Cheeseball Cinema: Living Dead Girl (1982)

You know a film is going to be erotic when the opening credit for a studio is a vampire chick sucking the blood out of a naked girl just to reveal that the film company is called Redemption USA. So instead of a lion that roars or a unicorn flying, you get a naked chick with a freaky vampire chick. It’s Cheeseball Cinema after all!!! So the film starts with some guys that hide toxic waste in a crypt and at the same time they moonlight as grave robbers. They mistakenly open one of the coffins of a young woman named Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard) and in the process they experience a mini earthquake which causes the toxic waste to awaken the dead girl who know needs human blood in order to stay alive. The rest of the film’s premise is that an American photgrapher (Carina Barone) notices Catherine walking through the field ans she takes her picture. She asks everyone in the town who she is and everyone says that it’s Catherine and that she died two years before. Barbara is baffled at the answer and she wants to investigate it. An old friend named Hélène(Marina Pierro) , calls the estate that Catherine and her family used to own to most likely buy it when she discovers Catherine is still alive. She thinks Catherine never died until she realizes that she is dead and needs blood in order to live. So, Hélène decides to help her with the feeding. The film also stars Mike Marshall (Moonraker) as Greg, Fanny Magier (East Of Berlin) as a victim, and the French film is directed by acclaimed French Director Jean Rollin.

What can I say about the film other than the fact that there is some eroticism in it like Catherine getting washed by her friend Hélène , who by the way is one of the most attractive woman I have ever seen. That is the one thing I love about European cinema is that you see some of the most beautiful and talented women on the big screen. There’s plenty of boobs and bush in this film, but the film is more than just that as Catherine realizes that she is just pure evil and that she wants to die. Hélène will not allow it because of her love for Catherine. The ending is pure poetic justice as Catherine murders Hélène, but before she does it she asks her if she remembers the oath. If one of them is to die, the other is to follow. As Hélène repeats that part, Catherine tells her that I am your death. Some of the death scenes are a little cheesy when you can tell that they are either not using a real human head like the first kill or the person is clearly wearing something on their head like the second kill. Other than that, Jean Rollin was an amazing director and I look forward to watching more of his films in the future. On a scale of 1 being an A-list Hollywood film and 5 being the cheesiest film of all time I am going to give it a 2.3 because I believe this was an amazing film besides the eroticism.

Cheeseball Cinema: Virgin Witch (1972)

I watched The Living Dead Girl the other day and for some reason I am picking movies that are also Rob Zombie song titles and after digging through Netflix, I finally settled on this British Exploitation horror film from 1972 that was directed by Ray Austin called Virgin Witch. The movie stars real life sisters Ann and Vicky Michelle as two sisters that run away from home. They stumble upon a lecherous lesbian who poses as a big time modelling agent in order to lure virgins to the countryside to get photographed. The thing Christine (Ann) doesn’t realize is that she has been set up to be the virgin sacrifice for a witch coven that has been covered up by Sybil Waite, the lecherous lesbian.  The problem for the coven is that Christine is not just any girl as they will soon find out. The movie also stars Patricia Haines (Blood Beast From Outer Space) as Sybil, James Chase (The Leather Boys) as Peter, Keith Buckley (The Spy Who Loved Me) as Johnny, and Garth Watkins (Twins Of Evil) as Gerald.

The most exciting thing about this film is the ritual scenes because the nudity and sexual nature is off the charts. If you want to watch natural naked beauties from the 70′s then this is the film because there’s plenty of it hence the reason it made it to Cheeseball Cinema. I think the more nudity a movie has, the more it fits this list.  The movie has a really slow build up sort of reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, where you’re expecting something to happen, but you don’t get until the end. I felt the first half of the film had way too much dialogue and the second half was the more exciting of the two. Some of the scenes as I had said are real erotic as it something you would expect from an exploitation film. The cinematographer at times didn’t take into account the different lighting problems that he would run into and the beginning of the film, the shots are real erratic and all over the place. On a scale of 1 being close to an A-list Hollywood film and 5 being the cheesiest film of all time I am going to give the film a 3 just because there was obviously way too much nudity for America to handle back in the 70’s.

Cheeseball Cinema: Fascination (1979)

It’s been a while since I posted a movie review let alone a horror review since the unleashing of The Lords Of Salem is right around the corner (This Friday). I have also decided to bring back Cheeseball Cinema back to it’s rightful place here on Eddie’s Entertainment. So, I cruised around Netflix and I came across another Jean Rollin (The Living Dead Girl) film. This one is called Fascination and it stars porn actress, radio host, the beautiful Brigitte Lahaie stars in this erotic horror film of two bisexual chambermaids that help a thief seek refuge from other thieves. The only problem is that the thief named Marc (Jean-Pierre Lemaire) doesn’t realize that he is being lured into a ritual where The Marchioness and her friends drink the blood of a man on a certain night. The film also stars Franca Maï as Elizabeth, Fanny Magier as Hélène, Muriel Montosse as Anita, Sophie Noel as Sylvie, Evelyne Thomas as Dominique,  and Myriam Watteau as La Femme Apache.

When I say that the film is erotic, I mean that it is really erotic. Brigitte obviously had no problem getting naked as she is for most of the film and she had no problem with lesbian scenes either. The only difference is that sex isn’t looked at in a very taboo way like it is in America. In Europe, sex is just another aspect of life and a lot of European films use sex to tell a story especially in horror films. One of my favorite scenes is after Eva is forced to take her clothes off. She stays very calm as one of the thieves starts to have sex with her. She was forced to give up her clothes to the man’s wife and without the man knowing she has a sigh that she is about to stab him with. Afterwards, she puts on the black cloak and grabs a scythe that she will use to kill the other thieves that remain. I provided the pic to the left of this paragraph. The idea of a blood cult was pretty clever for the time. Let’s understand that this is not a vampire flick, but rather a film where women meet up to drink the blood of an ox in order to battle amnesia and thirsted for more. It’s not the scariest film at all, but a very sexy almost borderline softcore porn horror flick. On a scale of 1 to 5 with five being close to a Hollywood film and 1 being the cheesiest film of all time, I am giving the film a 3 because it’s still softcorinsh, but with a decent story.

courtesy of wikipedia