Herschell Gordon Lewis "Month" hits the homestretch with The Gore-Gore Girls (1972)
This is Lewis's last credited work until the newly completed Blood Feast 2, and it appears he wanted to go out with a bang. So he upped the gore quotient by leaps and bounds while taking cues from the then-fairly-new giallo genre as well as old-style detective flicks. (Sidebar: For those of you who don't know, a giallo is a style-heavy and often quite brutal slasher genre practiced mainly in Italy. Most of the best-known ones were made by Dario Argento. The plots to gialli tend to be nonsensical; HG Lewis one-upped the Italians by making his plot nonexistent.) What this all means is that this is one seriously fucked-up movie. Even by HG's standards, there's shit in here that goes beyond the pale. (It's popular to read this as a misogynistic film; I don't see it that way, but it's easy to see how someone could believe that.) Still, what makes it bearable is twofold. First, Lewis's crackpot sense of humor is in full flower here -- fer crissakes, one woman bleeds to death after her naked rear end is repeatedly hammered upon with a meat tenderizer! (This inspires a classic line of dialogue from an enthusiastic-but-dumb-as-rocks cop: "And this one had her ass beat in.") Great closing title card, too. Second, the acting, while not excellent, actually seems semi-professional here. (Once again, NO CONNIE MASON! YAY!) I don't even think the film is as good as Blood Feast (it tends to get kinda dull when nobody's dying, and the Sherlock-Holmes-style-coda is stupid), but for HG cultists, it's worth a look-see. (Incidentally, Andrew Borntreger's review of this film is fall-down funny. Especially the "Things I Learned" section. Check it out for yourself here, buckos. Be forewarned, though, that he reveals the killer's mystery identity. Like it really matters.)
Grade: C+
This is Lewis's last credited work until the newly completed Blood Feast 2, and it appears he wanted to go out with a bang. So he upped the gore quotient by leaps and bounds while taking cues from the then-fairly-new giallo genre as well as old-style detective flicks. (Sidebar: For those of you who don't know, a giallo is a style-heavy and often quite brutal slasher genre practiced mainly in Italy. Most of the best-known ones were made by Dario Argento. The plots to gialli tend to be nonsensical; HG Lewis one-upped the Italians by making his plot nonexistent.) What this all means is that this is one seriously fucked-up movie. Even by HG's standards, there's shit in here that goes beyond the pale. (It's popular to read this as a misogynistic film; I don't see it that way, but it's easy to see how someone could believe that.) Still, what makes it bearable is twofold. First, Lewis's crackpot sense of humor is in full flower here -- fer crissakes, one woman bleeds to death after her naked rear end is repeatedly hammered upon with a meat tenderizer! (This inspires a classic line of dialogue from an enthusiastic-but-dumb-as-rocks cop: "And this one had her ass beat in.") Great closing title card, too. Second, the acting, while not excellent, actually seems semi-professional here. (Once again, NO CONNIE MASON! YAY!) I don't even think the film is as good as Blood Feast (it tends to get kinda dull when nobody's dying, and the Sherlock-Holmes-style-coda is stupid), but for HG cultists, it's worth a look-see. (Incidentally, Andrew Borntreger's review of this film is fall-down funny. Especially the "Things I Learned" section. Check it out for yourself here, buckos. Be forewarned, though, that he reveals the killer's mystery identity. Like it really matters.)
Grade: C+
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