JEAN ROLLIN
Clocking in
RELEASED 24 APRIL 1971/1997 | 18/15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) Director Jean Rollin Cast Sandra Julien Jean-marie Durand, Alexandra Pic, Isabelle Teboul
Both these Indicator releases have the late French director Jean Rollin’s hallmarks: pairs of young women, vampires, cemeteries, freewheeling narratives, poetic dialogue, and what he’d have called a painterly use of nudity.
As psychedelic as it is gothic, The Shiver Of The Vampires
sees newly-weds visiting the castle of the bride’s cousins, to find that these vampire hunters have now been turned. There are some memorably surreal images – a vampire emerging from inside a grandfather clock; death by nipple spikes; a coffin on fire – plus some eye-pleasing use of coloured gels, with a graveyard inexplicably bathed in blood red. The icing on the cake is a deeply groovy score by psych band Acanthus.
Two Orphan Vampires
centres on Louise and Henriette – bloodsuckers who (for reasons never explained) are blind by day, but can see at night, and have apparently died and been reborn many times. The sight of the twentysomething leads in little-girl pigtails is somewhat squirm-inducing, the frequent day-for-night is laughably naff, and the film really would have benefited from a brisker edit.
Extras An upgrade on Black House’s vanilla 2018 Blu-ray, Shiver features a useful Making Of (18 minutes) which interviews two crew, plus a critical appreciation (eight minutes). Rollin’s heavily accented English makes a 2004 interview (41 minutes) hard-going; thankfully his commentary is in (subtitled) French. There’s also a second track by a Rollin blogger, plus 25 minutes of S&m/lesbianism inserts used to sauce up export prints, and a short Rollin intro.
On Orphans four cast and crew contribute to a Making Of (42 minutes). There are 2002 interviews with both leads (24 minutes), plus footage of them visiting a cemetery (four minutes). Archive Rollin footage sees him interviewed (in French, 35 minutes) and showing off his books (seven minutes). There’s also a new critical commentary. Both releases come with trailers, galleries and 80-page books. Ian Berriman
The weight of huge bat wings cracked three of Orphans Pa/actor Véronique Djaouti’s ribs – but she finished the scene!