| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Here’s a ludicrous piece of trash no fan of the slasher genre can afford to miss, done by the pioneer himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis. Gore Gore Girls was Lewis’ swan song, and is an excellent reminder of just how awful his movies were. Never one to bother with character development, Gore Gore Girls goes straight into the drink and treats us to a woman having her head smashed into a mirror, being stabbed, and having her face smashed. Classic. Now, on with the story. We are introduced to our hero, a Mr. Abraham Gentry, who is reading the paper. A knock on the door brings Nancy. It seems she’s got $25,000 for Mr. Gentry, who is a world class private investigator, if he would crack the case of the dead hooker. They banter for a spell, and as she leaves, Abe cracks off one of our favorite insults, "Stay out of trees." That one’s in heavy rotation to this day, especially on the frolf course. Abe takes a trip to one of the numerous local strip clubs, bickers over the cleanliness of his drinking glass, and interviews a stripper about the recently deceased. He gets an address and continues the investigation. Meanwhile, on the other side of town dwells Candy Cane, another stripper and a friend of the dead one. She looks at herself in the mirror, making sure she looks sleazy enough. The killer appears and hits her with a mallet. The killer proceeds to slash her throat, and then goes on to absolutely obliterate her face by mashing and pulling it apart very much the way pizza crust is prepared (unfortunately, her face isn’t tossed up into the air like on TV, that would have been goofy.) I guess the pizza metaphor is appropriate because everything’s all red and the entire scene is covered with a thick greasy layer of cheese. Our hero shows up a minute too late and finds her mutilated. He calls the comic relief police and heads to another strip club. After being subjected to a hideous woman (she makes Lil’ Kim look like Tyra Banks) strip to horrifying marching band music, Abe goes to talk to the bartender. The first thing he does is get fresh with the waitress and orders a particularly stiff drink for Nancy. At the bar sits a lummox by the name of Grout, who for one reason or another, is smashing vegetables with faces drawn on them with his bare hands. Grout is a prototypical red herring: he’s a former Marine who went nuts, developed an unhealthy anger towards “gooks” (taken straight from the movie, the Brotherhood in NO way promotes racism or hate towards any group except stupid people) and made it a habit to crush the heads of fallen Vietnamese soldiers. It turns out he crushed the heads of American soldiers as well, so he was given his release. Abe tries to get some information out of Grout but has little success. While all this malarkey is going on, a spirited group of feminist protesters are looming behind the curtains with signs ("quit with tit"), and then strike during one stripper’s act. Just as Abe drops his accusation of Grout, he rushes off to rescue a charmingly smashed Nancy, along with the stripper. After Nancy is in the safe hands of a random taxi driver, Abe takes the stripper home and interviews her about the two dead strippers. She tells him about Henny Youngman (playing himself), who owns all of the strip clubs. After an unsuccessful attempt to seduce our unflappable hero, she grabs a cucumber from the fridge (?!?) Before this situation can go any further, the killer comes by and cuts her neck open. He lays her down ass-first on the counter and proceeds to tenderize her ass (I’m not joking) and seasoning it afterwards. Then, proving that a classic never goes out of style, her face is dissected in the same spirit as before. I’ll say this, I never thought H.G. would be capable of outdoing the previous kill scene, let alone in the same movie, this man is incredible. The comic relief police are summoned to the scene. It’s silly, but one of the cops finds a feminist button in her mangled butt. Next, two of the strippers are brutally murdered (leading to the revelation that if you snip the end off of the nipple, they give white milk out of one and chocolate milk out of the other) using such tools as an iron and some frying oil. Meanwhile, still intrigued by the feminist angle, Abe sends Nancy to infiltrate the feminist organization while he seeks out Henny Youngman himself. After arguing with a familiar waitress, he convinces Mr. Youngman to hold the be-all end-all grease logged stripping contest in the biggest of strip clubs. Nancy returns from the feminist gathering with a whole new outlook on women’s rights, but she also brings back knowledge eliminating the leader of the feminists as a suspect. As our story approaches its oily climax, Abe takes Nancy to the