Virgin Among the Living Dead

A Virgin Among the Living Dead

1973

Director- Jesús Franco

Cast- Christina von Blanc, Britt Nichols, Rosa Palomar, Anne Libert, Howard Vernon, Nicole Guettard,

From Spain/ France

            

   This movie is one of the best examples of how studio attempts to broaden the appeal of a movie by altering the original vision can lead to the original vision almost being lost.

Originally Franco made Christina, Princess of Eroticism (which I admit is a pretty stupid name). It was a very low key, strange film that was almost reserved (by Franco standards). To boost its appeal, the studio called in another director to shoot some soft core porn, inserted it into the film, and re-released it. The porn scenes by the way were pretty stupid and lacked even the tiniest bit of eroticism. A few years later to capitalize on the Romero inspired zombie craze they called in French director Jean Rollin to shoot some extra scenes of zombies (that absolutely added nothing to the film) so they rebranded it a zombie movie entitled A Virgin Among the Living Dead (which, giving credit where its due, is an awesome name). Well the final name stuck and that’s what  it is best known as, so that’s why I’m listing it by that name.

Christina (Christina Von Blanc) has found out that her deceased father has left her an estate. She arrives to collect the inheritance to find the mansion inhabited by a strange group of her distant relatives. They seem to be very close knit but also have an antagonism toward each other. They also seem threatening in a way that is hard to put your finger on. One seems to be a lesbian (Britt Nichols from Les Demons) who is always trying seduce Christina. Another seems to be an idiot who only speaks gibberish (Franco himself). They all seem to be sharing a private joke with each other that Christina is not in on.

There are several scenes that could be interpreted as ominous dreams including one where Christina sees her dead father with a rope around his neck from where he has been hung. He reveals that his soul is being held by some mysterious “Queen of the Night” (Anne Libert also from Les Demons). Not until the very end of the film do we discover what is going on and the fate of this strange cast.

If you have only seen the “zombie” version of the film, you may be wondering why I included it on a site devoted to infernal films. The “zombie edition” replaced the occult imagery from the original director’s cut. The original Franco version features an occult ritual that has to be seen as analogous to witchcraft or Satanism and one scene rife with archetypal subtext where Christina, naked, kneels before a giant phallus. 

The “zombie” version of the film not only negates the occult symbolism, it adds pointless zombies in scenes that are shot to hide the fact that the main actress was not actually present.  For years, Virgin was the only version of the film that was readily available. Luckily, for completionists, Redemption video has released a Blu-ray that has the original, unaltered, Franco version Christina, Princess of Eroticism and the zombie themed A Virgin Among the Living Dead and as a bonus, the  extras contain the silly soft core porn scenes from the “sexy” version. However, feel free to watch Christina and skip the rest.