DEAD GIRLS

 1990/104m

“When rock n’ roll fantasy turns into a nightmare.”

Director: Dennis Devine / Writer: Steve Jarvis / Cast: Diana Karinkas, Angela Eads, Key Schaber, Angela Scaglione, Steven Kyle, Dierdre West, Jeff Herbick, David Chatfield, Ilene B. Singer, David Williams.

Body Count: 15

Dire-logue: “Would you please stop embarrassing him and yourself and anyone else forced to watch this revolting spectacle…”

The Dead Girls are a shiter than shite rock band who look like bargain-basement Bangles – all big hair and strappy, tight leather clothes – and yet the drummer is a guy. And this was made in 1990, after the spandex death metal revolution was done with, right? And that isn’t them on the cover, that’s just some random group of girls. Maybe they’re dead too though. The band are blamed for the suicide of a group of teenagers who listen to their songs – Nail Gun Murder and You’ve Got to Kill Yourself – and take the latter seriously. One girl survives and she happens to be the kid sister of the bands’ songwriter, Gina.

Gina decides the band needs a vacation and so they do what all 80’s horror film rock bands do: they go to a cabin in the woods. There, they are hacked up by a skull-masked looney toon who kills in accordance with the lyrics of their crappy songs. Is it the identikit retarded groundskeeper? Is it Gina’s nasty aunt and uncle, who raised kid sis and tell Gina they hope she’ll “burn in hell for this?”

Dead Girls is another slasher film where the characters act completely illogically: one victim faces off with the killer and, before he axes her, says this: “I used to be afraid of the afterlife – but not anymore!” It’s also 104 minutes long. One-hundred-and-four minutes. Sixteen minutes away from two bloody hours.

The extra half-star is for the laughs. If you can block-book a day off to watch it – advisably in shifts no longer than fifteen minutes – then it’s good for a few giggles, especially the acting skills of the “burn in hell” woman, who was quite possibly approached in a mall parking lot and asked to come and utter some lines to camera.

Vixen forever! I’ve been livin’ on the edge of a broken heart… Yeah!