Living Dead Girl (5 Stars)

"The Living Dead Girl" is Jean Rollin's 14th film, made in 1982. It's one of Jean Rollin's strangest and saddest films; a zombie movie that treats gore not as spectacle, but as tragedy. While many zombie films turn the undead into anonymous flesh-eating mobs, Rollin narrows the focus to a single resurrected woman and the emotionally destructive bond that ties her to the living. The result feels less like horror exploitation than a doomed romance infected by death.

The film begins with Catherine Valmont rising from her grave after toxic waste contaminates the crypt where she lies buried. In another director's hands this might become social commentary or apocalyptic terror, but Rollin is interested in something far more intimate. Catherine is not a monster in the traditional sense. She's confused, fragile and trapped somewhere between death and memory. The only thing anchoring her to existence is her childhood friend Hélène, who immediately devotes herself to protecting Catherine, even after discovering that Catherine must kill in order to survive.

This is where the moral ambiguity becomes fascinating. Catherine commits terrible acts, slaughtering innocent people and feeding on them with increasing desperation. Yet Rollin films her almost sympathetically. She doesn't appear to enjoy killing; she looks haunted by it. There are moments where Catherine seems aware that she's become something unnatural and horrifying. Her beauty decays in the course of the film, making her resemble a corpse wearing the fading memory of humanity. She's trapped inside a body that demands violence.

Hélène, however, makes conscious choices. She's alive, rational and fully aware of the consequences of her actions. Rather than helping Catherine die peacefully or alerting authorities, she becomes an enabler. She lures victims to Catherine, lies to protect her and treats murder as the price of preserving their emotional connection. The film quietly asks whether love can become monstrous when it values possession above morality. Hélène's devotion initially seems compassionate, but gradually it turns selfish. She cannot bear to lose Catherine again, even if preserving her means condemning others.

That makes the central question deeply uncomfortable: who is the real monster? Catherine kills because she's become a creature driven by hunger beyond her control. Hélène kills through choice. One acts from curse, the other from obsession. Rollin never gives an easy answer because he clearly sees tragedy in both women. Catherine is horrifying, but she's also suffering. Hélène is loving, but her love corrodes into moral blindness.

The film becomes even more poignant because Rollin presents their relationship with genuine tenderness. There is an unmistakably romantic undercurrent between the two women, yet it's portrayed less as exploitation and more as emotional dependency. Hélène clings to an idealised memory of Catherine from childhood, refusing to accept that the woman she loved is gone. In a sense, she falls in love with death itself. Catherine, meanwhile, increasingly recognises what she's become and seems almost ashamed of Hélène's sacrifices.

Unlike conventional zombie films, there's no triumph in survival, no restoration of order and no clear distinction between innocence and evil. The horror comes from watching affection transform into complicity. Rollin asks whether unconditional love is truly noble when it destroys everyone surrounding it.

Visually, the film carries Rollin's trademark dreamlike atmosphere; crumbling chateaux, graveyards and misty countryside landscapes that feel suspended outside ordinary reality. Yet compared to some of his more surreal works, this film has unusual emotional directness. The gore is graphic, but the lasting impression is melancholy rather than shock. Catherine is less a predator than a decaying memory refusing to disappear.

In the end, "The Living Dead Girl" suggests that monstrosity isn't simply about violence or undeath. The greater horror may lie in refusing to let go; in loving someone so absolutely that morality itself becomes secondary. Catherine is the monster created by death, but Hélène is the monster created by love.

Grapes Of Death (4 Stars)

"Grapes of Death" is Jean Rollin's tenth film, made in 1978. It's the film where Rollin finally stopped drifting through graveyards full of melancholy vampires and decided to make a proper gore film. The result is strange, uneven and occasionally repulsive; but it's also one of the most fascinating entries in his career precisely because it feels like Rollin wrestling against his own instincts.

Most of Rollin's films move like dreams. Stories barely matter. Characters wander through ruined castles, deserted beaches and cemeteries as if sleepwalking through somebody else's fantasy. Dialogue is sparse, the pacing is hypnotically slow and violence often feels secondary to atmosphere. Even when blood appears in films like "Requiem for a Vampire" or "The Nude Vampire", it rarely has much physical weight. Rollin was usually more interested in lonely women, surreal imagery and erotic melancholy than shock.

