Splatter-movie titan
Herschell Gordon Lewis’ final flick before a 30-year directing hiatus, The Gore Gore Girls is pure cinematic
sludge, leavened only by a lowbrow sense of humor—although the jokes don’t
actually justify watching the movie. In the opening scene, a mysterious maniac
attacks a stripper in her home, kills her, and then mutilates her corpse. As
Lewis’ camera lingers to savor every detail, the murderer decapitates the
woman, carves off her face, and pummels the bones and muscles of her skull
into a pulp decorated by one intact eye. Since Lewis’ camerawork is as clumsily
amateurish as his team’s makeup effects, this scene isn’t so much horrifying as
unpleasant; there’s no illusion of reality, of course, but it’s hard to stomach
the idea that Lewis thought such atrocities should be filmed. Once the
story proper gets underway, attractive reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell)
hires aristocratic private investigator Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress) to search
out the identity of the killer. Gentry plunges into the world of
low-rent strip clubs (all the victims are exotic dancers), so Lewis gets to
complement scenes of bloodletting with grungy vignettes of strippers plying
their trade. Inexplicably, comedy legend Henny Youngman shows up as a
strip-club proprietor, so Youngman delivers crude jokes like this one: “We just
got the news that Tom Jones crossed his legs quickly—he’s in critical
condition!” (Jokes about Jones’ reputedly impressive manhood were already
growing mold by the time The Gore Gore
Girls was filmed.) It’s hard to know whom The Gore Gore Girls was meant to please, since the comedy scenes undercut
suspense and the murder scenes are so absurdly extreme the movie was originally
rated X. However, one hopes Lewis was aiming for irreverence with touches like the title card that appears after the final
scene: “We announce with pride—this movie is over!” Would that it had never
begun.
The Gore Gore Girls: SQUARE
