Men and women's genitalia are torn to shreds, eyes ripped out, beautiful naked French ladies and there's even a foursome between a prostitute and the three dead girls. The film is certainly campy but there's some terrific atmosphere. The alternate ending on the DVD is a jewel.

REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD GIRLS (Pierre B. Reinhard - France 1987).

The premise of spilling some toxic waste in awakening the dead is rather similar to Jean Rollin's girlie zombie flick LA MORTE VIVANTE (1981), in this case it's the spilling of contaminated milk that awakes three slumbering girls in a graveyard instead of one. Some even suggested Jean Rollin directed this one too, and that Pierre B. Reinhard was a pseudonym. Does three living dead girls mean more fun? Well, not exactly. Now, I'm not a big zombie fan, but sometimes it can be fun, even the bad ones, but the only thing this one delivers is a couple of truly sickening - but not too convincing - gore scenes, like a woman's abortion in the shower, a sword used as a dildo and some genital mutilation. Despite this, even gore lovers or those looking for a couple of laughs, better look elsewhere. In between the occasional and quite infrequent zombie action, we're treated with a hokum storyline, wooden acting and when talking atmosphere and cinematography, Jean Rollin's oeuvre begins to look brilliant in comparison. This one is plain dull, and Brigitte Lahaie isn't even in it. The pits.

Camera Obscura --- 2/10