stripping contest. He gets her adorably plastered again, and makes a big deal out of the final stripper, who is getting a good reaction from the crowd. Unable to detect that Abe’s interest is feigned, Nancy wobbles up on stage and shows us what she can do. She wins the contest hands down and is taken backstage. What comes next is one of the most ludicrous and goofiest endings in the history of moviedom. The killer approaches a dozing Nancy and is about to give her the acid treatment when Abe returns. The killer is revealed to be Marlene, the waitress he exchanged insults with throughout the film. She goes to the window and kills herself. Her head hits the street below with a hilarious *splat* and is run over by a passing car. This death has few equals when it comes to side-splitting comedy, Chevy Chase would be proud. The next day, we are treated to a classic Scooby-Doo ending. It turns out that Marlene was once Betty the Beautiful, a professional wrestler. She later went on to be a popular stripper. She was badly scarred in a house fire, however, and was disfigured to the point where she was unable to continue her prominent career in stripping. Youngman could no longer make money from her, but he felt sorry enough for her to give her a job as a waitress. She developed a (you guessed it) violent jealousy of women who were able to expose their bodies to the grease balls who inhabited Youngman’s vile stripping establishments (they’ve got nothing on The Outer Edge, our local strip club. Just driving past it is a STD risk), and began killing and disfiguring bright young strippers. I still haven’t stopped laughing. Then Abe pulls the curtain down over the movie and tells us that we’ve "seen enough." Man, I loved this movie. I have absolute respect for H.G. Lewis’ contributions to the slasher world, for it’s quite possible that the slashers we’ve come to know would never have existed without Lewis’ seminal foray into the gore genre, 1963s Blood Feast. Though I’ve only had the fortune to see these two films (200 Maniacs, Paint Me Blood Red, and Wizard of Gore are all supposed to be equally awful), I’ve grown quite fond of H.G. I’d absolutely recommend Gore Gore Girls to anyone who realizes that atrocious pieces of exploitive trash done in poor taste can taste pretty good to those willing to try them.
What's a BrainWave?
Fistula
Ferox
Ragnarok Begin.
Not THE H.G. Lewis. This is Hud Gomer Lewis.
Another time through? Does anyone have any 7-Up to assist my sobriety?
Eegah... oh, god.
10 Min.
Stay out of... huh?
Stay out of trees... I... think...
Let me give you a little tip... stay out of trees!
20 Min.
I bet the killer enjoys a big open face sandwich. PUN!!
Beef: It's what's for DEATH!!
7-Up has a bad pun-inducing chemical in it.
30 Min.
I love a woman drunken to the point of idiocy. It's a little charming to me.
OK, he was gone three minutes, that's not possible. It must have been the 7-Up. That makes sense.
Hey Gentry, get me a drink too, would ya?
40 Min.
I wish this was the day the music died. Turn it off!!
Nothing can bring HER up, she's female!
Dog is good!!
50 Min.
If you're goin to eat as, at least take the time to tenderize and season.
No, H.G., no!! Stop playing that song - which, by the way, is indeed a real song. Damned public domain...
Fanny Bangers II: Fresh Meat. Sigh.
60 Min.
Chocolate milk? Cheers!
Hey, that's not Mel Brooks!
No talent! Very little, if any.
70 Min.
Oh man, please let me "see you like that".
None of the others were anything like her!
That last stripper's appendectomy was performed with a chainsaw!
End.
Hey! I haven't seen enough! I announce with pride this movie kicked ass.
We announce with pride: Our brainwaves are over!
I think we've seen enough too.
Brother Fistula: Stupid? Yes. Tasteless? Yes. Ludicrous? Very. Unenjoyable? Not entirely. I know I stand alone on this, but I am a fan of H. G. Lewis and am grateful for his contributions to the schlock world. One of the best endings ever. I still have nightmares about that dreadful circus music that played through the whole movie. I think I've seen enough. 3 Brother Ferox: Well, Fistula got to this point before I did... but I've been scarred by that damned circus/high-school band music as well. This movie was almost impossible to sit through... although when it picked up (what is she doing with that meat tenderizer? Ohhhh, no....) it was hilarious... whether that was because of the fact that the rest of the movie was so terrible, or that it was just that damned silly, I'll never know. Anyway, Lewis, thanks a lot, guy **UPDATE** After reviewing this movie again, Ferox re-rates this: 3.5 because of the ending. I can't believe I missed that the first time around!!
Brother Ragnarok: Um...I liked Grout. And Abe has a kickass car. That's about it. The ending kicks ass too. 2.5
