La Fiancée de Dracula

The fifth Rollin film I've watched naturally features a good deal of nudity and gore: it's bizarre and incoherent, to put it mildly, but undeniably fascinating for all that - even if, unfortunately, the TV reception got messed up during the first few minutes of the film!

Coincidentally, it emerges as yet another "Nunsploitation" film (which followed my first-time viewing of SATANICO PANDEMONIUM [1973]!; see review above) - apart from being an esoteric vampire (and zombie) flick!! We also have here an interesting depiction of the effect which the chosen (but unbalanced!) vampire bride-to-be leaves on the order of nuns who harbor her. These, then, have been given silly names pertaining to their idiosyncracies, like Sister Pipe and Sister Cigar (given their smoking preferences) or Sister Funnel (which is what one of them unaccountably keeps on her head)!; likewise, there's a (cave-dwelling) ogress and a (horse-riding!) she-wolf on hand - but these carry no make-up whatsoever, save for the latter's talons!!

As for the Dracula figure (who uses an old grandfather clock as a teleporting device!), however, he's as under-developed here as he had been in Jess Franco's comparable (and almost identically-titled) LA FILLE DE Dracula (1972)! The film's climax - featuring Rollin's beloved seaside setting - is totally wacky, with mad nuns attacking Dracula's horde of disciples (including a couple of old crones and a love-struck dwarf-jester!) and the ogress (a veritable female zombie but a sexy one!) feasting on a naked vampire, before the latter is eventually fried by the oncoming sunlight!!

While the flat digital shooting manages, for the most part, not to obliterate the typically dream-like mood created for the film, its cast includes a comeback to Rollin territory for Brigitte Lahaie as the she-wolf I mentioned above (by the way, I should be watching her first horror film for him - THE GRAPES OF DEATH [1978] - soon) and Bunuel regular Bernard Musson(!). Rollin's latest offering is the only one I've watched from him of recent vintage; while not exactly a good film, it's certainly unique for these times - and, frankly, I'm more interested than ever now to watch a contemporaneous Franco effort (if anything for comparison's sake)...

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.

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.

Out of all the movies involving the character of Dracula, this has got to be one of the most uninteresting ones I have ever come across.

I'm somewhat familiar with the director Jean Rollin and his other movies and it seems to me that this movie is very different from most of his other work. The movies I had seen by him were all very straightforward horror flicks, involving blood and gore and a revenge from the death type of plot. Not this movie though.

Seems to me that this movie was more trying to be a drama, rather than a horror. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course but it is when the story is just so incredibly odd and uninteresting and offers you absolutely nothing thought provoking or entertaining.

It's still something that could had worked. I mean, just look at any random Werner Herzog horror/thriller. I think this movie was also going for a same sort of approach with its style and approach but it just never worked out, at least not for me. The movie is lacking in style. Basically it is a very cheap looking one with nothing in it that impresses. Same goes for all of the characters and the story really.

Don't even ask what the story was all supposed to be about, since it was all such a big mess. The main plot is not that hard to follow and it's very simply written but it are all of the plot lines and characters surrounding its main plot that makes this movie such a confusing mess and also a totally uninteresting one to follow. Parallel worlds, a circus dwarf, killer nuns. Did this movie really thought it was being clever, by simply throwing in as much non-sense stuff as possible? It certainly seemed to me that way but I really wasn't fooled by all of it. I could see through this movie so easily and could see it for what it truly was; A poorly made mess of a movie, that tries to make sense and be clever by being as silly as possible. Now, that just doesn't make any sense to me.

You can't even really regard this as a Dracula movie, or a horror in general. It takes a totally different approach, that unfortunately just isn't much good.

4/10

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