"The Grapes of Death" is different from its opening scene. The countryside here isn't mystical; it's diseased. A pesticide sprayed on vineyards has transformed local workers into rotting homicidal maniacs, creating something halfway between a zombie film and a rural plague nightmare. Rollin borrows openly from contemporary exploitation horror, particularly the splatter films emerging in Italy at the time. Faces split open, flesh peels away and bodies are mutilated with a level of nastiness almost absent from his earlier work.

Yet even while embracing gore, Rollin cannot entirely stop being himself. The film still contains stretches of eerie silence and bizarre encounters that feel disconnected from ordinary narrative logic. The heroine Elisabeth wanders from one pocket of madness to another, meeting traumatised survivors who seem trapped in their own isolated worlds. The atmosphere remains dreamlike even when the special effects become graphic. Rollin turns the French countryside into a place of decay and loneliness rather than pure terror.

What really separates the film from his earlier work is its anger. Rollin's vampire films are sad and romantic; "The Grapes of Death" feels bitter. The poisoned vineyards create an unmistakably environmental horror story, reflecting fears about industrial contamination and modern agriculture. The violence has a grimy physicality that strips away the fairy-tale quality usually found in his cinema. This is probably the closest Rollin ever came to making a conventional horror film for mainstream exploitation audiences.

The irony is that even here he could not fully conform. Beneath the gore and infected flesh lies the same lonely poetic sensibility that defined all his work. The film is rougher, harsher and bloodier than his usual output; but it still belongs unmistakably to Rollin. Nobody else would make a zombie film that pauses so often for melancholy, silence and strange beauty.

13 Erotic Ghosts (4 Stars)

Fred Olen Ray never ceases to surprise me. Of all the films in the Medina Collection, this is one of the last I would have expected to be released on Blu-ray. It's an old film, made in SD in 2002. It must have taken a lot of work to remaster it for Blu-ray. And now I hold it in my hand. It has a unique place in the Medina films. The sex scenes are all girl-girl, and it's the only film that Fred ever directed that starred the stunningly beautiful Julie Strain. His only other work with her was "Sorceress", directed by Jim Wynorski, for which he acted as producer.

A team of TV paranormal reporters is investigating a haunted castle. On the whole they're sceptics, but they're hoping that they're wrong. If they can film real ghosts they'll make a lot of money. The castle used to house a school for wayward girls. It's the 100th anniversary of a fatal accident. Lightning struck a metal dildo, killing the school's teacher, Baroness Lucrezia, and all 12 of the girls. Since then the girls have been cursed to relive their sexual encounters with one another every day. It could be worse.

The girls are invisible, unless watched with psychic ghost-goggles. There was a lot of high tech in 2002! Unfortunately, the camera can't film the ghosts.

Here's an updated summary of the Retromedia films so far, with the Blu-ray releases marked.

The Medina Collection

1. (BR) Thirteen Erotic Ghosts (2002)
2. (BR) Bikini Airways (2003)
3. (BR) Haunting Desires (2003)
4. Curse of the Erotic Tiki (2003)
5. Bikini Carwash Academy (2004)
6. Erotic Dreams of Jeannie (2004)
7. Teenage Cavegirl (2004)
8. The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful (2005)
9. Bikini Chain Gang (2005)
10. Ghost in a Teeny Bikini (2006)
11. Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet (2006)
12. Harlots of the Caribbean (2006)
13. Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes (2006)
14. (BR) Bewitched Housewives (2006)
15. The Girl from BIKINI (2006)
16. (BR) Super Ninja Doll (2007)
17. (BR) Tarzeena (2007)
18. Voodoo Dollz (2008)
19. Bikini Royale (2008)
20. (BR) Bikini Frankenstein (2009)
21. (BR) Twilight Vamps (2009)
22. Bikini Royale 2 (2009)
23. (BR) Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros (2009)
24. (BR) Housewives from Another World (2010)
25. Lady Chatterley's Ghost (2010)
26. Bikini Time Machine (2010)
27. (BR) Sexual Witchcraft (2010)
28. Bikini Warriors (2010)
29. The Teenie Weenie Bikini Squad (2011)
30. Dirty Blondes from Beyond (2012)
31. Busty Housewives of Beverly Hills (2012)
32. (BR) Baby Dolls Behind Bars (2012)

