The Rape of the Vampire

I must begin this review by being honest. This film baffled me. Completely. I didn't understand it. At all. So why the devil am I writing this, you may ask? To urge you to see it. Rollin does for horror films what Suzuki Seijun does for the gangster film, or Leone for the Western - he blows it to pieces to create something otherworldly and new. Although not nearly as well - from what I can make out, Rollin's sensiblity is facile, reactionary, inane and exploitative. But he does have an eye. And what an eye.

I think the film's 'failure' to lucidly communicate is actually the point. I mean, under all the visual verbiage, there is a plot of sorts. Not that I even got this part right. There's this gorgeous French chateau. There are sisters, maybe two, maybe four, who are being controlled by this disembodied voice, who turns out to be an crusty old landowner with a foreign accent. They are being told they are vampires, and one of them keeps remembering the time she was raped by villagers. We are shown images of this event, although neither their temporal status nor reliability is signalled.

Three young, modern, attractive Parisian types arrive for no stated reason at the chateau, spouting psychobabble, convinced that the girls are delusional and mad, needing help. It turns out that the landowner is not in charge at all, but a lesbian vampire queen add her predictably nubile cohorts, and madness ensues as the forces of science and the modern do battle with the undead. The film may be a satire on de Gaullism, conservatism, radicalism, or feminism; or maybe it's just the visual ramblings of a very talented Poe-obsessed teenager. Who knows?

The whole thing is addled, pretentious nonsense. Fragments of this plot get lost in a mass of possibly meaningless symbolism (although I actually know someone who can make everything in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME fit coherently, so I'll suspend judgement). But we must remember that horror films traditionally involve a force of meaning eventually triumphing and explaining the forces of evil who would destroy meaning. After PSYCHO, the validity of this was called into question, and the horrors of films like REPULSION and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD became terrifying precisely because it was not possible to explain them away.

This is presumably Rollin's intention, to destroy the arrogant assumptions of all systems of meaning. The inevitable result of this is chaos, but it's a chaos gorgeous to behold. Rollin has the cherishable flaw of wanting to stick his camera in the most awkward places just to astound us. And he does - there are images here no mainstream director would dare attempt.

The mixture of Gothic, Gallic atmosphere, and a sublime clarity of imagery is stunning. The climactic shoot out also shows how French gangster films, with their concentration on the disintegration of the individual, unlike their US counterparts, have their roots in horror, the mighty FANTOMAS.

Rollin divides his two part melodrama in the middle of the action. The whole film has the feel of a project taken away from its wayward director, and re-edited by blind minions. It is a silly, delirious, wonderful thing, a true 'melodrame' as the subtitle suggests, showing us in a hideous mirror the repetitious cycle of living death we are caught in our everyday lives.

When Jean Rollin died earlier this month, cult-cinema lost an iconic director who always made exactly the films he wanted to. Rollin is considered a true master by many of my fellow Eurohorror fans. Admittedly, I have never counted myself among his biggest fans. While Rollin's visual and atmospheric mastery is undeniable, I found most of the confused and weird plots of his films to be rather low on substance. The fantastic 1978 Zombie film "Les Raisins de la Mort" (aka. "The Grapes of Death") and the interesting "La Morte Vivante" ("The Living Dead Girl", 1982) are the two exceptions to this. However, it must also be seen to Rollin's credit that he never seemed to care to give his films a conventional storyline and therefore arguably make them more accessible. Rollin is primarily known for his countless Erotic Vampire films, which are usually visually stunning, atmospheric and highly artistic but utterly weird and confused.

Rollin's feature length debut "Le Viol Du Vampire" aka. "The Rape of the Vampire" aka. "Queen of the Vampires" (1968) is one of the films that epitomize Rollin's style of filmmaking. Since it was made in the 60s the film is not quite as explicitly sleazy as Rollin's 70s and 80s efforts, but doubtlessly incredibly sleazy for its day. Visually, this black and white film is maybe even more astounding than Rollin's later efforts. The film has a beautiful and eerie Gothic atmosphere from the very beginning, and every sequence is filmed with sinister elegance. The first half of the film is generally interesting to watch. Sadly, it gets somewhat tedious in the second half.

