A Virgin Among the Living Dead

Starring:Alice Arno, Luis Barboo, Fernando Bilbao, Antonio de Cabo, Val Davis, Nicole Guettard, Rose Kiekens, Anne Libert, Paul Muller, Britt Nichols (II), France Nicolas, Rosa Palomar, Nadine Pascal, Pierre Taylou, Howard Vernon, Christina von Blanc
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Description

After losing her mother at an early age and being raised at a boarding school, Cristina Reiner is notified of her father's death and summoned to Monserrat Mansion for the reading of his will. Other members of her strange, accursed family are found there awaiting the imminent demise of Cristina's ailing stepmother, whom she has never met. When Death finally visits the castle in the person of an elegantly attired Queen of Darkness, Cristina is approached by the ghost of her father, who advises her to flee the castle and her cold-skinned, bloodthirsty relatives. But is it already too late? Find out if you dare in cult director Jess Franco's legendary cult classic, uncut in America for the first time!

Customer Reviews:

One of the most disturbing gothic films ever made!.......2007-06-01

I have to admit something. I first rented this movie about a year ago, and didn't watch more than the first 15 minutes got bored and took it out. I finally rented it again just to give it a better look. I can admit when I was wrong. This is a truly surreal, disturbing , haunting work of horror and sensuality. It is erotic and yes even sinister at times. But it was really good. I'm surprised I had never given this film a chance before. The title always sounded stupid..but once I saw it I understood why. The point of this film is really....well....that there are places on the earth that are just damned without redemption. A great number of people would really hate this movie. I'm gonna stand up and say..if the point of celluloid is to educate, entertain, stimulate and emulate human nature as opposed to spiritual awareness...this movie did both in a dark way.
I must say I feel a bit shocked...but thrilled as well.

It's finally on DVD!.......2004-11-14

WARNING -- This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a Zombie movie. If anyone out there typed "Living Dead" into the Amazon search engine and come up with this little golden nugget Of Jess Franco weirdness, click the back button right now!

I know this movie has been re-titled "Zombie 4" and "Zombie 5" when intercut with footage from the 1980 film "Zombie Lake." But the "Living Dead" of the title refers to Vampires. The original title was "Cristina, Princess of Eroticism," but for some reason, they chose to mislead unsuspecting Zombie movie fans, as well as to reveal cause of the strange goings on we are meant to be wondering about.

I'm a great admirer of Jess Franco. I like to watch his movies, but unfortunately, it's impossible. Not only because he has made over 200 movies, and each one of them has about 5 different titles, but because the overwhelming majority of his films are crap. From what I read about Jess Franco, he would not argue with me on this particular point, because he allegedly believes ALL of his films are crap, whereas I actually like some of them.

The DVD has options to watch the film in its original language with English subtitles (which I didn't do, so I don't know what language that actually is, although I would assume it was French.) or dubbed in English. Most people probably think the preferred viewing option would be subtitles. As you can imagine, the dubbing is pretty atrocious, but there is a very specific reason why someone would want to watch the film this way. This film has been famous for several years (well, famous in a cult-like way) for being the source of many prominant and more lengthy samples on My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult's classic album, "Confessions of a Knife." Long time Thrill Kill Kult fans remember the eerie, "I hear her...she's calling me tonight.." and of course, "I'm blind, but I can see the color of souls, and yours is white," which is still used in their live show today. We've sought after it for years, and it's finally available on DVD! Although, sadly, my fellow TKK fans, the now legendary, "I'm gonna find her! And I'm gonna kill her!" sample is NOT in this film, but if you found that, don't you think you'd only end up disappointed?

Cristina is traveling to visit her extended family in a mansion, and everyone tells her not to go there, because no one lives there. Unless you blocked out the title of the movie, you can probably guess why they think this, even after Cristina arrives, and meets her family members. This movie doesn't have a lot of gore, but plenty of nudity, and general Jess Franco weirdness. The people who live in the house, and some who just hang around for no apparent reason, like to come into Cristina's room while she's sleeping. This never stops her from sleeping naked above her sheets, however, and if it did, it wouldn't be much of a Jess Franco movie.