The McKendrick Collection

1. Strippers from another world (2013)
2. Big Bust Theory (2013)
3. Intergalactic Swingers (2013)
4. (BR) All Babe Network (2013)
5. Great Bikini Bowling Bash (2014)
6. Stacked Racks from Mars (2014)
7. Atomic Hotel Erotica (2014)
8. Lolita from Interstellar Space (2014)
9. Sexy Warriors (2014)
10. Bikini Avengers (2015)
11. (BR) College Coeds vs Zombie Housewives (2015)
12. Lust in Space (2015)
13. Erotic Vampires of Beverly Hills (2015)
14. (BR) Invisible Centerfolds (2015)
15. (BR) Cinderella's Hot Night (2017)
16. (BR) Sleeping Beauties (2017)

The Apocrypha

1. (BR) Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016)
2. Vixens From Venus (2016)
3. Cyborg Hookers (2016)
4. Cosmic Calendar Girls (2016)
5. Escape From Pleasure Planet (2016)
6. (BR) Paranormal Sexperiments (2016)

The Medina Collection consists of films directed by Fred Olen Ray using the pseudonym Juan Medina. The McKendrick Collection consists of films directed by Dean McKendrick. The Apocrypha consists of films directed for Retromedia by other directors.

Notes:

(1) "Bikini Carwash Academy" (Medina 5) was re-released with a different opening credits sequence, listing the director as Sherman Scott.

(2) "Tomb of the Werewolf" (not listed above) was directed by Fred Olen Ray using his own name, but it's in the Medina style. It has almost the same cast as "Haunting Desires".

(3) Dean McKendrick made seven erotic thrillers for Retromedia, not listed above.

(4) Apocrypha? If you have a better name for these films, let me know.

That's 19 out of 54 films released on Blu-ray so far. Let's hope the others will follow soon.

What Dreams May Come (4 Stars)

Is this a good film? A bad film? Or merely average? It depends on how you judge it. It's a perfect performance by Robin Williams in a deeply emotional film that made me cry at several points. That would normally guarantee a film a five star rating. But when the emotions died down, after a cup of coffee, I had to ask myself what junk I'd just watched. It presents an afterlife that matches no existing religion and would be ridiculed by any atheist or agnostic.

Robin Williams plays Dr. Chris Nielsen, a man who dies in a horrific car accident. As a ghost he follows his loved ones, from the hospital to his funeral. Then he falls asleep and wakes up in a painting. Yes, a painting. When he walks through the fields of flowers they squelch, because they're all made of paint. That's Nielsen's heaven. He's told by a man called Albert, at first his only companion in the painting, that everyone can choose his own afterlife, but Chris has subconsciously picked a picture painted by his wife. Later he travels to other afterlifes, for instance to a playful kingdom created by his daughter, who died four years previously. Just writing about it makes it sound even more ridiculous.

Finally Chris finds out that his wife is in Hell, so he abandons Heaven to go to find her and bring her back. That's a romantic notion, but would any religion, even one, envisage such a possibility? Added to all of this, the film's philosophy has reincarnation, but it's purely voluntary. Anyone who grows tired of Heaven can return to Earth as a baby.

So what's the bottom line? Is the film good or bad? Heaven is a personalised art project; Hell is a kind of psychological sinkhole; identity persists, except when it doesn't; rules exist, except when love overrides them. The film insists on emotional truth while playing fast and loose with its own cosmology.

At times, this contrast is almost jarring. The same film that treats grief with such grounded sensitivity also asks you to accept a universe governed by what amounts to sentimental logic. Love conquers all, quite literally; but not through any moral or philosophical framework that holds up to scrutiny, rather through sheer narrative insistence. It’s less theology than wish fulfilment dressed in painterly grandeur.

I think my four star rating is fair. Maybe more than the film deserves, but I'll stick with it.

Films can be judged by the people who like them. Leslie Colligan was my girlfriend for a few years while I lived in America. "What Dreams May Come" was one of her favourite films. In retrospect, it's easy to understand why. She had confused religious beliefs. She claimed to adhere to the ancient Celtic religion, but she also believed in Heaven and Hell and reincarnation. She was a confused person, so she was quick to accept the film's pseudo-theological babble.

By the way, this photo shows her sitting in front of my CD collection. This was one of the greatest tragedies in my life. When I became ill I gave her $5000, more than enough to mail the CDs to me, but her new boyfriend, Thomas Kuzilla of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, took the CDs into his own hands and attempted to sell them back to me. I lost all 1800 CDs, with the exception of six CDs that Leslie mailed to me behind his back. For all her faults, she had a good heart; Thomas was pure evil. Would Leslie journey into Hell to bring Thomas back? No; in the afterlife she'll know that he's not worth it.

