“For it the gallows weep — There is neither happiness nor luck. It has no place on earth, let it hang in a loop.” In general, there are not so many feature films on hearing, one way or another related to the rock scene of that period (but not biographies like the Doors): Candy or Death, This is Spinal Tap!, Detroit Rock City... Somewhere we are talking about real groups, somewhere about fictional ones. In the genre it can be a drama or fearless horror with elements of black humor and teenage action. Such films are quickly forgotten and interesting except for fans of rock music, and precisely those years.
Dead Girls didn’t really exist. But the stories of teenagers whose suicides were blamed on the songs of Ozzy Osbourne or Judas Priest are well known and have resonated. In a similar incident involved and the plot of the film. The sister of one of the participants of “Dead Girls” with a group of fans decided to commit suicide, but she managed to save and now trying to return her mental health.
Unfortunately, there are no scenes of the girl group in the film, as well as rock music in general. Approximately to the middle, the tape looks truly “trashy” – a funny mask of a killer maniac, a weak play of pretty actresses, common stamps like a house on the outskirts or a harmful rural sheriff, plus obvious “sinking” scenes and “cut” editing. All this, of course, spoils the impression. But at some point something happens to the film, and you begin to catch yourself thinking that you are watching a good and even exciting thriller. The growing tension within the group and the escalating conflict between the Dead Girls and a female psychiatrist, fanatically striving to restore health to her patient, are well shown. And the mask of the killer no longer seems funny, and the horror on the faces of actresses does not look fake. Undoubted advantages include the unpredictability of the plot, including the fact that the identity of the killer almost to the end remains a mystery. And when the action approaches the end, the best examples of Italian gallo are remembered. However, I think that it was the denouement - a piercing and chilling soul, completely uncharacteristic for the vast majority of American films - that caused this film on the subject of rock to be coolly accepted (primarily in the United States) and quickly forgotten, not to mention that it acquired at least a semblance of cult status.
7.5 out of 10