La vampire nue

The eighth Jean Rollin film I have watched is also possibly the weirdest; the intriguing plot (such as it is) seems initially to be too flimsy to sustain even its trim 84 minutes but it somehow contrives to get inordinately muddled as it goes along! A would-be female vampire (scantily-clad, as promised by the title) is held in captivity inside a remote château and emerges only to 'feast' on the blood of willing victims (who are apparently members of a suicide club) As if unsure where all of this would lead him, the writer-director ultimately has the human villain – actually the blank-faced hero's kinky father – ludicrously revealed as a mutant(?!) from the future! The languorous pace and dream-like atmosphere (the cultists wear hoods and animal masks to hide their features from the sheltered girl) are, of course, typical of both the film-maker (ditto the seashore setting at the {anti}climax) and the "Euro-Cult" style, as are the bevy of nubile beauties on display. Personally, the most enjoyable thing about the whole visually attractive but intellectually vacuous affair was watching familiar character actor Bernard Musson (who appeared in six latter-day Luis Bunuel films) crop up bemusedly through it from time to time!

Following a strange encounter with a young woman, Pierre (Olivier Martin) begins snooping around the location where he last saw her and quickly uncovers a mystery leading all the way to his own father. See, Pierre's dad has kidnapped this vampire girl and is using his company in order to try to find out the secret to her immortality. This is director Jean Rollin's second vampire film but the first one that I've witnessed. I'm not sure it is entirely successful, but it clearly establishes some Rollin motifs. I did enjoy the dream-like staging even if it has a slumber-like pace at only 81 minutes long. As always, Rollin has a keen eye for the ladies and everyone here is downright gorgeous. Especially of note are the twin servants, played by real life twins Marie-Pierre & Catherine Castel. Rollin also has an equally good eye at catching some great images and the final half hour set in a picturesque château in the country features some really striking bits. Of course, you know he is going to work that beach in there too and the last few minutes feature that famous location (plus a dimensional jump and twist that reminded me a bit of PHANTASM).

From the title and the opening sequence of 'La Vampire Nue' it looks like you're in for a dreamlike erotic nudie vampire flick ala Jess Franco (which is not a bad thing mind you!). Very quickly though it metamorphoses into something more complex, and difficult to categorize. The mysterious and sensual title character played by Caroline Cartier actually has very little to do on screen, but is the key to the mysterious events involving scientists studying immortality, and a surreal suicide cult. A young man discovers his father is somehow involved in a secret society who favour animal masks and (apparent) murder. When he investigates he finds that not everything is as it seems, and that the enigmatic, mute beauty at the centre of it may hold the key to the future of mankind's evolution. A very strange, poetic and unique piece of 60s exploitation, quite unlike any other. I was fascinated by the whole thing. Highly recommended to fans of the offbeat and unusual.

Rollin in his usual mode impresses with place, color, dreamlike reverie. His women are unappealingly scrawny and bland, but his teasing of the cinematic imagination works for me enough to want to step in his ether - his films feel much less constructed than what passes as sensual these days, the night air and architectural walls of the thing always feel real, the texture real.

The film opens with a distraught 'virgin' being followed in dark streets by mysterious masked figures, everything in the film that is of that same somnambulist quality carries resonance and I would not dissuade you from watching. It really is fine in ways that you will seldom see in a horror film and that Kubrick bombastically killed in Eyes Wide Shut (it breathes here).

But damn it all to hell, if he isn't utterly inept as a storyteller and ruins every pleasure of touch. I don't mean that he wants to confound logic, I like that he does. I welcome filmmakers of the sort - Lynch, Ruiz, Zulawski, those who tether you to narrative threads you have much less control of than usual then pull and leave you scudding through the shattered story-parts.

It's quite the opposite with Rollin. Though the world feels real, the interplay of story dynamics is cartoonish at best. Every initially baffling element has to be explained in due time, and each explanation is dumber than a sack of rocks. He is not illogical in the sense that we cannot fathom more than bits of a deeply inscrutable world, quite simply he jots down a coherent story from a few absurd/fantastical elements then gives it to us in conveniently random ways.

In this case, the movie about vampires is a horror show being put on, the vampires are only vampires because we believe they are. This is repeatedly stressed out for us.

The point of all this is apparently the celebration of the rigor and 'purity' of youth, remember those where the Vietnam years, who in Rollin's garbled set of metaphors are equated with a mutant race of immortals.

Rollin's problem is that he is not content to be a perfume master who seduces the senses, he wants to be a bit like the meditating mentor in this film, someone who promises initiation into the 'hidden dimension' of truths so he ends up being as silly.

A man named Pierre (Olivier Rollin) tries to uncover the strange goings-on at his father's chateau, involving a suicide cult, and a woman with a rare blood condition. After barely escaping death, Pierre gives his father 48 hours to explain what the hell is really happening.

Director Jean Rollin's THE NUDE VAMPIRE is a mostly absurdist film, loaded with odd characters, crazy costumes, unexplained events, and an atmosphere of lunacy. The story makes sense only when viewed through its own lens. Rollin has created a secret, dream-like underworld, where mysteries abound and rationality takes a seat in third class. It's best to simply enjoy the surreal imagery, weird intrigue, and the overall crackpot presentation.

Oh yes, there's also a vampire woman running around...