Success Rate:  - 1.1

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Splash (5 Stars)

At first glance "Splash" looks like a straightforward romantic fantasy; what gives it staying power is how quietly peculiar it is. It drifts between tones, never quite settling, and that sense of imbalance is exactly what has allowed it to gather a cult following over time.

The premise is simple enough. Tom Hanks plays a lonely New Yorker who falls for a woman who happens to be a mermaid, played with detached serenity by Daryl Hannah. Around them, the film builds a world that feels only loosely tethered to reality. Scenes unfold with a kind of dream logic; the mermaid learns English from television, adapts to human life with improbable ease, and the story barely pauses to question any of it.

That refusal to over-explain is central to its cult appeal. Director Ron Howard lets the film slip between romance, farce and something more wistful without drawing firm boundaries. One moment plays like broad comedy, the next carries a surprising emotional weight. Cult films often live in that unstable space; they don't fit neatly into a single genre, and that makes them feel more personal to the audiences who return to them.

There's also the sense of a film caught between identities. Released through Touchstone Pictures, "Splash" sits somewhere between family-friendly fantasy and more adult romantic comedy. That tension gives it an edge; it feels slightly more daring than its premise suggests, yet never loses its softness. For many viewers discovering it on home video, it had the air of something both familiar and faintly subversive.

Its most lasting cultural impact, though, comes from a small, almost throwaway moment. When Hannah's character needs a human name, she chooses "Madison" from a street sign. Hanks' character even remarks on how unusual it sounds as a first name. In 1984 that was true; Madison was primarily a surname, historically meaning "son of Maud".

The film changed that. In the years following its release, "Madison" surged in popularity as a girl's name, particularly in the United States. What began as a joke became a trend; within a decade, the name moved from rarity to mainstream, eventually becoming one of the defining names of its generation. Few films have reshaped everyday culture in such a specific way, and fewer still have done so so casually.

That odd, lingering influence is what defines "Splash" as a cult film. It's not about perfection; the film meanders, and its fantasy is never fully grounded. What it offers instead is a distinct tone, a handful of memorable ideas, and a series of moments that stay with you long after the plot fades. Among them is a single name, lifted from a sign and given a new life, which might be the film's strangest and most enduring legacy.

Success Rate:  + 4.3

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Girl You Know It's True (5 Stars)

This is the second musical biopic I've watched today. The film is called "Girl you know it's true", which was the title of Milli Vanilli's first single, but that's ironic. None of it was true. It was a fake group created by the German music producer Frank Farian. He recorded a song with session musicians who were talented, but not sexy enough to appear on MTV, so he needed two front men to perform. One single became a whole album. They went on tour lip-syncing to their hits. Before you say that lip-syncing is common in the music industry, this was different. Other singers lip-sync to recordings of their own voices, but Milli Vanilli lip-synced to recordings of other musicians.

Maybe Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan could have continued the illusion if they'd remained more modest. As it was, they indulged in drug abuse (mostly cocaine) and forgot who they were. In an interview they described themselves as bigger than Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Pride comes before a fall. Their lip-syncing became apparent when the tape skipped during a concert, and their fans turned against them. They became outcasts. They went from being millionaires to practically broke. Rob was imprisoned for stealing a car, and shortly afterwards he died of a drug overdose. Fab was working as a waiter, unrecognised by his former fans.

I like the way the film is structured. It continually breaks the fourth wall. Rob and Fab are the narrators, speaking to the audience even after Rob's death. Franks also takes time to speak to the audience. He explains the truth behind the lie.

It's a tragic story. Other musical biopics like "Better Man" show how musicians start poor and soar to the heights, overcoming adversities. "Girl you know it's true" shows how two young men start poor, then rise up and hover before crashing down, lower than they were when they started out. Shed a tear for Milli Vanilli.

Better Man (5 Stars)

For me it's all about the film. My five star rating isn't meant as an endorsement of Robbie Williams' music. I was aware of his career. My daughter was a fan, and she even called our cat Robbie. I didn't like his music, and I liked the music he made with Take That even less. The only album of his that I liked was his album of cover songs, "Swing when you're winning". He did justice to the old classic songs. I remember listening to the CD a few times and thinking Wow. My daughter thought I was becoming a Robbie Williams fan. Not quite.

