DEAD GIRLS DON'T SAY NO

Once upon a time, there was a popular death metal band called Cradle of Filth. The above slogan came from a t-shirt design they did, and was the coolest thing you could wear, back when you were 17 and offensive band t-shirts were the height of fashion. I myself hopped onto this particular bandwagon, with a White Zombie t-shirt that said 'DIE FUCKER DIE' on the back. "You are NOT wearing that whilst living in this house" my mum said, so I gave it to my best mate. I then thought "Why didn't I just turn it inside-out when I put it in the laundry? That way she'd never know what it was". That is exactly what I did with a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt I bought, after seeing them on tour in the original Corporation uilding in Sheffield, many moons ago. My friend and I dressed and danced like Ace Ventura for the gig, which met with angry bewilderment from many of the other fans. Metallers can be such grumpy buggers. So anyway, the CC top had a drawing on the back of a hooker gutting a fat man. Class. In an interesting side-note, I remember one of the first times I went to Corporation - it was when Placebo were The Next Big Thing - and 99% of the people in the club (and I'm not making this up) were dressed EXACTLY like Brian Molko, the androgynous singer. It was very, very weird.

My point is, that Cradle of Filth t-shirt slogan directly relates to the new film DEADGIRL, which I watched recently. Two teenagers, whilst exploring an abandoned hospital, find a naked girl tied up in a basement - the two first signs that something's odd are: the door to the room was rusted shut, and the girl herself is alive. Well, sort of. She can take bullets to the guts and keep breathing, put it that way.

It doesn't take long before one of the lads realises they have their own sex slave, and yes, he does use her as that. But, it's a real testamet to the filmmakers that DEADGIRL is not as sleazy or exploitative as the premise suggests. This is partly helped by the inclusion of soft indie rock on the soundtrack (as opposed to, say, Lords of Acid of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, which would have rocketed the sleaze angle right through the roof) and the (fairly) realistic characters. Other people become involved in the 'secret', and we start to get an idea as to what the 'dead girl' is...it's just a shame the ending fumbles it a bit by undermining what went before (regarding one particular character) and leaving some annoying loose-ends (is a character who was last seen shitting his guts out actually dead, or what?). Whoops, that was a bit of a spoiler. But I bet it's got you more intrigued now, right? DAMN STRAIGHT.