Jean Rollin: Four vampire movies
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Four of Jean Rollin’s vampire movies in a birthday extravaganza!
Rape of the Vampire is Jean Rollin’s first feature film and the result is an audacious, extraordinary, and at times incomprehensible, take on the vampire legend. Centred on four sisters who are either mad and believe that they are vampires, or are sane, but actual vampires.
A local psychiatrist is convinced that the sisters’ alleged vampirism is purely psychological and sets out to prove it. Added to the mix is a mysterious “Queen of the Vampires”, a “blood-wedding”, and a mob of enraged villagers; complete with pitchforks and burning torches, bristling and ready to abuse and assault the sisters.
“The Rape of the Vampire is an essential film for fans of Jean Rollin, it’s certainly one of his best, and is also a great place to start for those unfamiliar with Rollin’s work.” – Cosmic Catacombs
Wealthy industrialist Georges Radamante (Maurice Lemaitre) has dreams of immortality. Not through his own achievements, but by finding a way to share the biochemistry of the mute, orphaned vampire woman (Caroline Cartier); who has been raised by hooded needle-stickers in isolation, deprived of exposure to human faces.
Radamante’s son Pierre (Olivier Martin, Rollin’s real-life brother) innocently complicates matters while trying to infiltrate his father’s private club. It is love at first sight and Pierre determines to liberate his beloved – a goal which attracts the companionship of other vampires, who plan a torch-carrying siege of Radamante’s palatial compound…
“an almost perfect synthesis of art and exploitation and as such should tick boxes in both the arthouse and the grindhouse halves of the film fan brain” – Grindhouse database
Le Frisson des Vampires AKA The Shiver of the Vampires, 1971, 96 mins
Featuring gorgeous, lesbian vampires, hippie vampires, and aristocratic vampires; mixed with stunning visuals and bizarre sex scenes. Beautifully macabre, and full of visual treats including a medieval castle, coffins, gothic graveyards and a strange woman who emerges from a grandfather clock at midnight…
Shiver of the Vampires is like no other vampire film. Director Jean Rollin manages to mix eroticism with a fairytale quality that is truly magical and makes “Shiver” one of Rollins most celebrated films.
“one of the most provocative-looking and -sounding Rollin films” – Confluence of Cult
Requiem For A Vampire, 1971, 88 minutes
A truly amazing and utterly spellbinding take on the vampire theme, with the director, the late Jean Rollin successfully mixing elements of the fairytale, surrealism, horror and erotica into a striking visual feast that is almost devoid of dialogue.
Centring on two young women on the run from a robbery and a New Year’s Eve party where they had dressed as clowns. The pair end up aimlessly wandering the countryside before taking refuge in a crumbling and abandoned castle and unbeknown to them home to the last of the vampires…
“…fetishistic kinkiness and sadism…” – George R. Reis, DVD Drive-in