drop dead gorgeous.

Only just gotten round to seeing this (slow I know) after being put off by the sub Diablo Cody style cover design and that fact that it sounded a wee bit like Teeth.

Only with a full female body not just a rubber fanny.

Ah, I love being one of those 'new men'.

Dead Girl (2008).
Dir: Marcel Sarmiento, Gadi Harel.
Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan, Andrew DiPalma, Eric Podnar, Candice Accola, a dog and Jenny Spain.

"JoAnn, I love you".
"Fuck you. Grow up".

Rebel without a clue Rickie (Fernandez channelling Vincent Gallo) and his 'bud' JT (the Skeet Ulrich-lite Segan) are the obligatory tattooed badboys at the local high school, hated by the cheerleaders and pummelled by the jocks on a daily (nay hourly) basis.

Think Grange Hill with better teeth.

Rickie, being the floppy fringed sensitive one, is totally obsessed with the big headed blonde JoAnn (Ex-Miley Cyrus backing singer Accola), his first kiss in grade school and his one true love.

Awww.

Unfortunately not only is she one of the schools golden girls but she's also engaged to star football player and owner of the slickest hair known to man, the monobrowed Johnny (DiPalma, a man constructed entirely of right angles). 

Deciding to skip class and go drinking rather than study and get some exams leading to a good job (listen to Uncle Ashton kids!) our dour duo head over to a handy abandoned mental hospital just up the road.

Thru' The Keyhole with John Leslie.

Creeping around the eerily empty wards JT does his best to freak his pal out before deciding it'd be more fun to chug weak American beer, jump about shouting "Woah!" and smash some windows.

As you do if you're a teen.

Everything is going swimmingly (well drunkenly) until a large hairy (and possibly very horny) dog turns up and chases Rickie and JT down a dark, damp corridor, up some stairs, passed the bins before finally losing our pissed up pals in the big scary basement.

Twilight for pikeys.

Deciding to explore the room for another exit rather than face the full arse tearing wrath of the mad dog our friends soon come across (not in that way, well not yet) what looks like a naked dead girl, spread-eagled, chained to a slab and wrapped in plastic.

So far so Lynch.

Having a good poke around under the plastic sheet, JT is surprised to see that she's not dead at all,  only sleeping - oh, and dribbling, moaning and trying to bite chunks out of anyone who gets too close.

Just like a normal girl then.

Rickie freaked out by the discovery wants to tell the police but JT has other plans.

Namely to keep her locked in the basement and have sex with her whenever he fancies, telling Rickie that it'll be "their little secret”.

What a lovely guy.

"And this is where you plug your MP3 player in!"

Cue ninety minutes of Rickie staring wistfully at JoAnn, sighing as his drunken stepdad talks about life and occasionally heading over (and down) to the basement to check on JT, who's quickly morphing from lank haired druggie to a comedy drunk, underpants wearing, slick-headed Pimp-Meister.

A Pimp-Meister with an eager new accomplice, long haired and behatted Wheeler (lead singer/songwriter of the band Falling Still, Podnar).

Unfortunately Wheeler can't help but brag about the 'sex slave' they have locked up in the hospital and it's not long before Johnny and his posse have bullied their way into the basement intent on tasting some undead arse for themselves.

Coercing Johnny into popping his cock in her mouth (as opposed to shite-ing in it obviously)  whilst his buddy has the proper 'vaginal sex' (Johnny doesn't want to be unfaithful to JoAnn, bless him) with the dead girl, it's only a matter of time before there's a case of nob-nibbling ahoy and muchos manly screaming ending with a wee bit of baseball bat and dead head interfacing.

With half the football team now knowing about JT's zombie pimping service and with Johnny's cock going a funny green colour it's only a matter of time before JoAnn comes a calling, desperate to find out what happened to her boyfriends penis.

Unfortunately for her the copious amounts of beatings and penetrations inflicted on our undead sex kitten are beginning to show (plus she's starting to smell like a cheese factory) but JT has the answer.

If he can get her to bite another woman, then the victim will turn giving him a brand new sex slave.

"Shite in mah undead mooth ya jock bastard!!"

In parts playing out like a particularly nightmarish version of Lemon Popsicle, Sarmiento and Harel's Dead Girl owes more than a nod to Tim Hunter's seminal movie of teenage alienation, the undisputed classic of the genre River's Edge.

Both films deal with the teen protagonists curiosity and pre-occupation regarding sex and death, and one that finally grows uncontrollably and violently as the stories reach their conclusion, questioning both our own and societies morals and beliefs along the way.


The only real differences are that Rivers Edge has by far the sexier corpse in Jamie, played to perfection by Danyi Deats - oh how I would sit and drool over her as a shy sixteen year old, the video remote cradled in my free hand - and also has quite possibly the greatest cast ever assembled for a film.

Whereas - and I'm sorry to have to say it - but Dead Girl is populated by actors that remind you of other actors and a zombie that looks like a young Adrienne Barbeau.

But without the frighteningly pneumatic breasts obviously.

As a 16 year old, this was my perfect girl....nuff said really.

On a plus point it does try to do something different with the undead genre and surprisingly (given the subject matter and advertising designs) actually underplays quite a few of the films more explicit scenes.

And for that we can all be grateful, in lesser hands this could have had all the makings of a cheap and tawdry sex-shocker (tho' I'm not saying that wouldn't have been enjoyable too) so kudos to all involved for staying true to the genuinely dark premise and although after much soul-searching and meta-textual musings on life, love and death the best they can come up with is 'males are nasty' they at least did it in a far more entertaining way than the utterly abysmal Teeth.

"Is it in yet?"

As it stands Deadgirl is the perfect first date film with something for the most jaded viewer; love, life, sex, death and the consequences of shite-ing your intestines out of your arse are all covered here, giving you loads to chat about as you enjoy your coffee and do-nuts afterwards.