Blood in, Blood out

Film: The Living Dead Girl ( La morte vivante)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

In many movies involving the dead coming back to life, the fact that this is happening is far more important than why it is happening. Sometimes, as in Night of the Living Dead, it simply happens and we don’t get an explanation. Other times, we do, and it doesn’t really matter that much if it matches anything completely ridiculous. Toxic waste, weird bacteria, whatever. It’s toxic waste in The Living Dead Girl (La morte vivante in the original French), which feels unique in the sense that our living dead girl in the title is not a Romero-style ghoul who creates other undead, but more of a reanimated vampire who requires blood to survive.

First things first—we need to get some toxic waste in position to revivify a corpse. We get that from a pair of men apparently delivery toxic waste for disposal. Rather than do their jobs, they stop at an abandoned crypt to put the waste there. While they are there getting rid of the waste and taking a few moments to rob the graves of the people buried in the crypt, a minor earthquake causes the toxic waste to leak, which causes one of the corpses to wake up and attack. Since this corpse, who we eventually learn is named Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard) has been dead for a few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that there is not a bit of decay or decomposition. Must be the favorable atmosphere in the catacombs.

Now awake and craving blood, Catherine returns to her ancestral home, which is on the market and being shown by a real estate agent. Catherine hides, but later comes out of hiding when the agent decides to come back to the house and have sex with her boyfriend; naturally, they become the next victims of Catherine’s hunger. Additionally, seeing the house for sale, Catherine’s childhood friend Hélène (Marine Pierro) calls the house and Catherine answers. However, since she can’t talk, all Hélène hears is a music box. She assumes this means Catherine is still alive and goes to the house.

And, of course, what she finds is a bunch of dead bodies and her dead friend not dead, but craving blood. After cleaning up her friend, Hélène starts to clean up the bodies, but Catherine is still hungry. Naturally, this means Hélène is going to take care of her friend, and she allows Catherine to feed on her, at least for a bit.

The monkey in this wrench are Barbara (Carina Barone) and Greg (Mike Marshall), a couple of Americans touring the area. Barbara managed to snap a picture of Catherine as she made her way back home, and when she asks around the town, everyone tells her that the woman in the picture has been dead for a couple of years. Naturally, this means that Barbara is going to have to investigate, which means that we’re going to eventually have a showdown between Barbara and both Catherine and Hélène.

If this was the entire movie, The Living Dead Girl would be a failure out of the gate. Fortunately, there’s a great deal more here for us to look at. Catherine ends up being far more than a reanimated creature desperate for blood to keep her alive. As she regains pieces of her memory and realization of who she was an now is, she starts to understand that she is truly something monstrous and should be destroyed despite Hélène insisting that she will do anything to keep her alive and seeking out victims to sate her hunger. What is initially a very giallo-esque horror movie featuring fountains of blood and eye gouging becomes something much more interesting in existential terms. The fact that Catherine understands what she is and fights against it is what makes her interesting. The fact that Hélène insists on keeping her alive no matter the human cost is what drives the film, and it is easily arguable that Hélène is the true monster here.

For as interesting as the idea here is, there’s a lot that doesn’t hold together. It’s one of those plots where things happen because plot rather than for any other reason. People act the way they do so that we can get the story that is planned for us rather than having the story come out of the characters acting in real and natural ways. You can’t have everything, I suppose. Getting a film that does a lot more than provide full-frontal nudity and gore is honestly a bonus when it comes to this era and oeuvre.

It’s worth noting that if you look through the filmography of director Jean Rollin, there is a long-standing fascination with vampires. Interesting then that this is a film with a clear vampiric connection but also clearly different from the norm.

Why to watch The Living Dead Girl: It’s a lot deeper than the initial nudity and violence.
Why not to watch: Not all of the pieces hang together very well.