The Sexy Goth Girl in the Lake (2004)

D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour (although the sex scenes are in black & white, so we can pretend they’re art)

The first Sexy Goth Detective film was like an episode of ‘Columbo’, but the second one is like the weirdest episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ you’ll ever see. There’s the small town where everyone knows each other, the dramatic discovery of a body, a cavalcade of suspects, and one lone woman who is prying into everyone’s lives, rustling feathers and generally making sure she’s irritating as hell in her quest for the truth. But what differentiates this from Jessica Fletcher (or Jane Marple) is that this film screams modern.

And sexy.

Sexy and wild in a way that Jessica Fletcher never ever was.

 (Well, maybe in her younger days).

The corpse of a 22 year old goth girl is pulled from the lake in the charmingly named town of Girdle. She was an outsider so her death isn’t investigated as thoroughly as it might be by the chief of police, but she has a friend driving to town determined that justice must be done. Enter Liddy D’Eath as the sexy goth detective – there to turn heads and cause discomfort in every way she can.

It really is a tour de force for both her and Von De Mille’s dialogue. All those scenes we’ve seen so many times before: the tense interrogation in the booth of a cafeteria; the leaning on a post office counter to interrogate a witness who is cagy as hell; the car chase on the dark country lanes outside the town;  the screaming confrontation with the relative of the deceased who doesn’t think the detective is doing her right. All of that is here and all of it crackles. It of course helps that Liddy has gone full on goth for this, with every harsh line of make-up and elegantly torn piece of clothing screaming that she is part of an alternative culture.

Okay, this may sound tame as hell. “What happened to the edgy promise of the original sexy goth girls film?” you may ask. Well, to counter balance the softness we do have a small town femme fatale who Liddy falls hard for her and goes skinny dipping in the lake with before a long soft-focus sex scene. Those expecting  a movie to watch over their cocoa will no doubt choke on their marshmallows at this point. It sticks out as much as a full blown S&M scene would in the middle of Cabot Cove. I’ve always said De Mille would be happier making porn and now he has.

The other characters aren’t well drawn and the plot has not only run away from the director by the end, but gone and hidden, yet thanks to a classy performance by the heroine this is a much watch.