A Virgin Among the Living Dead was directed by the mega prolific Jess Franco at a period when he was delivering his most consistently interesting work. It's definitely one of his better films. It's another low budget sexploitation flick that was obviously cheaply made but there is no denying that this was one of the movies where Franco took a bit more care. The result is an effectively dream-like and quite stylish erotic horror.
The story revolves around a girl who travels to a remote mansion for the reading of the will of her recently deceased father. While there she encounters her very strange relatives and pretty soon a series of bizarre events start to occur, including strange supernatural happenings.
This is one of the movies that really shows that Franco definitely had something interesting to offer. His filmography was wildly erratic and uneven, which is really to be expected for a director responsible for two hundred films. However, on occasion his left-field, slightly surrealistic style produced movies that were amongst the best in the erotic genre. There is definitely an interesting ambiance to this one. The selection of weird characters and the strange events experienced by the heroine are all successfully dream-like. There is a fair bit of striking imagery such as the seated man who is pulled slowly backwards into a black void, a strange night-time walk through the woods, a vampiric lesbian coupling and the occult ceremony near the end. The latter is scored by cool music by Bruno Nicolai whose soundtrack is very good throughout the film and helps sustain the mood. Franco regular Howard Vernon plays a lecherous uncle but best of all is Christina von Blanc in the title role. She was very beautiful and this is one of her rare appearances.
The story revolves around a girl who travels to a remote mansion for the reading of the will of her recently deceased father. While there she encounters her very strange relatives and pretty soon a series of bizarre events start to occur, including strange supernatural happenings.
This is one of the movies that really shows that Franco definitely had something interesting to offer. His filmography was wildly erratic and uneven, which is really to be expected for a director responsible for two hundred films. However, on occasion his left-field, slightly surrealistic style produced movies that were amongst the best in the erotic genre. There is definitely an interesting ambiance to this one. The selection of weird characters and the strange events experienced by the heroine are all successfully dream-like. There is a fair bit of striking imagery such as the seated man who is pulled slowly backwards into a black void, a strange night-time walk through the woods, a vampiric lesbian coupling and the occult ceremony near the end. The latter is scored by cool music by Bruno Nicolai whose soundtrack is very good throughout the film and helps sustain the mood. Franco regular Howard Vernon plays a lecherous uncle but best of all is Christina von Blanc in the title role. She was very beautiful and this is one of her rare appearances.