(Streamed via Kino Cult)
Jess Franco directed this fun and gory rock n’ roll horror flick. The Spanish punk band, The Killer Barbies are on their way to a gig when their van breaks down. They wind up spending the night in a nearby creepy castle owned by a bedridden Countess. As it turns out, she is a centuries-old vampire who intends to drink the band dry in order to regain her youth.
It’s easy to see why Franco would want to work with The Killer Barbies as lead singer Silvia Superstar looks dynamite on stage wearing nothing but a skimpy bikini while screaming about sex, murder, Troma, and comic books. It’s a match made in Heaven if you ask me. The movie itself kind of has the feel of an R-rated Scooby-Doo episode (or maybe Josie and the Pussycats since it features a rock band led by a sexy singer). Even though it was made in the mid ‘90s, there are some sequences here that look like they come straight out of a Franco film from the ‘70s as the fog-drenched outdoor scenes, grimy special effects, and Vaseline-smeared camera lenses harken back to Franco’s golden era. One particularly memorable sequence finds the Countess’s minions chasing a nude groupie through the woods, ending on an unlikely (but highly enjoyable) note.
I think my favorite moment though was the awkward dinner party where the Barbies do some simple math and figure that their sexy hostess should be about a hundred years old. Slightly miffed, she whips out her tit at the dinner table and says, “Is this the breast of a woman of one-hundred?” What makes this scene even better is the fact that the Countess is played by none other than Burial Ground’s Mariangela Giordano! Remember the sexy MILF who breastfed her zombie kid in that movie? She still looks great too. Oh, and to answer her question, I have to say her breast looks much better than any hundred-year-old (or sixty-year-old, which is how old she was when she made the movie) breast I’ve ever seen. Later in the film, Giordano seduces a band member and looks simply incredible while writhing naked on top of him, proving that age is just a number when it comes to being wickedly sexy.
While there are flashes of brilliance here and there, the film does kind of dawdle when it enters the homestretch. It’s here where things devolve into an endless series of scenes of Silvia Superstar wandering down the smoky corridors of the castle. Since she does so while wearing Spider-Man Underoos, it’s hard to complain too much. Fortunately, Franco sends us off on a high note by delivering a great death by steamroller and what has to be one of the most hilarious scenes of defenestration ever captured on film.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering why the movie is called Killer Barbys and the band is called The Killer Barbies, it’s because Mattel, who owns the Barbie copyright sued Franco and made him change the title—No, seriously!
Franco and the Killer Barbies reunited six years later for a sequel, Killer Barbys vs. Dracula.
AKA: Vampire Killer Barbys.
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