Le viol du vampire

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.

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.

I don't know how to properly describe this film, because I don't think this film knows what it is. The film is structured in two parts even though the second part is direct continuation of the first. There is some lovely black and white photography that is really clear and shows a good eye for detail. The problems I have with this film come with how the story is told, there are continuity errors. The editing is muddled and makes things unclear, whether this was intentional or not, I believe it hurts the viewers experience. There are characters who just do things, without any reasons for it, so the story just kind of, happens with no reason as to why. There a lot of shots containing female nudity, and I'm not against that, but usually there's a reason, in this film there's just boobs, in frame, like they are just there. Some the acting combined with the bad editing choices made me laugh aloud or talk to myself, questioning why or what just happened, but this film isn't so bad it's good. Overall I would say the experience is OK, like watch the film if you are a big fan of the director or vampire movies or just weirdness, it just wasn't my thing.

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.