girl gone bad

Ginger Snaps (2000)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed by John Fawcett
Copper Heart Entertainment/Water Pictures/Motion International/Canadian Television Fund/Telefilm Canada/The Movie Network/The Government of Ontario/Casablanca Sound & Picture Inc./Tattersall Sound

For the first half of this – legitimate – werewolf picture, it’s funny as hell, a kind-of Heathers-infused look at the mordant, bilious lives of two outcast-and-proud-enough sisters, even after one of them is mauled by a lycanthrope. The second half brings pathos and pain and fear to bear in heavy doses, and almost all of it is done to a turn. The satiric amplification of the dangerous threat posed by the maturation of the teenage female – as famously exemplified in the horror genre by Carrie White, should I have to draw you a picture – is obviously a focus here, but I thought the simultaneous portrayal of the growing differences between the sisters was just as forceful, if not more impressive a feat. This flick features a lot of blood, but somehow didn’t strike me as all that gory. (That is likely an “eye of the beholder” thing, though.) And in a way, that paradox sums up the entire affair succinctly enough.

Why Did I Watch This Movie?

Many books I’ve read about horror pictures have singled this one out as being way above average. (The latest being the revised edition of Nightmare Movies, recently mentioned in the Bloody New Year review.) So I finally decided to take the plunge, though I remained dubious.


Should You Watch This Movie?

It’s way above average.


Highlight and Low Point

The writing is extremely sharp and several of the performances are exemplary as well. Teenage mystique is captured accurately (thus not admirably). Of especial note to me was that Mimi Rogers and Emily Perkins resembled each other enough to really be the mom and daughter they were portraying.

Rating From Outer Space: A−

Beyond the Darkness aka The Devil’s Female aka Magdalena, vom Teufel besessen aka Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil (1974)

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Directed by “Michael Walter”
TV 13

There’s exploitation, and there’s EXPLOITATION, and then there’s this feckless Exorcist parallel, which shows little regard for any aspect of its story that isn’t related to the nude form of Dagmar Hedrich, the comely lass who plays the title role. After around 75 minutes of wallowing in the gutter with little pretense of doing anything else, it’s possible that the film produces its most legitimately shocking moment when the director remembers to wedge the unequaled anticlimax of a half-assed exorcism into the final few minutes. Appropriately enough, Hedrich seems to have said “to Hell with this profession” after making this picture. (Not that this performance was going to be topped.) Highly entertaining, shamefully inexcusable, and amazingly crude and crass in more ways than one – not the least of which is that there’s almost no semblance of a storyline at all. Then again, helmer Walter Boos boasts a list of credits including such highbrow material as “Intimate Teenager” and “Train Station Pickups,” so …


Why Did I Watch This Movie?

You know I cannot turn away from a film titled “The Devil’s Female.”


Should You Watch This Movie?

The website Film Dienst classifies this as follows: Sex movie. (Its brief synopsis concludes, “We advise against it.”)


Highlight and Low Point

I will admit to a sense of befuddlement that the members of the cast take their jobs seriously and comport themselves professionally throughout this picture. The foulmouthed manner in which Magdalena requests Holy Communion has to be heard to be believed, though one might well wonder how or why it was so easy for her to convince her housemother to escort her to Church in the first place, given her immediately preceding histrionics. Hedrich does an ace job of simulating sexual congress with phantoms.

Rating From Outer Space: