Requiem pour un vampire

This film was rated higher by others than I would have thought. Vampires usually do a lot of biting and blood sucking. There was more erotic virgin handling and molestation than biting and the like in this one. The use of silence in the film gave it a surreal quality. The whole movie was dream-like. The lure of the victims was not captured. The chase and seduction is the best thing about vampires but those subtleties were lost here. But, I must admit, the film did remind me of Vampyros Lesbos and, to a lesser extent, Suspiria. I must state that vampire films do not have to be bloody etc. But a little blood at the bite would have been welcomed. Not a bad watch if you seek those who walk at night.

One of Rollin's best, although lacking the stylish gaudiness of his earlier masterpieces. However, considered as the work of an impressively productive director with about as many misses as hits, this film holds a high ranking in his oeuvre. He starts smash dab in the middle of obviously complicated unexplained criminal events, with the two female protagonists done up in ludicrous clown costumes. After the death of their fellow fugitive, they set fire to their car and wander off into the woods. Dark, young beauty Mireille Dargent stumbles into an open grave and ends up covered in opened dirt as nearby Marie-Pierre Castle watches, too scared to speak. Once unearthed, she and her friend find a seemingly abandoned castle with a decomposing body in the basement. Some uninspired vampires bring the girls to their dungeon of depravity. Dying vamp Philippe Gasté, the last of his kind in great need to make more with the help of vamp pal Anne-Dominique Toussaint, gives them a wee bite. They're somewhat uncertain about this idea of slowing turning into the blood-sucking undead, but things head in unexpected directions from here in typical Rollin style, if typical can be described as such. Although many of Rollin's women find themselves thrust unexpectedly into a world of evil, a close inspection of their characters from the beginning suggest a previous loss of innocence. Rollin's women do not succumb to these influences - indeed, they generally escape from their perilous situations - but it's important to remember that this sort of behavior may well not be old hat to them. Requiem uses extremely effective pacing, which many mistake as boring. Some extremely long takes contain little distinguishable action, denying the audience a passive film experience. This style of filmmaking instead demands total audience involvement, with only occasional instances of the glossy seduction suggested by the film's pretext. Rollin's decision to spend so much screen time on seemingly aimless wandering evokes a misguided spiritual quest, with obvious sexual connotations in the form of vampires. The experimental score by Pierre Raph, who worked with Rollin on the notorious Démoniaques, compliments this uncertain, possibly confused journey. In stark contrast to these rather profound elements stands the unnecessarily graphic sexual torture that goes on the castle's dungeon. This goes to an unnecessary extreme - I can't, for example, imagine anyone enjoying the image of a bat nestling in a woman's vagina. However, movies do need a target audience and Rollin could easily have chosen a worse genre into which to work his ideas. After this film, Toussaint began her career as a producer.. Dargent and Castle, prototypical Rollin girls, appeared in several other of his films.

REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE is the story of two women named Marie and Michelle (Marie-Pierre Castel and Mireille Dargent), who are on the run after some unknown -until later in the film- event. They're also dressed as clowns. Making their way to a crumbling castle in the countryside, they are besieged by thirsty vampires and their barbarous henchmen.

The first half of the film is nearly dialogue-free, mostly relying on the actions of Marie and Michelle to move things along. In the second half, they are prisoners, spending much of their time naked. A rather slow movie, lovers of action will most likely self-immolate around the 15 minute mark. However, if you enjoy weirdness, this is a feast thereof...

'Requiem For A Vampire' is the first disappointing Jean Rollin movie I've watched. It starts off beautifully enough with two girls made up as clowns fleeing a scene which we are later told was a murder. Desperate and hungry they wander the countryside looking for food and shelter. Most of these early sequences feature very little dialogue, and are beautiful and haunting. Both the girls themselves and the landscape they inhabit are perfect and typically Rollinesque. Eventually the girls look for sanctuary in mysterious and apparently abandoned castle. This is where their troubles really begin, because it is inhabited by a vampire and his entourage who force the girls into luring men to their doom. It's around this point that the movie falls apart for me I'm afraid. I that the movie is listed as having a runtime of 95 minutes. The DVD version I watched clocked in at around 75. I can only assume that the footage I missed would have salvaged this one from mediocrity. There was very little nudity, which is unusual for Rollin, and I saw virtually no "Sadeian sex" that the back cover blurb mentioned. I can only comment on the cut I saw (released by Salvation, who are normally very good), and this version was weak and uninspiring. I hope one day to see the complete version and that it is up to the usual high standards of Rollin who has become a great favourite of mine.

Two lovely ladies are on the run (why? I'm not sure} and find shelter in a rather Gothic, sprawling castle in the French countryside. They soon run into the lord of the manor, an aged vampire looking to use their luscious, virgin (yeah, right!) bodies as vessels for his progeny. A lot of flesh, a bit of bondage and a touch of lesbianism punctuate another erotic horror masterpiece from French filmmaker Jean Rollin.

It's somewhat hard to recommend a Rollin film to the uninitiated. Often surreal but almost always beautiful, thanks in part to the lovely ladies frequently in the buff and the photography pf the locations. Rollin clearly has an eye for beauty. However the plots and story lines are often very slight. Heck there is hardly any dialogue in the first thirty to forty minutes of 'Requiem'. But man does he have an eye.