400-419 Jean Rollin

[MichaelB]

It will indeed be completely uncut - the BBFC issued the certificate this afternoon.

[MichaelB]

• The Nude Beaver
• The Beavoniacs

[MichaelB]

Final specs for the latest Rollins.

The Nude Vampire:



The Demoniacs:

[therewillbeblus]

Making my way through these - I had previously enjoyed Fascination and still do. Rape of the Vampire was a little less consistent - though that's by design. The first section was a wonderful, near-experimental short film, but the bifurcated structure invites another hour that doesn't quite gel - either formally or tonally with the first. It's fine, but the style alone pares back as if Rollins needed to sober the lens to focus on the narrative, and that's just not what's interesting about his films.

The Night of the Hunted was a strange departure - a kind of sterile sci-fi slow-burn that recalled (very) early Cronenberg, Resnais, and late Antonioni(?!) It's probably the weakest link for me so far, but I appreciated what it was doing once I made the connections to that shocking dish of elliptical influences. It's a deliberately alienating and static movie to depict characters who are so out of touch with their identity and environment that they cease to understand their own characterization, mirroring our own lack of a throughline to connect to them. That doesn't necessarily make for a compelling experience, but it's an interesting approach.

[therewillbeblus]

My experience watching The Nude Vampire was little more than peering through a pair of Beer Goggles at the version of Eyes Wide Shut that its detractors see, and I was so relieved to take them off. Amateur prep work for The Night of the Hunted, whilst retaining a vampire edge, with the same distance from everyone and everything.. it's a shame Rollins forfeited his more intimate experimental-stylistic strengths in favor of a detached enigmatic atmosphere that has no reason to exist.

Man, this guy's all over the map for me, but I hope the current pattern of my Rollins Count/LB score of each subsequent film is pure coincidence, since it's a very linear and pessimistic graph

[MichaelB]

I wasn't going to say anything before because I thought it was a one-off typo, but for the record Jean Rollin is no relation of Howard, Sonny or Henry Rollins - he's singular in a great many ways, including that pretty fundamental one.

[therewillbeblus]

Well in that case, I’ll take back the opinions too

[therewillbeblus]

A few more:

The Demoniacs is a terrible pirate rape-revenge experiment. I don't think I've ever felt so alienated by the activity in a film, which is surely attempting to engage us on some level. I'd be interested in a reading that defends this choice as thematically artistic, but I just couldn't get on board.

Lips of Blood is pretty good! A lot more captivating with a central mystery around an enigmatic woman, ostensibly nefarious figures obstructing the protagonist's journey, and a fun subversive final act that's entirely in step with the obsessive and compulsive nature of infatuating affection mirroring vampirism. Not consistently

Two Orphan Vampires - What a strange movie, even by Rollin's (note the apostrophe, thanks) standards! The youthful "self-discovery" is sloppy, totally all-over-the-place - a tone set by their first conversation in the graveyard: A nonsensical internal dream illogic they share, followed by kittenish adventuring around the city to a slightly-bombastic elevator music score (the music is actually pretty great before and after, eclectic and matching the energy of each scene well). From there, it maintains this slapdash, (dare-I-say?) Godardian approach to fragmenting narrative, and then a more surreally comedic quasi-Bunuel feel in the last act. I loved how elliptical this one was (at times giving off Week End vibes, other times Ruiz in terms of character interactions) - it felt like Rollin was finally trusting his audience to engage with less defined holds on the mysticism, which essentially transforms this into a film about faith (in the lightest possible sense), partially in a self-reflexive way asking us to cultivate it towards the film's abstract narrative - particularly forcing a humbling agnosticism onto the viewer.

As opposed to other Rollin films that recognize a moral dilemma or element, morality is not a factor here. It's the most humanist film I've seen from him, in not attempting to condescend to or categorize the vampires in a way that dilutes their humanity, and the dignity therein. It's concentrated on nothing else but their sense of wonder and discovery and experience, which is sublime in every sense - even in disturbing encounters (a bit like City of Pirates) when they have bouts of loneliness and suffering. Their imaginations are too strong-willed, and that translates onto the screen and sustains a playful tone through dire straights. Plus it's just a lot of bizarre fun to watch constantly unpredictable action in a disjoined nouvelle vague-inspired art film manifesting as an (anti-)road movie of sorts, exploring all facets of our world and the meaning within - only without the burden of achieving a tangible form of enlightenment.

I was really dreading this late-career entry after a series of misses, but it was cool stuff, yet wouldn't begrudge anyone for losing patience. The looseness Rollin permits felt controlled and successfully majestic - a difficult thing to pull off well, especially the humor he derives from his outstanding lead actresses. It's a celebration of "mad poetry." I loved it.