Day Old French Cheese

So, yesterday morning brought about some unexpected news and as a result, the scheduled piece for that day had to be pushed back...to today. From the land of wine and cheese comes a piece of rather perverse horror from Jean Rollin. While I have never really checked out most of his films, I have in fact, checked out today's movie La Morte Vivante, or as the English speaking folks like to call it, The Living Dead Girl.

The beginning of this movie cuts to an industrial plant where a van with chemicals makes its way to an abandoned house to drop off chemical drums in the basement. Two of the three do this and decide to rob the coffins that house a deceased mother and daughter. A tremor and some chemicals that spill as a result awaken the daughter, who in short order pokes out one guy's eyes with some incredibly long fingernails and uses those same fingernails to poke through another guy's throat. A third guy gets badly burned by the chemicals. I don't know about you, but I don't unless the guy magically inhaled the gas from the chemicals, the worst that could have happened to him would be having part of his face disfigured. The daughter's friend arrives at the house after hearing a music box over the telephone. I can waste more time trying to make sense of the plot, but it sounds rather irrelevant compared to some of the gore in the movie, and did I mention naked people? The movie itself is mostly in French with no option for English, so subtitles are provided for the non-French speaking crowd. The daughter is somewhat wooden in the performance, but given that she doesn't begin to speak until halfway through the film and would likely have to have had an adjustment period after being dead for a few years, this is forgivable. For the most part, outside of the visuals, this movie is somewhat lacking in the subtlety department.