Sunday, July 24, 2011

Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)




Directors: Jesus Franco & Jean Rollin

Starring: Christina von Blanc, Britt Nichols, Rosa Palomar, Anne Libert, Howard Vernon

More info: IMDb

Tagline:

Plot: A girl arrives from London to visit her estranged relatives in a remote castle for the reading of her father's will. After a while she discovers that they are all in fact dead and her decision to live with them turns into a nightmare. Unable to leave she's drawn into a macabre underworld through visions of nude satanic rituals and her own impending sacrifice.



My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? NOOOOOOOO!

The plot summary on IMDb (above) is full of spoilers but you're never going to watch this (at least I hope not) so it doesn't matter. I don't care enough about this one to write a different one anyway. It's a snoozefest with some welcome doses of nudity. The story creeps along without much happening like many Eurosleaze/Eurohorror flicks from this era. We meet, as our lead Christina does, an unusual cast of characters at her ancestral home that are all very cold to the touch. Hmmmm.

Uh, Honey? Can you try not to look so excited? Thank you.

There is one scene that I actually liked. The lawyer shows up to read the will and his performance (or rather the voice actor providing the dub) is hilarious. Loved it. I laughed out loud. That was unexpected. Other than that, Bruno Nicolai's score isn't that bad.



Ohh! Ohh! Sacrifice me next!

Man, that cracks me up. So the movie really isn't terrible, it's just really, really slow and there's not enough of a story or anything else to hold any interest. An hour and twenty minutes in the film ends. Hell, it even says, "FIN", you know...at the end. Then there's this girl lying in bed (we never see her face but I guess we're supposed to believe that it's Christina) who wakes up and sleepwalks into the woods where there are a few people we've never seen take her and sacrifice her. Wait, wasn't she already sacrificed? I'm confused. Yeah, so that takes 11 more minutes. It's probably taken from some other movie. It felt like an extended deleted scene from another flick tacked on to pad this one. Either way, it's not worth a spit in context with this movie. If only the Extreme DVD release had any special features like a trailer or something that would keep it from being a coaster i could justify keeping it. Noop. I'm passing this video Ambien onto someone else.

Here's that 11 minutes.



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