Jean rollin
Lust In France
released OUT NOW! 1968/1971/1978 | 18 | Blu-ray
Cast solange Pradel, Bernard letrou, Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille dargent, Félix Marten
May 1968: Parisian students hurl paving stones at the police as a general strike threatens to escalate into an all-out revolution. Tear gas seeps into a cinema, where a cult director-tobe’s debut is screening...
Hired to make a short, Jean Rollin assembled friends in a derelict chateau to shoot the tale of a psychoanalyst and friends who visit four “vampire sisters” to convince them they’re deluded. Asked to expand it to a feature, Rollin had a problem: he’d killed off most of the characters. Solution: resurrect them for part two! Largely improvised, The Rape Of The Vampire gives the general impression of a bunch of hippies who’ve raided the dressing-up box. But with its grandiloquent dialogue (“We are all damned souls haunted by our desires”), startling imagery – a naked woman whipped with seaweed, anyone? – and cacophonous free jazz, it has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Kicking off like a groovy thriller as two young women dressed as clowns shoot out of a car at pursuers, Requiem For A Vampire soon settles into an erotic vampire groove as they come across an old castle and are threatened with initiation by “the last vampire” and his cape-swooshing followers. Sparsely scripted (it’s 40 minutes before either girl speaks), it’s strangely charming if you can see past the discomforting Lolita-porn stylings of the heroines, all knee-socks, miniskirts and pigtails.
Finally, atypical director-forhire job The Grapes Of Death
sees violence consume a French village due to pesticidepoisoned wine, in a Gallic riff on George Romero’s The Crazies. The “infected” makeups are abysmal (we suspect candle wax and ketchup), and Rollin is no action director. What entertainment value there is stems from outrageous excess – like the chap who, having nailed a topless woman to a door, chops her (laughably fake) head off while roaring, “Je t’aime!” Sacré bleu!
Extras Trailers. Ian Berriman