Dead Girls puts us back in killer stalking heavy metal group territory, only this time it's an all girl gang of head bangers put to the sword. With the amount of rock bands that have been stalked since the slasher genre launched in the early eighties, it's amazing that there's any of them left recording! It all kicked off with movies like Terror on Tour and Rocktober Blood, which were the first hack and slashers to feature a band as the body count material. Even the Australians got involved with the sub-genre giving us Ollie Martin's insipid Houseboat Horror just before the turn of the decade. The theme ran extremely sporadically throughout the nineties, probably because the genre was phased out due to poor sales and even poorer production qualities. But after the Wes Craven inspired reinvigoration in 96, movies like Slash and Backlot Murders have given the category a new lease of life to build upon
Lucy Lethal, Cynthia Slayed, Nancy Napalm, Randy Rot and Bertha Beirut are all members of the heavy metal band Dead Girls. They have found notoriety with a gimmick that revolves around murder, death and lyrics that glorify suicide. Bertha Beirut is the lead songwriter and would like to try and move them in a more uplifting direction, but her band mates just don't think it would work. "We're the Dead Girls not the Shirelles," remarks Lucy Lethal sarcastically. Looking at the clearly bemused songwriter she continues, "You call yourself Bertha Beirut and strangle yourself with the American flag every night, so we're not gonna break out in a chorus of Stand by your man!" I'm pretty sure that Tammy Wynette would certainly agree
Just as the group are about to embark on a nationwide radio, television and stage tour, Bertha receives a shocking letter via special delivery. Her younger sister Brooke has attempted to commit suicide whilst repeatedly listening to their morbid album and she is currently comatose in a hospital bed. After visiting the youngster, Bertha decides that the band need to be alone together for a short time to clear their heads and maybe start afresh. They head out to a remote cabin in the woodland to find some peace and serenity away from the pressure of their superstar status. Meanwhile, an ominous stranger dressed in a black raincoat, gloves, fedora and skull mask has decided to follow the band to their retreat and is sadistically slaughtering the musicians one by one. It seems someone else has taken the death gimmick a tad too seriously
Director Dennis Devine (who also had a hand in slashers Blood Stream and Fatal Images respectively)) admits that Dead Girls is widely regarded as the best of his B movie output. He also notes that it was possibly the most difficult and frustrating project that he has worked upon, which was mainly due to the size of the script that he had to squeeze into a fourteen-day timescale. Apparently the abysmal weather conditions didn't help, as he had to shoot a lot of scenes outdoors and it kept snowing at all the wrong times. Snowing in California now that was bad luck!
Despite these production blunders, Dead Girls is at least a relatively enjoyable late entry to the cycle. It takes a little while to step up a gear, but once the victims are stranded in the realms of woodland wilderness - struggling to uncover the maniac's identity - it provides a few cheesy thrills. All the essential slasher movie regulations are intact, including a tad of nudity, some tacky gore and a soundtrack of ear numbing heavy metal that seems only to be found in these kind of pictures. There's even a gooey finger-lopping scene, which looks to have been inspired by Tony Maylem's The Burning.(Although co-director Stve Jarvis swears blind that it wasn't!) The killer himself looks pretty creepy in a decent rubber skull-mask and traditional Giallo-like psycho garb and there's more than enough suspects to keep viewers playing the guessing game until the film's lengthy climax.
The only real problems with Dead Girls are those that plague almost every other genre attempt from this period uneven performances. It doesn't even look as if Devine hired this particular cast for their looks, as they're not your typical buxom bimbo brainless Dolly Parton wannabees.It's a shame that the dramatics continuously blow so hot and cold, because in this particular movie it really does hold back the chance of a higher rating. Some of the potential shown by the leads was hampered by unconvincing work from the supporting cast, which never allows the motion picture to fulfil it's full potential.The only other complaint I have to make is the amount of twist and turns leading up to the films conclusion. Some could call this artistic flair, while others will just want to know the true culprit ASAP!
Dead Girls is hilariously cheesy and gratuitously gruesome in the same breath and adds just the right amount of both to remain interesting. Recommended to fans of rare-ish slasher movies that enjoy gore and decent killer disguises. Oh and for those who often falsely note that Dead Girls was shot on video - WRONG! In fact this was Dennis Devine's first feature to be shot on film
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