One such person is Linda, a blind woman who says she wants to help Cristina, although it is never really explained how or why. One morning, Cristina wakes, naked of course, to find a big black dildo on her floor. When she flings it away, Linda says, "Oh, no, you've shattered the great ebony phallus! You are now doomed to eternal misery!" I haven't exactly figured out how Linda knew that Cristina shattered the great ebony phallus, since she is blind. But, since it is never mentioned again, I have to assume one of two things: 1) Linda knew Cristina was doomed to eternal misery anyway, in a mansion with the living dead, and shattering the phallus had nothing to do with it. She just put it there because she knows that a girl who sleeps naked when strangers keep coming into her room might find it useful or 2) Jess Franco wanted to shoot a scene with a naked girl sitting in front of a big black dildo, and wrote in Linda's line in a failed attempt to incorporate it into the plot.

Did I say, "plot"? I didn't mean to. Don't watch this expecting a story to unfold. Like most of his best films, it's a lot of weirdness and very little story. But if you're interested in Jess Franco enough to have looked this up, I would recommend it. It's also a must-see for Thrill Kill Kult fans.

Haunting Euro Horror.......2004-06-21

I was dying to see this film after reading about it in "Images in the Dark" ( a must have book on gay and lesbian films) The film is a lot better than I expected. Yes it does suffer from a low budget and atrocious English dubbing; but director Jesus Franco creates some haunting images that will stay with you after the final fade out.

One of Jess' Best.......2004-02-26

Franco's 150+ films can be divided into two types: crude, deritive films he quickly cranked out in order to maintain an income, and those into which he poured his heart and soul. The fact that most of his films fell into the former category, that he had low budgets and short filming periods, his films are often poorly translated, and ill-advised cuts were often created by his american distributors, has led to an underappreciation of Franco's skills. Although most of his films deserve all the criticism they receive, this disk should help lead to a reevaluation of Franco.

This film, despite the unfortunate title imposed upon it by the producers, is one of Franco's better films, although those looking for a horror film or one of Franco's more fun-filled movies, such as The Girl From Rio, will likely be disappointed.

After the death of his favourite star, Soledad Miranda, in a tragic accident, Franco spent about a year cranking out lousy films in order to quickly fulfill his contractual obligations with a German distributor. Afterwards, he created this film which is a very personal, poetic, surreal and melancholy rumination upon death, most likely inspired by Soledad's death. One of the themes touched upon is how death is especially tragic when it happens to someone who is young and innocent.

Attempting to describe the plot only does this film injustice. Without conveying the film's actual mood created through image, music, and acting, the story sounds absurd and simplistic. Fortunately, Image has for the first time released Franco's true vision of the film. As another reviewer notes, you should watch this in the original language. Previously the dozens of different cuts available in the american market were bastardized versions with inserts created by different directors. Some of these schlocky inserts are included on the disk as an extra, including some by Jean Rollin (from whom I would have expected much better).

What???.......2003-05-01

I first came across this movie on vhs rougly 6 or 7 years ago. I was browsing the horror section of a local Suncoast when I first discovered it. The cover had several grotesque looking zombies on it and the description of the film sounded pretty good so I took it home and watched it thinking I was in for a real surprise! I sure was! Too bad the surprise was that not only was this film so bad but it didn't even have anything to do with zombies. I have watched this movie a dozen times and still have no clue what it's about. There's no story, no plot, no zombies and it ends so abruptly that if you're not sitting down when it ends you'll fall over. It's like having the carpet pulled out from under you. Funny thing is I thought this would be the one film that would never see the light of day on dvd. Shows how much I know about marketing. I gave this film one star but only because that's the lowest I could go. Otherwise this movie would be in the red.

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