Le viol du vampire

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.

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.

First looking at Jean Rollin's debut feature Viol Du Vampire was not very impressing. It looked very cheap, and the editing seemed almost amateurish. After a while though I learned to appreciate the movie's very unique pacing and artistic approach. Its been long since I've seen a movie as pleasant to look at. I found an interesting saying by a user at the amazon page: "Its boring, but in a good way". Which of course doesn't make sense to most people, but try seeing this. Relaxing, yet exciting. The low-tempered experimental music really is nice.

You don't really have to understand what is going on though. Lots of nudity, blood, poetry, interesting characters... Yes, I really enjoyed this! If you like old art-house movies you should try it. Jean Rollins should be deemed as a great great artist.

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.