With his first four full length films, between 1968 and 1971,
Jean Rollin forged his own brand of
erotic and poetic vampirism. The one of a kind auteur painted over the ‘in
vogue’ gothic horror tropes, changed up the rules, and gave his vampires reign
over dark and melancholic vistas far removed from the familiar world. The experience
ends up being fantastically vampiric while also seeming at odds with the classic
notion of a vampire movie.
Rollin
would shed his brand of tragic vampire lore for a time to experiment with new
dark takes on death (The Iron Rose (1973)),
adventure, and revenge (The Demoniacs
(1974)). To compensate for box office failures, and in order to have steady
work between more personal projects, Rollin
also directed several porn films under a different name (Michel Gentil).
In 1975, Rollin returned to vampires with the
exceptional Lips of Blood, which
also ended up being a commercial failure, and so to try and bring in money, Lips of Blood was reformatted with new
hardcore pornographic inserts and transformed into the more exploitative movie Suce moi vampire (1976). For me, the
existence of Suce moi vampire
undermines the significance and spirit of Lips
of Blood, and, kind of similar to my feelings on House of Exorcism (1975) (the reworking of Bava’s masterpiece Lisa and
the Devil (1973)), I don’t have much interest in seeking it out.
THE NUDE VAMPIRE has a lot going for it and is just as enjoyable as other early efforts from Jean Rollin (THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES and REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE) and is a masterpiece that I can’t help thinking ends up not getting the love it deserves on account of its low production and bizarre ‘out there’ feel; although it is getting a Blu-ray release this January along with a few other Rollin favorites.
A mysterious woman, Caroline Cartier, is stalked in the middle of the night by strange pursuers with animal masks. She runs into a well-dressed young gentleman, Pierre, played by Olivier Rollin (Rollin’s half-brother), who senses she is in danger and attempts to help her out but with no such luck, as she is eventually shot by her masked pursuers and carried away to a clubhouse that happens to belong to Pierre's father, Radamante, Maurice Lemaitre, where nicely dressed people seem to aggregate. Concerned, the young man attempts to enter, but he is refused by a gatekeeper who doesn’t let him in without an invitation.
The appearance of the stalkers in animal masks are an early sign of the ‘no-budget’ feel of the film, but they still manage to be eerily intriguing, and the particular sequence is so visually unique that it is hard not to be interested. During this sequence, the dissonant and screeching violin and a delirious sounding saxophone that can be heard blend into a cacophony at times. The music succeeds in setting an unusual mood that is just as weird as the movie. The violin will sometimes shriek out, resulting in a feeling that is like a slap to the senses.
When Pierre manages to gain entry to the nocturnal meetings, he finds that what might have been an exclusive private party at his father’s clubhouse turns out to be a meeting ground for a cult that worships the mysterious and alluring woman he met and saw shot on the streets.
