L'amante di Dracula

After a long fallow period exacerbated by health problems, it looked as if Jean Rollin would never get back on track. The sublime surrealism of his early masterworks was increasingly being overshadowed by long periods of inactivity and the occasional disappointing dud. Even the highly-touted TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES seemed like a far cry from his glory days. Well, it may be impossible to bring back the early '70's, but I suspect that FIANCEE OF DRACULA is the best Rollin film we are likely to get from the second half of his career. It certainly makes me wish he'd crank out a few more. Whereas TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES struck me as a somewhat tired parade of setpieces, FIANCEE actually feels like a fully-realized story where the characters interact and drive the narrative. The music is much better than the synthesizer droning that's been contaminating Rollin's later pictures, with the composer actually using several different instruments. In fact, the one thing that struck me about this film is that for the first time in ages there is a Rollin movie that doesn't seem hamstrung by budgetary constraints from start to finish. Instead there is great imagery, an interesting story and a refreshing lack of predictability.

Often overlooked in discussions of the wave of new kinds of movies in the late '60s and early '70s is the new kinds of horror flicks. Jean Rollin was one of the wave of new Euro-horror directors of the era. His movies tended to feature unabashed gore and eroticism. His output started to dwindle in the '90s.

At the beginning of the 21st century, he released this oddity. "La fiancée de Dracula" ("Dracula's Fiancee" in English) depicts vampire hunters investigating a group of vampire-like individuals. There's the requisite nudity and bloodsucking. Otherwise, the movie just sort of drags on a lot. It's not a terrible movie but it seems like they drew it out too much. The movie's strengths are the shots of the castle where everyone converges.

Anyway, teenage boys will no doubt enjoy the sight of all the hot babes. I don't predict anyone else getting into the movie.

Fiancée of Dracula (2002)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A professor and his assistant are trying to track down Dracula but aren't having any luck so instead they locate his fiancée and have her released from a nun-ran mental hospital. Once the fiancée is out, various circus freaks help her locate Dracula and of course the Van Helsing-wannabe is along for the tracking. After years of ill-health and not tackling any movies, director Jean Rollin tried a comeback with TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES and this film, which followed five years later. Sadly, neither film returned the director to his glory days of the 1970s but I guess fans can at least be thankful that he did get to crank out a few more movies. This film here, plot wise, is an incoherent mess that never really adds up to much of anything. At 90-minutes the film is way too long because it's hard to get any type of feeling for the actual story since the thing is all over the place. I'm not sure if Rollin just wanted to throw everything on the picture and hope that something would stick but sadly the end result is rather lame and not much works. The biggest problem is that none of the characters are all that interesting and this is especially true of the three most important ones. The professor just comes off as a fool and it's hard to take anything he's doing very seriously. The fiancée is very poorly written and whatever motivations she has just roll off. Then there's the Dracula character who has to be one of the weakest versions from any film. Not only do we get vampires but there's also a semi-zombie and a wolf-woman. This wolf is one of the film's saving graces since she's played by the cult favorite Brigitte Lahaie, an actress who appeared in several of Rollin's earlier films. She's the only real energy in the film as she gets to have fun playing the bad girl and she even gets to make a return in a lesbian sequence. You certainly can't take away from the fact that she looks incredibly good at this stage in her life. As you'd expect, there's some gore and nudity but even this is rather tame and boring. There's just really no reason for one to be involved with anything going on since Rollin can add any energy to what we're watching. Fiancée OF Dracula is only for those Rollin fans who must watch everything he did.

I've seen a handful of Jean Rollin films, and the only ones I liked were his zombie flicks The Living Dead Girl and The Grapes of Death; which is pretty ironic when you consider that ninety percent of his filmography is made up of lesbian vampire films. Well I must be a glutton for punishment having seen this film after seeing so many Rollin films that I didn't like; but to my surprise it would seem that four decades of lesbian vampires has actually taught Rollin something, and while The Fiancé of Dracula suffers from most of the same problems as Rollin's other films; it is actually surprisingly good! As you should expect, the plot is completely made up of nonsense and focuses on some Van Helsing wannabe and his dopey assistant as they go around hunting "parallels" (hot lesbian vampires, basically). Their investigation leads them to a strange convent (via a circus dwarf) and the pair soon discovers that the nuns are harbouring a young woman who just so happens to be the fiancé of the almighty Count Dracula...

Naturally, the film is completely incoherent and nothing after about the first fifteen minutes makes a lick of sense...but Rollin films generally aren't meant to, and he does at least get the ambiance right. Most of the actresses used are stunningly beautiful - even more so when given lesbian vampire roles and Rollin makes good use of them; in particular Rollin stalwart Brigitte Lahaie who has an interesting role as a 'wolf woman'. It soon becomes easier to just take the film scene by scene rather than trying to enjoy it as a whole and the film features plenty of interesting scenes - one that involves a young girl eating a baby is a highlight. Given that Rollin made most of his films between the late sixties and early eighties; it would be reasonable to assume that The Fiancé of Dracula is merely an imitation of his earlier works, but actually that's not the case and this film appears to be as 'true' to Rollin's style as anything he made earlier on in his career. There's not much point talking about the ending because it makes just as much sense as the rest of the film; but while this film isn't brilliant, it's better than most of Rollin's stuff and his fans should enjoy it.

If your expecting another classic from Jean Rollin, then you will be very disappointed. It seemed that Mr. Rollin was poking fun at the work that made him the artist he is today. Avoid this and rent any Rollin film from the 70's instead.