i don't (french) fancy yours much.

Been searching thru' the Arena archive for reviews of zombie movies featured in The UnDeck playing card set in order to have a handy mini-review of each of the films therein for folk who care about such stuff.

I'm not sure which is harder tho', trawling thru' pages of my barely literate ramblings or having to cut out all the mooth shite-in/laugh now comments to make them readable.

So taking a break from such endeavors last weekend I took a trip into old Glasgae toon (that's Scotland, in England near to Buckingham Palace and Europe for our American readers) to take a look around a place called 'The Barras'.

For those of you who aren't local, try to imagine a market stall version of Mos Eisley selling everything from knocked off pork to car doors and you're a third of the way there.

Whilst there I came across (not literally mind) a bearded old woman selling clothes pegs, country and western CD's and old VHS tapes.

Not being able to resist varicose veined vixens I just had to take a quick peek at her ample wares, so imagine my surprise when I found this:


Yup, a copy of tit-tastic La Revanche Des Mortes Vivantes on dusty old VHS and for only £1.

It was then that I realised that it wasn't featured in the UnDeck on account of being far too shite.

Imagine that.

Needless to say I had to buy it, unfortunately it also means I have to rewatch it and share my thoughts with you.

And possibly show my distinct lack of French language skills.

Apologies in advance.

Revenge of The Living Dead Girls (AKA La Revanche Des Mortes Vivantes. 1986)
Dir: Pierre B. Reinhard.
Cast: Véronique Catanzaro, Kathryn Charly, Sylvie Novak, Anthea Wyler, Laurence Mercier, Patrick Guillemin, Gábor Rassov and Christina Schmidt (not Christian Schmidt from Neighbours).

The time: the late seventies by the look of things, the place: a rainy, overcast road somewhere in the arse end of France, a blonde bimbette hitchhiker (wearing the cross country regulation outfit of stiletto heels, fishnets, suspenders and fur coat) is picked up by a pube haired man in a big jumper driving a milk van.

So far, so foreign porn like.

Pretending that she's sprained her stick-like ankle getting into his cab she persuades the driver to carry her to a deserted barn where our hitch hiking whore slowly lifts her skirt to see if driver Dan can see any bruises.

Whilst all this is going on a mysterious biker arrives and pours a bottle of Fairy Liquid into the milk.

Tho' God only knows why.

Fearing the audience may blow their load too early, the director sensibly cuts to a hideously decorated kitchen where an old lady is chatting to a transparent lingeried young girl who's busily glugging milk from a bottle like a bairn clamped onto it's mothers breast.

Within seconds of finishing the bottle she keels over.

Dead.

Liquid in mah milk!

This mysterious death is swiftly followed by a shockingly bespectacled, larged hipped bird in a pub and another girl who is so plain as to make her instantly forgettable.

It seems that a trio of bad men (and a bad lady) were blackmailing somebody rich (I don't know/care who) regarding the toxic waste that their evil lemonade mines were producing.

Probably.

Unfortunately the cash-grabbing plan started to unravel and given the choice of dumping the waste in a bin or pouring into the local milk supply, one of them bizarrely chose the latter.

If that wasn't enough excitement for you it now seems the very same chemical waste that killed the girls has somehow turned them into spud faced, massive bushed (yet completely normal bodied) zombies out for revenge (hence the title) and maybe, just maybe a wee bit of four way zombie girl on girl action along the way.

We can but hope.

"laugh now!"

I'm assuming the plot makes a bit more sense if you speak French, but frankly I'm too embarrassed to give it to any of my French friends to find out.

But as we all know, it takes more than gratuitous sex and mindless violence to make a great movie (well, most of the time) and frankly no number of lesbian zombies, penis munching, vagina/sword interfaces (at the moment of orgasm no less, well it is French) and scary plasticine undead babies can save this film from being complete and utter tedium from start to finish.

Yup, 'director' (and I use this term under duress) Reinhard (the man behind such classics as 'Outrages transsexuels des petites filles violées et sodomisées', 'Fantaisies anales' and 'La perverse châtelaine dans l'écurie du sexe' amongst others....ask your dad) manages the impossible by taking a plot involving nude zombie girls shagging people to death and turning it into one of the most boring film ever made.

How your mum could afford all those
holidays she took you on as a kid.

It even makes the directors cut of Oliver Stone's Alexander seem a good proposition for a Friday night.

OK, well maybe not that bad.

Featuring as it does, the most unattractive bunch of freaks and misfits since Joe D'Amato stopped making horror porn hybrids, piss poor effects, a camera and lighting crew that appear to have been blinded with sharp sticks minutes before production began and the clumsiest editing ever committed to celluloid and all of this still can't elevate Revenge of The Living Dead Girls to anything other than the motion picture equivalent of weeping arse sores.

And you can trust me when I say I know a thing or two about those.

The sexiest women in Cradley
Heath strip for your pleasure!

But is there anything about this film to recommend to fans of zombie nonsense (or even fans of Unshaved European girls?), well the aforementioned undead lesbian orgy between a prostitute (don't be too harsh, that's someones mum and she had bills to pay) and the three female zombies is unique enough to have you reaching for the remote with your free hand to rewatch it at least once and the fact that the zombies have a habit of ringing folks doorbells to gain entrance into their houses rather than just sneak in does have a certain polite charm to it but other than that it's to be avoided at all costs.

No doubt tho' that there'll be some pasty skinned, expensive shirted and novelty bearded behemian type sitting in a cinema bar somewhere loudly pointing out that La Revanche Des Mortes Vivantes is a serious study of perversion and the breakdown of common values in society, it's refusal to adhere to the shackles of linear storytelling prefering to confront the audience head on with visualisations of mankinds darkest thoughts puts it on par with Lars Von Treer's Antichrist and how the uneducated movie goer will miss these subtleties, concentrating on the sex and breasts instead.

No idea where I was going with that but it's late here and I felt like I should get it off my chest.

But in a totally non nude lesbian zombie way of course.