The voluptuous horror of Jean Rollin
Guest columnist Tom Bagley sinks his teeth into French soft-core vampire films
As a young horror movie geek in the 1970s, Jean Rollin held a great deal of interest for me. Scenes from his delirious, decadent, continental vampire films often padded out the tomes I read dealing with genre cinema. When translated, their cool titles came out something like Violation/Rape of the Vampire, Nude Vampire, Shiver/Thrill of the Vampires, and Requiem for a Vampire. They seemed to have it all: mouldering skulls, colourfully lit castles, candelabras loaded with 300-watt candles, exotic and vaguely dream-like seaside settings, and, of course, oodles of attractive young French girls clad, if at all, in bizarre, fetishistic costumes.
Equally intriguing were the reproductions of the wild poster art used to advertise these movies in their native France. Rollin utilized the artistic talents of his buddies, French comics geniuses such as Druillet and Caza (whose works may be familiar on this side of the pond to readers of the original Heavy Metal mag). The designs heralded something more akin to insane, full-blown psychedelic happenings, rather than what were often viewed as soft-core grindhouse skinners with traces of dynamic pretension.
This may all sound like goth-dweeb heaven, but there was a charming sophistication at play that was a few notches up on the dreary trappings of the yet-to-be-labeled black raincoat, doom ’n' gloom set.
Of course, the chances for a youth such as myself to see any of these movies were slim. Only a few of them ever made it to these shores in the early part of the ’70s, and they only played in seedy downtown sex theatres (like the Tivoli on Fourth Street). Even when the video revolution hit in the ’80s and every obscure Z-grade drive-in gore movie imaginable could be rented at the local mom ’n' pop, the films of Jean Rollin remained impossible to find. Finally, damn-near 30 years later, the advent of DVD has allowed the intrepid sleazoid fright flick fan the chance to witness a few select titles in all their letterboxed, Euro-trash glory.
Once you get past the putrid packaging adorning the Redemption Video boxes, be prepared for some fine, non-sequitur, "languidly paced" sleaze. The pretty Parisian gals are there; the goofy, ineffectual "heroes" (draped in foppish Mick Jagger scarves, natch); the over-lit crumbling palaces; the coffins washing up on the beaches of Dieppe; traces of wooden acting; long stretches of film where you forget that you're even watching a talkie. (A definite aura of quality dimestore surrealism pervades.)
The first couple of Rollin's vampire series, Le Viol du Vampire (1968) and La Vampire Nue (1969), have yet to show up in legit DVD form. Therefore, the best introduction to Rollin’s films would be Shiver of the Vampires (1970). In these films, vampires are seen as mutations, one step up from your regular Joe (or Pierre) on the evolutionary ladder, so you end up siding with them. Hell, everybody wants to be a juggernaut, no? In Shiver, a sexy bride and her nebbish hubby go to visit her cousins in their ancestral home. It turns out that the cousins were vampire hunters who were in turn vampirized and now roam about the castle and countryside, in beads and paisley, pontificating on their fate. The bride herself is vampirized nightly by a sallow-faced lesbian vamp (who also wears an assortment of hippy headbands and robes, as well as a nifty pair of six-inch nipple spikes in one scene). The hubby is denied consummation of the marriage, and as a result sets about destroying the clan. Also on hand are a pair of cute little slaves who, in addition to being lesbian lovers, are always on hand to set the table, make the beds, pour the wine and offer their supple necks to the vampire brothers. It all ends on the beach with the sunrise wiping everybody out. Most of Rollin's classic vampire flicks end on this same beach. Another plus is the great "prog-rock" soundtrack, banged out by a gang of teenagers called Acanthus.
The follow-up, Requiem for a Vampire (1971), deals with a pair of jailbait-ish runaways in clown costumes who run back and forth across the same wind-swept field about 20 times before becoming virginal slaves to a clan of grumpy neck-biters and their swarthy henchmen. Released in the U.S. as Caged Virgins (producer Sam Selsky is quoted as saying "Americans probably don't know what requiem means anyway"), this flick is the weakest of the lot, but is still worth checking out for its beautiful scenery and creepy atmosphere. One sequence that weakens it is a lengthy bit of torture and coarse "groping," featuring a bevy of chained-up beauties who don't even appear in the rest of the film. It seems a tad out of character with the more "hi-brow" feel of things, but the scene redeems itself with the somewhat notorious (among Euro-trash fiends) "bat in the bush" image.
Rollin's vampire film output was interrupted for a few years by his work on a string of hard-core pornos (gotta pay those bills) and a soft-core seaside spooker called The Demoniacs (1974). He got back on track with the excellent Lips of Blood (1975). This is one of my faves, dealing with a haunted young man yearning to return to a mysterious ruined beach-front castle, where a beautiful girl in white cared for him one night in his youth. Scenes shot in Montmartre cemetery show the unwitting protagonist unleashing a quartet of vampire girls in filmy gowns who seem to come to his aid whenever he needs it. The girl of his dreams turns out to be his vampire sister and it all ends happily, if a bit on the incestuous side of the tracks.
This was the end of Rollin's "golden age." More pornos followed, although he eventually would turn in the enjoyable Fascination (1979 – featuring France's biggest porno export of the day, Brigitte Lahaie) and The Living Dead Girl (1982). The rest of his genre output has that ’80s gore movie feel, and that era still needs a bit more time to develop a good "period crust" before I can sink my fangs into it. |
