A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)

Take it away Franco!

Christine arrives at the small town of Montserrat to meet her estranged relatives and for the reading of her father’s will. Already before she gets there she is told at the hotel that there are no people living in Montserrat. Well, there certainly isn’t anyone with a pulse anyway. Upon her arrival at the castle a series of increasingly strange events start to unravel. What is going on and why is everyone so cold?

A Virgin Among the Living Dead starts off incredibly dull. While I always have a certain fascination when seeing scenes filmed out in the real world at those moments in time, the imagery is desolate and uninteresting. The look of the hotel makes the movie feel dangerously close to a dogme film. That’s okay I suppose, but was it the intention? It doesn’t look like any effort has been made in lighting or props of any kind. The cinematography, or should I say camerawork, is bad. The man behind this is José Climent whose credits include 6 of Franco’s films and very little else. Zooming can be a good thing in a movie. It is however not a good thing when used as frequently as here. And by frequently I mean all the time. He zooms in. He zooms out. He zooms while moving the camera. My guess is that he thought it would make everything seem more important. It doesn’t and it frequently took me out of the movie. To be fair he does have a couple of moments.

The film, while not exactly abundant, has a fair amount of nudity and some kinky situations. Christine walking in on Carmenze and another woman was pretty great. At first I thought Carmenze was merely trying to trim her pubic hair and had accidentally cut herself. It turns out this is not the case! Our main character also enjoys sleeping in the nude. Why wouldn’t she? It is after all pretty hot!

Christine discovers that dabbling in the occult can be perverted fun.

Bruno Nicolai provides a score I found at times annoying, but way more often pleasingly funky. You can usually rely on a movie with a title as lurid as this to provide the groove. A Virgin Among the Living Dead is no exception.

What surprised me with A Virgin Among the Living Dead is that it actually gets better along the way. Franco is great when it comes to creating eerie, dreamlike atmospheres and while it takes some time it eventually breaks out of its chains. A couple of scenes with Christine and her dead father are particularly great. It does strike me as odd that the cinematography here is inspired when the rest of the movie is pretty lifeless in those terms. “Your tortured mind can no longer recognize reality”, says a voice as Christine is drawn farther and farther into the abyss. The movie takes on a sad and quite haunting tone. It’s too bad Franco ventures into this territory all too briefly at the end.

Is A Virgin Among the Living Dead art? I would say yes. A movie is individual artists coming together. The music is an element. The writing is an element and so on. Some of the artists working here fail and drag down the overall result. Still, it proved to be better than expected. Ultimately you did good Franco.

6/10