"Better Man" wins me over emotionally, from Robbie's humble beginnings in Stoke-On-Trent to the death of his grandmother and his reconciliation with his father. It's a beautiful film, whether you like his music or not.

Success Rate:  - 4.9

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Ballerina (5 Stars)

This is a film that's grown on me. I gave it five stars from its first viewing, but I've always added "it's not as good as the John Wick films". Now I'm not so sure. "Ballerina" is different to the John Wick films, but it's just as good, in its own way. John Wick himself was always a master assassin, from the first film onwards, but Eve Macarro is a new recruit to the Ruska Roma, who needs to be trained from the ground up. She's like "Nikita", or more like "Red Sparrow". 

"Ballerina" doesn’t so much expand the John Wick mythology as refract it; a side-step rather than a leap forward, yet one that reveals new textures within a world that had, by "John Wick Chapter 4", begun to feel almost sealed.

Set against the familiar framework established in John Wick and elaborated through "John Wick Chapter 2" and "John Wick Chapter 3", the film’s most immediate contribution is perspective. Where those entries centred on John Wick as both participant and anomaly, Ballerina shifts the focus to an initiate; someone shaped by the system from the outset rather than dragged back into it. This alone alters the tone. The mythology is no longer something glimpsed from the outside or resisted from within; it becomes an environment, almost a culture, that produces its own agents.

The Ruska Roma, previously a striking but secondary presence, moves into the foreground. What had once seemed like a stylistic flourish, ballerinas trained alongside assassins, now reads as a fully realised institution with its own internal logic. The film leans into the idea that artistry and violence are not merely juxtaposed, but intertwined. Discipline, repetition and performance become the connective tissue between dance and killing, suggesting that the mythology’s rituals are not confined to coins and markers, but embedded in the very bodies of its practitioners.

This emphasis on training and transformation adds a layer that the earlier films only hinted at. In the mainline series, assassins simply are; their skills are presented as faits accomplis. Ballerina asks how such figures are made. The answer is not comforting. The mythology expands to include systems of control that feel less like honour codes and more like indoctrination. The world of assassins, once alluring in its elegance, acquires a harder edge; its beauty is revealed as something constructed through coercion.

At the same time, the film subtly recalibrates the role of institutions like the The Continental. In the earlier films, the Continental functioned as a neutral sanctuary, a space where rules imposed order on chaos. Here, its neutrality feels more ambiguous. Seen from the perspective of someone raised within the system, it is less a refuge than a checkpoint; one node in a network that monitors, regulates and ultimately constrains. The mythology becomes less romantic, more systemic.

Crucially, "Ballerina" resists the temptation to over-escalate. After the globe-spanning, rule-bending climax of "John Wick Chapter 4", it would have been easy to introduce an even higher authority or a deeper layer of conspiracy. Instead, the film narrows its focus. The High Table remains distant, almost irrelevant; what matters are the local structures, the immediate relationships and the personal costs of participation. This contraction paradoxically enriches the mythology. By showing how the system operates on the ground, it makes the larger hierarchy feel more credible.

There is, however, a tension at the heart of this approach. By explaining how assassins are trained, by detailing the mechanisms that produce them, the film inevitably demystifies aspects of the world that were once left to the imagination. The danger, as in "John Wick Chapter 3", is that myth hardens into procedure. The more we see, the less we wonder.

Yet "Ballerina" mitigates this by shifting the emotional centre. The mythology is no longer primarily about rules; it is about identity. What does it mean to belong to this world if you never had a choice? Can its codes be internalised without being questioned? In this sense, the film doesn’t just add lore; it interrogates the cost of that lore on those who live inside it.

In the end, "Ballerina" functions as a kind of echo within the larger saga. It doesn’t reshape the mythology in the way the sequels did, nor does it attempt to conclude it. Instead, it deepens it laterally, filling in the spaces between what we already know. The result is a world that feels less like a series of elegant rules and more like a lived-in system; one that creates its own adherents, and perhaps its own victims.

It’s a quieter form of expansion, but a meaningful one. If the John Wick films built a myth, Ballerina shows how that myth is sustained; not by legends like John Wick, but by the countless figures shaped in its image.

Success Rate:  - 0.4

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