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...

Yes, this movie is a French production but it really feels and looks like one of those cheap Italian zombie flicks, from the '70's. Funny thing about this movie is that it actually got made during the late '80's, though you really wouldn't had guessed that. The movie looks so old fashioned and got put together in a clumsy way. If this all would had been intentional this would had actually probably been a good movie.

The movie seemed so completely silly and random. It has a story you just won't care about and a bunch of characters you also can't care about at all. As a matter of fact the movie doesn't even have a main character or 'hero' in it. The movie keeps switching between a whole bunch of characters without making it apparent who is supposed to be the good guy here and they basically continue to introduce new characters for the entire movie. The movie also doesn't even turn into a zombie-flick until about halve way through the movie and when it does the movie of course only gets more silly.

Don't understand quite why a 1987 French movie is trying to be like an '70's Italian horror zombie movie. It has exactly the same ingredients and not just in its look and feel. It features plenty of nudity and gore, which the fans will still get a bit of a kick out off.

It's often the editing and directing approach that makes this movie a bad one to watch. It makes the movie at times embarrassingly bad to watch and unintentionally funny.

But yes, it is also true that as far as the genre goes, this really isn't the worst movie to watch. Like mentioned earlier, fans o the genre will probably still get a kick out off it, also since they won't care much about it that the movie is lacking a real good story.

Some more originality wouldn't had harmed the movie really. Not just with its story but also with its moments. If you have seen a couple of type of movies like this one, nothing in this movie should be too surprising. Still it needs to be said that some of the gore is being good at times, which shall especially please the genre buffs. The gore and killings within this movie are also really basically its only redeeming qualities. Make sure to watch the uncut version for this though.

A bit of a clumsy made movie, that gets unintentionally bad and funny at times but the fans of the genre shall still most likely enjoy the movie for what it is.

4/10

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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

This is one of those films that "irresponsibly" intermixes extreme sex and violence. This doesn't bother me, however, because the two things are like drinking cold beer in a hot tub--both are enjoyable but for completely different reasons. And just as no sane person is going to start bathing in cold vats of beer or drinking hot tub water, these kinds of movies aren't going to make gore erotic and sex repulsive, however much they mix the two. The real problem with THIS movie though is that it fails miserably both as a sex movie AND as a splatter movie.

Three nubile young girls die and come back to life as zombies either because some misguided environmentalists poisoned their milk with chemical stolen from a chemical company OR because the same chemical company is pouring toxic waste in the graveyard--the incompetently plotted movie never quite makes up its mind on this. The zombie girls have dessicated faces and hands but perfectly firm young bodies when they disrobe (which is very often). They are thus neither very sexy nor at all scary. Maybe this was meant to be an absurdist comedy, but I sure wasn't laughing. The non-zombie girls aren't much more appealing (how do you say "sleazy skanks" in French?). They kind of look like refugees from "Traci, I Love You" (Traci Lord's French-made, only-legal porn flick) except that their acting is not quite up to the level of 80's Euro-porn.

The splatter scenes are very puerile in their attempts to shock the viewer, resembling more the shot-on-video, sold-to-suckers-over-the-internet efforts of modern-day amateur filmmakers than the European horror masters like Argento and Fulci (or even the European horror hacks like D'Amato and Mattei). The director, another hardcore-porn refugee, apparently went on to helm the "French Lolita" (hardly a necessary film in the "zank 'eaven, for leetle girlss" French cinema).

Not a good film in any sense of the word , but if you're still interested contact me--I'll sell it to you, CHEAP.

I really don't know why this film has gotten such a bad rap. I personally had a blast with this one. It's total trash cinema at it's "finest" and after reading all the horrible reviews, was surprised to find how much I enjoyed it.

DEAD GIRLS is a strange combination of exploit style horror/crime caper. The town's milk supply is tainted with a chemical that causes those that drink it to die. Three girls fall victim to the bad milk and are buried in the local cemetery. Meanwhile, the sleazy chemical plant manager is paying to have toxic chemicals dumped and the guy doing the dumping chooses the same cemetery. The chemicals cause the dead girls to come back to life and they want revenge...

DEAD GIRLS is a fun, gory, sleazy "zombie" film. The best part (other than the high-heel-eye-gouging, penis-munching, undead-orgy-vagina-stabbing, and spontaneous-shower-miscarriage...) is the "twist" ending that really comes out of nowhere and is sure to throw the audience for a loop. The zombies in this one aren't your average, no-brain flesh eaters - these girls plan, hide, go for a swim, and even drive cars...and in the end, you'll understand why. Definitely not high-brow art, DEAD GIRLS is pure goofy sleaze at it's finest. 8/10