Hooptober 12.0 – The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Being Film #9 for Hooptober 2025

There were a lot of things running through my mind watching La Morte Vivante, aka The Living Dead Girl. I wish I meant that in a good way, but the truth is despite the cult status of Jean Rollins and the notable similarities between his films of the fantastique and the Italian giallo I adore, this film was so mind-numbingly dull any mental distraction was welcome. I hate the feeling of not really giving a film a chance, but maybe this is one cult that just isn’t for me.

THE QUICK SUMMARY: Despite being dead a few years, Catherine Valmont looks to be perfectly preserved in a casket beneath her family home. or so it looks to the two bumbling thieves who are inexplicably disposing of toxic waste AND stealing the valuables from her grave. One spill later and Catherine is back from the dead and with a taste for human blood. No one naked is apparently safe from her need for bloody sustenance, except perhaps her old friend Hélène, who will go to any lengths to keep her LIVING DEAD GIRLfriend with her…

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this one. About the only thing I found of interest in The Living Dead Girl is the fact that the plot is largely the same as the original Hellraiser, and I wondered if Clive Barker was a fan of Rollins. It would make sense, as like Barker Rollins largely worked on a canvas of transgressive sexuality and the fantastic for the majority of his films.

But where Barker refined his approach to use those things as subtext for larger conversations and observations, Rollins merely slaps it on for exploitation. The acting is atrocious on almost every level, and outside of a few shots the direction and cinematography are bland to the point of fading immediately from your mind.

There are few charms to be had. I was taken by one shot, of the real estate agent lying dead on the steps of the Valmony home, lit and glistening in the night like a dream. And something new to the genre: as Catherine drinks more blood she becomes more aware, and with that awareness comes the guilt of what she’s doing to maintain living. It’s an interesting concept, and one that could have been explored much deeper when paired with the conceit of Hélène being so devoted to Catherine that she resorts to getting the victims for Catherine to feast on. Alas, Rollins is not that filmmaker but on the plus side this is material ripe for a modern update.

If nothing else the gore is vibrant and silly in the way some of the most fun giallos are. During The Living Dead Girl’s climax you can clearly see the bladder between Catherine’s fingers to squirt the blood out as she feeds. Sure it’s silly fun, but I can get that in a thousand other genre films and have it coupled with a better overall movie.