"Le Viol Du Vampire" was originally meant to be a short film, which would have probably suited the film better. However, Rollin decided to make it a feature length film; therefore, the film is divided in two chapters, the second of which is the longer, more confused and more tedious one. As it is the case with most of Rollin's Erotic Vampire films, it doesn't really make sense to give a plot description here. The first chapter, which is about 30 minutes long has a confused storyline, but one that is interesting enough to be saved by visual beauty and atmosphere. The second chapter, which is an hour long has some interesting moments, but overall it is way too long and doesn't make a lick of sense, which makes it quite tedious to say the least. As it is the case in every Rollin film, the female cast members are beautiful and have exhibitonist tendencies. The appearance of many hot naked women, Sadomasochistic scenes which must have been outrageous at the time, and a whole lot of bizarre stuff is vaguely enough to make "Le Viol Du Vampire" rewarding, however. Most of the second chapter just seems to be an excuse to make the film longer, and it shows. Overall, most of "Le Viol Du Vampire" is Rollin-typical visually astonishing nonsense, with a beautiful female cast and a mesmerizing score.

R.I.P. Jean Rollin. While I personally will probably never be one of his most enthusiastic fans it is undeniable that the man did exactly the films that he wanted to make, and very obviously didn't care to meet any accepted standards. Even though "Le Viol Du Vampire" is somewhat tiresome, and therefore only recommendable to those who like Rollin's weird style of filmmaking, it has to be considered a classic of Erotic Eurohorror and pioneering Erotic Vampire film. The atmosphere and visual style are stunning. Nonetheless it is hard to watch the film all the way through without getting bored. One for Rollin-fans.

Rape of the Vampire, The (1968)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

When one thinks of Jean Rollin there's no doubt that nudity, vampires and lesbian vampires come to mind. This film here was the first of a long running series featuring undead ladies usually doing their evil deeds while naked. The film starts off with a psychologist trying to convince four sisters that there really aren't vampires who have been walking the Earth for two hundred years. After the four of them are killed by the local villagers an evil Queen brings them back to life. The first thirty-minutes of this film, leading up to the sisters being killed, was originally a short film but when Rollin got the extra money he decided to add another hour and turn it into the feature that would become known as THE RAPE OF A VAMPIRE. Anyone familiar with the work of Rollin will agree that there's certainly more style than substance but this early picture contains very little of either one. I will admit that by the time the movie was over I really didn't understand what I had just watched. The first portion of the film is somewhat easy to follow but once we get everything dealing with the Queen then things just get so twisted that you feel as if you've fallen asleep for an hour only to then wake up and not know what you're seeing. I'm going to guess that this thing was shot extremely quickly and perhaps that's why everything feels so rushed. Or, perhaps director Rollin was just scrambling trying to get anything on film to turn this into a feature. Whatever the reasonings, the end result is that there's very little to enjoy in this thing. I thought the second half of the film looked extremely rushed and not a bit of it contained any real style. The earlier section isn't all that much better but I thought some of the cinematography was very good and this helped add a little atmosphere. While there's some nudity in the film it's certainly not as graphic as later films. The performances are all mixed but then again who comes to a Rollin film for performances? THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE will probably have Rollin fans wanting to view it just so they can see where it all started but those new to the director would be best served by checking out on of his later pictures.

Jean Rollin's film was not quite like some of his great ones that will be later. For a start, the film is black&white, which has some of the great photography but not quite the wonderful colours that will follow, and also this it is only a short film. For some reason Rollin must have decided he could make it another longer one but there it is a rather odd one. Much of the later is partly excellent but some of it isn't and there are far too many people, with to much dialogue that the story, or what it is, gets lost. It is not much of a good film and it shows that what so much will follow will be wonderful.

A psychoanalyst and his wife go to a château in the country, which is inhabited by four vampire sisters. Rollin's first feature is distinguished by good photography and score, which manage to overcome the bizarreness of the plot and the deliberate pacing. An atmospheric horror classic, but decidedly not for all tastes.