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VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971)Director: Jesus Franco
Image Entertainment
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VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971)During the early days of video rentals--the era of "mom & pa" stores to be exact--curious horror fans would marble at the various eye-catching boxes for titles they knew little about. A great example would be Wizard Video's release of A VIRGIN OF THE LIVING DEAD. The box art promised Fulci-esque zombies and scantily clad girls galore, but renters who popped this in their VCRs were in for a deceiving surprise. What they got was a slow-moving, badly edited (irritatingly repeating one sequence several times) confusing mess, with no female skin in check and lame zombies who ate too many black jelly beans.
It turned out that different versions
of the film existed consisting of more eroticism and other sensational stuff.
For the first time in the U.S., Image Entertainment gi
ves
us what is believed to be the director's cut, and it truly is a different experience
altogether. While still not for all tastes, this version runs an agreeable 79
minutes with a supplemental section of deleted scenes found in various other
cuts of the film.
VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD concerns
a young woman named Christina (sexy Christina Von Blanc from THE DEAD ARE ALIVE)
who goes to an old chateau for the reading of her late father's will. When she
arrives, she is greeted by her eccentric relatives, including Uncle Howard (Howard
Vernon) who plays his piano while a woman is dying in another room, Carmencé
(Britt Nichols) who kisses her on the lips and paints her toenails during a
funeral, and other assorted nuts. Other people in the vicinity tell Christina
that the chateau is empty despite what she witnesses, and her dead dad (Paul
Müller) shows up as an apparition and 
warns
her to leave.
Franco's cut of A VIRGIN AMONG
THE LIVING DEAD is flawed but interesting enough, filled with surreal imagery
and the bizarre sensuality that you'd expect. Dead bats, severed arms, a black
phallus and lesbian bloodsucking flatter some fine cinematography despite his
generous (and I do mean generous!) use of the zoom lens. Vernon is pretty funny
as the uncle, while Müller appears exclusively with a noose around his
neck and ketchup on his mouth. Von Blanc is usually nude, and Franco regulars
Nichols and Anne Libert (playing a sort of an "angel of death") also
romp around in the buff. Having no shame, Franco casts himself as an idiot deaf
servant who plays with a chicken head while doing a Chuck McCann impersonation.
Bruno Nicolai's score is effective and even sounds like something done by Ennio
Morricone.
Image has done a fine job releasing
A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD on DVD, making it part of their "EuroShock
Collection." The film is letterboxed in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio
and is 16x9 enhanced. Overall, the colors are very bright with sharp detail
throughout. Except for a few blemishes here and there, the source material is
in pristine shape. The mono audio is playable in either English or French, with
the optional English subtitles. The preferable English track has those hollow
sounding voices you expect from post-synched films of this sort, but dialog
is clear 
as
a bell.
As a bonus, nearly 15 minutes
of deleted/alternate footage is included. Most of the footage is the zombie
scenes reportedly shot by Jean Rollin a decade later for the tame version seen
in the U.S. See actors in greasepaint crawl out from wet leafs and terrorize
an actress pretending to be Christina Von Blanc. You'll also see a deleted rape
scene with obvious stand-in doubles. Also included is the European trailer and
excellent liner notes by Tim Lucas who perfectly sums up this title's convoluted
history. (George R. Reis)