Killer Barbies

I must admit I approached Killer Barbies – or Vampire Killer Barbys as it has been retitled to deflect likely litigation from Mattel – with trepidation.

Though I would class myself as fan of director Jess Franco, having presently seen somewhere between 40 and 50 of his 150+ film output, I had more or less consciously avoided seeking out any of his post-1990 output. The broad concensus of opinion indicated that these films varied between bad and unwatchable. True, some would say this about Franco's cinema tout court, but often these evaluations were coming from fans who appreciated the director's earlier work.

It came as a pleasant surprise, then, to find Killer Barbies both watchable and enjoyable. It's got plenty of flaws and weak points, to be sure, and doesn't come close to the heights of – to cite a few representative examples from different periods of Franco's career – The Diabolical Dr Z, Venus in Furs, La Comtesse Perverse or Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, but nor is it by any means the proverbial dog's breakfast of a film I was expecting.

The Killer Barbies of the title are a real-life pop-punk group – though only some of their members appear on screen here – with a strong B-movie influence and cartoon sensibility, coming across as something akin to a Spanish version of The Misfits or White Zombie.

One fateful night they cross paths with the Countess of Fledermaus and her servants when their tour bus breaks down outside the Countess's castle, immediately reminding one of The Old Dark House, Dracula Prince of Darkness, The Playgirls and the Vampire etc, etc.

It's owner, a former silent movie star in manner of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Fedora, is in fact a vampire badly in need of a fresh infusion of blood to restore her vitality…

Two of the Barbies quickly fall victim to the Countess who, rejuvenated, sets her sights on a third. Will the remaining Barbies realise what is going on before it is too late…

Let's get the bad points out of the way to begin with: First, the dubbing on this English version is truly dire, with exaggerated voices and no attempt to match speech to the actors' lip movements. Indeed, you sometimes wonder if the dub dialogue was translated at all or ust ad libbed. Second, the gore effects aren't that good. Third, there's an over-reliance on unconvincing looking dry ice fog for atmosphere.

But, even here, at least the latter two of these could be explained away as potentially parts of a cartoon/trash aesthetic, knowingly and consciously bad in the manner of a Troma film – indeed, one of the Killer Barbie's songs is entitled "I Wanna Live in Tromaville" – or as the filmmaker's demented take on Scooby Doo or Josie and the Pussycats.

Franco's direction feels quite restrained and thought-out beforehand, with peripatetic camera noodlings and doodlings conspiciously absent and the emphasis instead being on effective angles, set ups and compositions; lighting effects (many scenes being bathed in red and/or blue light); and signifying details, such as the portrait of the Countess as a bow-armed huntress (shades of La Comtesse Perverse) or the bald, blue-eyed broken doll (reminiscent of Succubus and the broader tradition of surrealist mannekins) to remind the viewer of Franco's authorial presence and vision.

So does the starring role given Mariangela Giordano as the Countess, aged 59 at the time of the film but gamely getting naked and bloody like an actress half her age.

It's the kind of thing that few actresses would consider doing – and perhaps with good reason considering the sorts of ad hominem comments that often crop up in reviews of recent Franco films with regard to their middle-aged actresses. (See, for instance, http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/reviews/l/lust-for-frankenstein.html.)

Yet, this challenging of convention is perhaps precisely Franco's point, insofar as his films have always been concerned with the exploration of sexuality in all its polymorphously perverse forms. Or, rather, in all its multiplicity of possibilities, for as a surrealist-inspired reading of Freud would also remind us, the normal is itself perverse.

Whatever, such an approach guarantees a reaction one way or the other. Further, it helps convey something of the Countess's magnetic power, insofar as she is able to have this effect despite not being the apparent prime of life, possessor of, say, the youthful beauty of Lina Romay's Countess Irina Karlstein.

To conclude, then, not a full blooded work to rank with Franco's best, but a film that has enough Franco in it to be worth the fan's time, even in this dub.