If you’re unfamiliar with Rollin it’s as well to know that there is nothing conventional about his movies. If you’ve heard that he was a maker of erotic gothic horror movies or erotic vampire movies you will find that this is somewhat true but his movies are not like other people’s erotic vampire movies. Shiver of the Vampires is a very very different beast compared to Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers or Harry Kümel’s Daughters of Darkness or even José Larraz’s Vampyres or Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos and Female Vampire. Those are all excellent movies that in various ways redefined the vampire movie but Shiver of the Vampires is much stranger.
It is an erotic vampire movie and it is an exploitation movie but it’s also an art film and an exercise in cinematic surrealism. The term surrealist is ludicrously overused but Rollin was the real deal. He was a full-blown surrealist, hugely influenced by surrealist painters such as Paul Delvaux and Clovis Trouille.
Shiver of the Vampires is uncompromisingly surrealist and uncompromisingly arty and it’s uncompromisingly a commercially oriented exploitation movie. Rollin wanted his movies to be commercially successful.
Isle (Sandra Julien) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand) are a young newly married couple. They’re heading to a semi-ruined chateau to visit Isle’s two male cousins who are her only living relatives. They arrive to discover that the cousins died a couple of days earlier.
The principal location used was the keep of the 14th century Château de Septmonts in Aisne. The keep is all that remains of the chateau. It’s an extraordinary location and Rollin wanted the chateau itself to be a character in the movie. It is in a sense alive. It influences all the characters. Although Isle and Antoine are madly in love and this is their wedding night (she is still wearing her bridal gown) she does not want to make love with her bridegroom. At this early stage of the story the chateau is already exerting its influence on Isle. It is claiming her.
The cousins reappear. They are not dead after all. Isle and Antoine are surprised but of course we, the viewers, are now suspecting that they are vampires. Perhaps they are, although later we discover that they were at one time vampire hunters. And another vampire, Isolde (Dominique) will soon make her appearance in one of the many dazzling minor visual set-pieces of the film. Isolde takes a keen interest in Isle.
Like many of Rollin’s films this is often regarded as a lesbian vampire story but that is slightly misleading. In Rollin’s films there are links and bonds and attractions between female characters but it is an over-simplification to see these in terms of lesbianism. Rollin describes this movie as a magical love story and the eroticism is indeed more magical than physical. There may be a physical side to it but it’s not physical desire that drives the story.
The connections between the characters between Isolde and the two cousins and between Isolde and Isle are inherently mysterious. The family history is complex. And the vampires here have mysterious origins. The cousins talk about ancient religious cults and conflicts between those cults and the Catholic Church.
There is also no clear-cut good vs evil conflict. Rollin’s vampires were rarely evil in any straightforward way.
And of course in a Rollin movie there is always a point at which we become aware that we are no longer in the world of reality in the sense that we usually understand reality. We may be in the world of myth or the world of dream. Perhaps those worlds are just different realities. In his late vampire movies, the superb Two Orphan Vampires (1997) and Dracula's Fiancee (2002), Rollin creates elaborate alternative mythologies. And in Two Orphan Vampires we are in a storybook world the reality of which is incredibly ambiguous.
Rollin had an overwhelming love for the pop culture of the past and his strange cinematic worlds draw heavily on such influences. In this case he is very deliberately homaging the amazing silent serials of Louis Feuillade, in particular Les Vampires (1915). For Rollin fictional worlds had their own reality.
Shiver of the Vampires is unusual among Rollin’s films for its fascination with hippie culture and the counter-culture in general. It was shot in 1970, a year after Woodstock. This was the high tide of hippiedom.
Rollin tells us in his audio commentary that he wanted to have something bizarre in every single shot. Trying to find a straightforward meaning in his films is a fool’s errand. It’s like trying to find a single coherent meaning in dream or a myth.
When Rollin is discussed it’s perhaps surprising that David Lynch doesn’t get mentioned. Very different filmmakers but with a few striking affinities. Those “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” moments in Lynch movies such as Blue Velvet serve the same purpose as similar moments in Rollin’s movies - opening a portal between everyday reality and another world in which reality has been subtly distorted.
Shiver of the Vampires is one of Rollin’s best and most characteristic movies. Very highly recommended.
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