I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Ow My Mother Lovin' Freakin' Eyes

La Revanche Des Mortes Vivantes 

(Revenge Of The Living Dead)
aka Revenge Of The Living Dead Girls (1987) France

To celebrate the fact that this blog has had over 5,000 views which is something I never thought would happen (thank you very much my most patient readers) I wanted to do something classic, something unique, something good. Instead, I got this. Laaaaaame. Why did I even pick this? Because it has the dubious distinction of being France's first gore film. I can just imagine the conversation between those who wanted to make a horror film like the Americans and those who wanted to stick to what the French do best (translated for your convenience):

#1 "We need to do a horror film. Americans are killing young people with chainsaws, machetes - they even kill them in their dreams. We need to do that, make a lot of money." #2 "Yes, but it has to be sexy." #1 We need gore, we need scary things, even zombies and vampires and all those things that America is making money on." #2. "Yes, but it has to be sexy." #1 We need super special effects, lots of explosions and nasty looking characters. #2 "Yes, but it has to be sexy." #1 "All right, all right, we'll get a porno director to do it."

No joke folks, this awful attempt at a zombie gore movie was directed by a man who had done many pornos, some under different names. Apparently according to the French you can't have a horror movie without whores... There is very little zombie action and if you like naked zombies there is something very, very wrong with you. If you're thinking neat, a horror movie with porn - uh, what they try to pass of as sexy only looks sad and low, low budget. Now you know what you're getting into, but is there any good zombie action at all? The story goes like this:

I'm a good guy, really, poisoning milk isn't evil, right?

The Elm Dairy is running just fine in France, but overseen by a corporate company in Germany. Why would a German corporation care about a French dairy? Don't know, don't care. We start with a man driving a huge dairy tank truck who picks up a woman feigning an injury. They are followed by a mysterious man on a Suzuki (like the driver couldn't hear that). He pulls up to a - umm - some type of tall building and puts her inside for, since this is French, something that is going to amount to sex. We then see our motorcycle rider and the film's first of many (I didn't keep track of all) boo boo's when it shows the motorcycle across the road but the tanker is no longer there. In fact, to do his dirty work he has to hoof it a ways down the road past the building to get to it. He dumps a mysterious substance into the tanker. 

Only my hands show 'cause that's all we could afford.

Now we have a bride-to-be talking with her mother dressed in transparent underwear which shows absolutely everything, you know, the kind girls always wear in front of their mothers. She drinks up the rest of her cereal and milk and collapses to the floor dead. Ahh, shucks. They bury her in her wedding gown. The next day two girls are playing pinball in a bar and afterward, drink their strawberry milk (Strawberry Quick in a bar?). They fall dead. They're buried right next to the first one. The tanker truck apparently only had enough poison in it for three 'cause that's all the zombies you're gonna get. Oh and in France, you get fancy stone crypts and carved headstones instantly - no waiting. 

Wow, this is a sexy as, as, oh never mind, it's just nasty...

So our genius motorcycle dude, scared that people died 'cause he's not evil (yeah right) decides to dump the rest where it won't hurt anyone - the cemetery. Right on the three girl's graves. So you know what comes next - three fresh faced pretty girl zombies.... oh no you horndog, no go. These girls look as if they picked their 'green and ugly as hell' zombie masks out of the marked-down bin at the local Wal Mart (or wherever the French shop) and since I guess they had a very limited budget, only the first girl gets the nasty zombie hands, the other two have normal hands. They wander around in billowing white gowns (one a wedding dress I guess) and start wreaking their revenge. They really show their, uh, talents. They can ring a bell so the one about to get killed will let them in. They can swim the length of a swimming pool. They can drive a car. They can write with much better handwriting than I have. They can scream. They can have a foursome with an intended victim (down boys, this scene was as sexy as dead kittens). Oh, and for whatever reason (I suspect a combo of the porn factor with low budget) only their faces became zombified, the rest of their bodies which they were not shy to show was of, uh, normal naked girls.

Good for a peek but not enough to get help...

So the sex part of the movie was a bust, what about the gore? Sigh. Since you have to wait 21 minutes just to SEE a  zombie, imagine how long until there's any gore in what is supposed to BE a gore movie. Let's see - we get a high heel to an eye (not even barely convincing), a guy getting his, uh, most precious possession ripped off and thrown to the ground (didn't show much of that either to my relief), and one disembowelment (with small white intestines obviously from some small animal) for a brief moment. A car drives by, a man looks out his window at it and says 'How disgusting.' and drives off. Really? No cops, no help? And that's it. Less than ten seconds of gore in a 76 minute movie. How disgusting.

Oh I hate getting chlorine in my hair...

The motorcycle man, an ecologist (as if that makes any difference) feels so bad he wants to confess at a church (doesn't feel bad enough to go to jail) and asks the woman where to find one and we get our only good line "Just look for a steeple and the church will be under it!" That's it - that's the extent of any kind of wit. Somehow we get mixed in this a chemist with a 'zombie' hand because he was stupid enough to touch the waste without a glove and his 8 month pregnant wife, who somehow now delivers a 'zombie baby'. By this time I was saying 'What the hell?' so much I really couldn't pay very good attention to the rest of this horrible film.

This is supposed to be a zombie baby why now?

There's more subplot about some woman ripping off the company and somehow our driving zombies grab her (and the money) and zip off where policemen are waiting to flag them down (no shooting in France) and, I dunno, throw Molotov cocktails at the car or something to stop them. They almost flag them down (Why didn't the zombies just run right through them? You're asking the wrong person man...) and because they swerve to avoid the humans (?!?) they get movie-stupid and overturn their car. A policeman throws his Molotov cocktail and the car completely bursts into flames, movie style, and the stolen money does this weird dance and I couldn't figure out why it looked so fake until I found this on the IMDB:

Major movie goof: At the end, when the car is on fire and the money is "blowing away", you can tell the money is actually being dropped on the burning car and the scene is being shown in reverse - watch the fire and smoke go back *into* the car instead of blowing *away* from it.

Ah, so a perfect ending to a perfectly awful movie. But you didn't have to watch it and you're welcome.