A Virgin Among the Living Dead
A Virgin Among the Living Dead is a 1973 film from France, directed by Jesús Franco and Jean Rollin, running 80 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic and zombie.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- France
- Runtime
- 80 min
- Director
- Jesús Franco, Jean Rollin
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (41/100)
- Also known as
- Zombie 4: A Virgin Among the Living Dead · Among the Living Dead · La nuit des étoiles filantes
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic, Zombie
Franco at his dreamiest. Distributors added zombies later without telling him.
One of Jess Franco's dreamiest films, in which a young woman arrives at a remote chateau to settle her late father's estate and finds it inhabited by relatives who may already be dead. Almost nothing happens in any conventional sense; the film drifts through a landscape of grief and unreality closer to Rollin than to standard horror.
Distributors later hacked in zombie footage shot by someone else to make it saleable, which tells you how uncommercial Franco's original was. In its intended form it is a melancholy, hallucinatory mood piece.
Slow, strange and haunting for viewers on its wavelength.
Both directors involved get a profile: Jess Franco's films and Jean Rollin.
The numbers
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Where to watch
Legal options in UK (nearest we have)
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Written about
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
The cycle in depth
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
Filed alongside
The Grapes of Death
Rollin does an outbreak. A pesticide turns wine-country villagers into oozing killers.
The Living Dead Girl
Rollin's best late film. Melancholy where the Italians were loud.
Lisa and the Devil
Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.
Maciste in Hell
A muscleman drops into a full gothic hell. Peplum crossbred with a haunted-castle picture, and it looks it.
Baron Blood
A resurrected torturer stalks his own castle. Bava on more commercial autopilot, still gorgeous.
Succubus
Franco's arthouse credentials, such as they are. Fritz Lang liked it.
Shock Waves
Underwater Nazi zombies rise off a tropical island. Peter Cushing, John Carradine, and real dread.
The Shiver of the Vampires
Rollin with a fuzz-guitar band and a vampire who lives in the clock. His most fun.
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
Barbara Steele married to a necrophile surgeon, and Freda smuggling it past the 1962 censors on innuendo alone.
Kill, Baby... Kill!
A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.
Hell of the Living Dead
Bruno Mattei rips off Dawn of the Dead with a Goblin score he also stole. Gloriously shameless.
The Blood Spattered Bride
Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.