Comments refer to the "unrated director's cut,"
although it is nearly indistinguishable from the
R-rated version (see the notes in the "nudity report."
===
Finally, here's a film that asks the all-important
question: what would really happen if a couple of
horny teenage losers found a naked female zombie?
The losers in question are playing hooky, drinking
beer, and exploring the basement of an abandoned
mental health facility, when they find a door that has
been boarded up for years, the lock and hinges rusted
shut. After considerable effort, the lads swing the
door open and find a sexy naked woman chained to a
hospital table. They assume that she's dead, until she
starts to stir and make noises. Then they assume she's
alive, until they start to think it through. How could
a woman stay alive for a period that must have been
many years, judging from the condition of the door?
She is obviously neither dead nor alive, but undead.
The loser characters come in two varieties: sensitive
and not. Mr Insensitive decides that he has found the
ideal way to lose his virginity. Mr Sensitive thinks
that idea is deplorable and leaves, although he has no
intention of alerting any authorities because the
other guy is his best friend.
And then things get complicated. The two guys can't
seem to keep a secret, so other people start finding
out about their discovery, and "deadgirl" starts to
act as a tool for the losers to gain power or revenge.
And Mr Insensitive just can't stop having sex with the
zombie girl and starts living in the insane asylum. As
you might imagine, that has some impact on his mental
and physical health.
If I proceed any farther, I will spoil all the dark
and nasty plot twists, but if you just have to know
how it turns out, IMDb has a synopsis which spoils
everything by summarizing the entire film almost
scene-by-scene.
The film operates on two levels at once. On the one
hand, it is an intense, creepy, atmospheric and
half-deranged horror film which maintains an
unrelenting sense of tension and leaves the viewer
feeling that he himself is doing something wrong and
might get caught. On the other hand, horror movies can
also present unsparing looks at the dark side of human
nature, in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
and this film does just that. It is obvious from the
beginning of the film that the humans are the real
monsters in this human-zombie encounter, but the film
goes beyond that cliché and ultimately reaches past
its one-dimensional portrayals of vicious jocks and
bitter losers, because the real emotional core of the
film is in the attitude of the sensitive guy, the
character we can relate to, the decent guy. When he
descends to the same level as the other guys, and does
so in completely credible ways, the film rises from
mere exploitation to genuine drama.
This is an excellent genre film, arguably a
masterpiece in its own demented way. I admired the
absorptive emotional power of the film and the
director's ability to maintain dramatic tension
throughout, but I can't really say I "enjoyed"
Deadgirl, and I'll never watch it again. Be forewarned
that you won't enjoy watching it either, unless you're
into some dark and twisted shit, and have a deeply
cynical view of human nature.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
