cannibal feast
by Douglas Messerli
Jean Rollin and Jacques Rolf (screenplay, with
US dialogue by Gregory K. Heller), Jean Rollin (director) La morte vivante
(The Living Dead Girl) / 1982
I came to cult filmmaker Jean Rollin’s work
from the opposite end of his oeuvre, after he had made several stylish lesbian
vampire films, churned out a number of heterosexual pornographic films just in
order to survive, and rejuvenated the zombie movie genre begun by George A.
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968).
She
quickly sends off the nasty duo of toxic delivery boys and would-be petty crypt
thieves by jabbing her long-grown fingernails into their eyes and hearts; the
third dies of the chemical spill when, quite inexplicably, a temblor shakes up
this rural part of France. But she’s hardly interested at all in their blood,
immediately wandering across the lawn and back into the house where she grew
up.
In
the house upstairs, meanwhile, a female real estate agent is showing the house
to an elderly American couple who seem vaguely interested but remain
uncommitted. None of them even notice that Catherine has slipped back into her
ancestral rooms, the only evidence being a wooden rocking horse which the real
estate agent imagines must have set into motion by the wind. When the US couple
leave without making a commitment, the agent invites her boyfriend over for a
night of sex in splendor.
This time in the middle of their love-making she really does hear a
noise in the other room, forcing her boyfriend to check it out. He comes back,
after being finger-jabbed in the neck, an already half-white corpse, spewing
blood everywhere. It’s clearly the blood of women, however,
But
if one has remained through the film this long, nothing that follows with
regard to bloody body parts will shock you until the very last scene.
While all this is happening, meanwhile, Catherine’s childhood friend
Hélène (Marina Pierro) has returned from somewhere after a long stay, unaware
perhaps that Catherine’s mother has even died, since she makes a call to the mansion,
and hearing the piano and the sound of the music box she has given Catherine as
a special gift, wonders if the mother might not be on the phone before finally
realizing that it is Catherine herself. How could that be, she wonders, having
heard of her death.
What’s a girl still in love to do but rush right over to see if it might
really be her childhood crush. And it is at the point that Rollin’s film
suddenly transforms from a loosely-structured, somewhat cheesy horror film,
into a queasy surreal tale of woman’s tortured romance with a haunted past.
Although no critic I have read discusses this aspect of the film, it
explains why soon after Hélène is not only willing to cover up for her friend’s
many murders, the bodies of which she discovers strewn throughout house upon
her arrival; but why she is willing to believe that Catherine may still be
saved in order to relieve her own passionate conscience.
Indeed, the real perversity of this film does not lie in Catherine’s
lust for blood. That is simply a matter of fact, a condition that she discovers
herself in for having awakened from two years of being buried. She would far
prefer to eat the pigeon Hélène serves up, or even sip more daintily upon the
blood Hélène proffers through a small cut in her arm. But she’s starving, going
mad with an unquenchable thirst that forces her lover to do all sorts of things
she might never have imagined,
In
between meals, the two relive their special love, recalling moments and
recommitting their vows to one another, this time with Hélène simply trying to
imagine ways to bring her friend back into full consciousness, freeing her,
perhaps, from her awful habits.
Rollin takes us with his camera through the ancient mansion as if he
were a tour-guide to the girls’ lost idylls, Hélène undressing and redressing
her play doll, washing the blood away from her body, combing her long blonde
hair, and imagining a world to which they might escape the horrors of present.
But the past is long gone and the future, alas, as Catherine quickly realizes,
can never become.
That summarizes the true “heart” of this story, a word I use with
caution because we know it is also the sorrowful source of Catherine’s
insufferable living death.
Just for the rhythm of this “dirge for a dead princess,” however, and
perhaps to poke just a little fun at Americans, Rollin switches the scene to
the photographer Barbara, who during the midst of Hélène’s comings and goings,
has traipsed back to the manse determined to find out more about the woman in
white who everyone says is dead, but who she’s seen with her very own eyes. She
not only finds Catherine alone, but snaps further photos a proof, the young girl
trying to warn her away before Hélène returns to serve her as further finger
fodder.
This time, the increasingly “humanized” zombie refuses, setting the girl
free and telling her to warn the village of what is happening at Mansion
Valmont. Infuriated with Barbara and Greg’s further intrusion, the real monster
Hélène has now become sets Barbara on fire and bonks Greg over the
There is no further hope of saving her beloved, and Hélène, now slinking
down into mad submission gives up her own body for consummation, her blood and
flesh being eaten alive by the lover who in the battle between her bodily needs
and spiritual desires has completely lost any semblance of sanity, the camera
focusing for a seemingly endless time on her screeches as she disembowels her
lover while munching on her fingers. The camera slowly pulls away, but cannot
quite let go of the cannibal dinner that is being played out before its lens.
The scene was evidently so convincing that both director and his crew
feared for the actresses’ mental health.
Los Angeles, March 22, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March
2023).
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