The Gore Gore Girls, AKA
Blood Orgy (1972)
Reviewed By: Sean Patrick Dolan
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cast: Frank Kress, Amy Farrell, Hedda Lubin, Henny Youngman
A stripper named Suzy Creampuff is brutally murdered, her face smashed and
ground into a mirror, a shard of glass used to gouge out her eyes. The
killer makes a point of mutilating her face until it resembles nothing more than
ground chuck. The next day a nubile young redheaded reporter from the
Globe, Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) makes Private Dick Abraham Gentry (Frank
Kress) an offer too good to refuse- $25,000 to investigate the murder, another
$25,000 grand if he solves the case. Of course the Globe will get the
exclusive story.
Gentry begins to investigate the strip club where Ms. Creampuff worked, with
Nancy tailing him to make sure the Globe is getting their money's worth.
Gentry learns that Suzy had a stalker of sorts, a young man named Joseph Carter
whom she regularly led on and teased, who seemed to be quite infatuated with
her. He was last seen talking with a friend of Suzy's, a girl named
Candy Cane, and Gentry and Nancy arrive at her place just in time to discover
her corpse, also hideously mutilated. Our man Gentry is forced to go back
on the beat and visit the other strip clubs in town, and oddly enough, one
waitress, Marlene (Hedda Lubin), seems to work at every establishment. At
Tops and Bottoms he encounters two other prime suspects, a Vietnam vet named
Graut who sits at the bar crushing squash and tomatoes with his fists, to
"relieve tension and relive the good old days in Nam (where he had the
pleasure of crushing human skulls)", and Mary Magdalene, the leader of a
feminist movement called "Lewd is Crude" which has had altercations
with strippers in the past.
Several more strippers are killed, in increasingly creative and gruesome
fashion, before Gentry decides to visit the man who owns all these clubs,
Marzone Mobilie (Henny Youngman). Marz is having problems- his strippers are
being offed, and those still alive are too scared to come to work, so he is
facing a shortage of girls to put on the stage. Gentry encourages him to
hold an amateur stripper contest at his largest club, Marz's Heaven, and offer a
$1000 dollar prize to the winner. Gentry tricks Weston into getting drunk
and stripping, and although her performance is unskilled, she takes it all off
and wins the prize. All that is left for Gentry to do is to take her home
and wait in hiding for the killer to appear. The killer is Marlene, the
barmaid, and Gentry saves Nancy in the nick of time from a similar fate.
In a Sherlock Holmes style denouement, Gentry breaks it down: Marlene was
a former female wrestler under the name Betty the Beautiful. She quit
wrestling for stripping, was a big hit, and married Marzone. A tragedy
occurred soon after, in which she was burned badly in an apartment fire, which
destroyed her hair and her breasts. Unable to strip anymore, Marzone
dumped her and gave her a job as a mere waitress. She became jealous of
the women Marzone employed and also slept with. Her jealously turned to
psychotic rage, and thus provided her motivation for murdering and disfiguring
the women that bore her wrath.
This film has it all, everything fans of trash cinema could want. The T
& A quotient is off the chart- half the film takes place in strip clubs,
with women dancing in thongs and pasties (the old school ones with the tassels)
in every scene. The murders are lurid and graphic, and with the
tongue-in-cheek humor fans of H.G. Lewis come to expect. This movie ends
with the written slogan, " We are proud to announce, this movie is
over." Memorable scenes include a murder by a meat tenderizing
mallet, a scene in which a woman's nipples are cut off and spurt milk, both
regular and chocolate, another whose face is ironed off, and a woman fried face
down in a pan of french fries cooking on the stove. The blood and gore,
though rendered in what Lewis is fond of advertising as "In Blood
Color", is not all that realistic, but effective none the less- it is, as
they say, the thought that counts. At a mere 81 minutes this film is
quickly paced and the violence and gratuitous sexual content is intermingled
effectively so that boredom is never given a chance to set in.
Between all the bloodshed, this is film was made and meant to be intentionally
humorous. This cat Gentry is beyond belief- smarmy, arrogant, rude, and
verbally abusive to everyone he come in contact with, be it Ms. Weston or the
ubiquitous barmaid Marlene. He mocks and misleads the young police chief
in his investigation, providing additional humor. Gentry is fond of
getting Ms. Weston drunk, first just to get her out of the way, and later to use
her as unwitting bait to capture the killer. He repeatedly orders her
"a zombie in a tall glass, with four shots of tequila", and the silly
broad drinks them down. For some reason Nancy Weston and other women in
this film are inexplicably attracted to this thoroughly obnoxious man.
Gentry's one-liners upstage "special guest star" and old time comedian
Henny Youngman's throughout the film. His comment on one crime scene-
"The poor lass seems to have lost face." I have heard
accusations of misogyny (all too familiar in the horror genre) on the part of
the director and Gentry's lead character, but this is a film with no political
motives whatsoever, and I might add that the feminist movement Lewd is Crude was
given a relatively merciful treatment here, and that the extras hired for the
male audiences in the strip clubs consisted of middle-aged men with beer guts,
which by no means elevated them above the female performers.
H.G. Lewis, " The Wizard of Gore" is known for quick, brutal trashy
flicks like this, but I think this was his finest- it was also his last film
before retirement, although rumors of a sequel to Blood Feast still abound. The
acting for once was not only competent but quite good, both in Kress' starring
role as Gentry and Farrell's role as Nancy Weston. The plot is without
fillers and the motivation of the killer makes a lot of sense, which is more
that can be said of his earlier works. It is a shame that Lewis took a
thirty year sabbatical after this film, which is my favorite H.G. Lewis film out
of all that I have seen and what I regard as his strongest work. Because
of its strengths and his other films' relative weaknesses, I think this is a
film that a large audience would enjoy, not merely aficionados of the obscure.
For viewers that appreciate campy B-flicks despite their faults (and I know some
of us masochists actually revel in the low-grade aspects of these films),
I would recommend the other works in his "Blood Trilogy", Blood Feast
and Color Me Blood Red, as well as Two Thousand Maniacs.
I give this film 4.0 Bitch Slaps. For any reader that is confused by what
may seem to be arbitrary ratings on my part, let me offer a brief explanation.
I do have a rationale for the relative merit I give each film, but I don't
compare apples to oranges. When I review a giallo, I compare to it to
other giallos. Similarly, a slasher, a zombie, or a cannibal flick is
compared to other films in that particular genre. As a fine example of
Trash cinema, and the B-Movie genre in general, I give this film a high rating.
This in no way implies that I find it either superior or inferior to other films
of other genres, regardless of the numerical rating I give them.
I reviewed the 2000 DVD Release by Something Weird-Shock Films. It
features previews of numerous other exploitation and trash films in Something
Weird's catalog, a 12 scene chapter index, a "Gallery of Exploitation
Art"- mainly posters and lobby cards, and a full audio commentary by
director Herschell Gordon Lewis. Lewis is as entertaining and informative
as always, and provides insight into how the special effects were done as well
on Henny Youngman's role as guest star. It is the strength of this audio
commentary that raised my Bitch Slap rating for the Extras on Gore Gore Girls.
Story: 4 Bitch Slaps
Extras: 3 1/2 Bitch Slaps
Picture/Audio: 3 1/2 Bitch Slaps
Overall: 3 1/2 Bitch Slaps
Back