Blood and Roses (1960)

Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses (Et mourir de plaisir) is an adaptation of one of the greatest (if not the greatest) of all vampire stories, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla. It was I think the first Carmilla adaptation. Vadim co-wrote the screenplay. Carmilla would inspire countless 1970s movies about lady vampires.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is often claimed to be the first lesbian vampire tale. While there are such hints in the novella I personally feel that this is a slight over-simplification of a complex story about awakening female sexuality.

Roger Vadim is the most unfairly maligned and misunderstood of all major French film directors. He has also been subjected to a disturbing amount of personal venom. Much of this was undoubtedly inspired by jealousy. He was either married to or lived with a succession of the most beautiful actresses in the world. Vadim really was not just a major director but an extraordinarily interesting one, far more interesting than the New Wave directors on whom critics doted.

Vadim has made major changes to both the plot and the setting. The movie has a contemporary setting.

In the novella Carmilla von Karnstein is an odd young woman who serves as a kind of governess/companion to a young girl named Laura. Laura lives on an isolated estate in Austria with her father.

In the movie Carmilla von Karnstein lives on an estate in Italy with her cousin Leopoldo von Karnstein (Mel Ferrer). They are both von Karnsteins, a family reputed to have a history of vampirism. But that was a long time ago. The vampires in the von Karnstein family were destroyed in the 18th century.

Leopoldo is engaged to marry the charming Georgia Monteverdi (Elsa Martinelli).

Carmilla is just a little obsessed by the von Karnstein family history of vampirism. She seems a bit unwell. The sun bothers her. She seems moody and preoccupied.

There’s a suggestion that when she was a little girl she had a bit of a crush on her cousin Leopoldo.

Carmilla may perhaps be jealous of Georgia.

Then a young housemaid is found dead. An apparent accident. The marks on her neck have no significance. And the gardener sees a strange figure moving through the woods.

Are all the von Karnstein vampires really safely in the past?

A party at the von Karnstein manor climaxes with fireworks, and some additional unexpected explosions. It turns out to be leftover ammunition from the war, which had been hidden in the ruins by the cemetery. Just to be on the safe side the army decides to blow up those ruins. That’s where the von Karnstein vampires were interred.

Le Fanu’s novella has a number of levels of ambiguity. This film has its own levels of ambiguity, which are not necessarily the same as those of the novella. The Carmilla of the film is troubled. She may be troubled by sexual feelings or by her emotions or by her obsession with the past.

Of course she might in fact be a vampire. There does seem to be a vampire active in the present day. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out if the ambiguity of Carmilla’s nature is resolved.

Elsa Martinelli is a fine actress and she’s very good here. Mel Ferrer is excellent as Leopoldo. But this movie belongs to Annette Vadim who plays Carmilla. Cynics might suggest that she landed the role because she was married to Vadim. In fact she’s perfectly cast and she’s superb. The role needed an actress who could look equally convincing and stunning dressed in the mode of the 18th century or in the style of 1960. Carmilla is a woman of the 18th century, an age of elegance, but she is also a child of 1960 - a world of rock’n’roll and sports cars.

Carmilla is also a woman of mystery. We have to believe that she might be an ordinary young woman or a dangerous seductive vampire. Annette Vadim manages all of this with style.

There’s a nice atmosphere of suppressed eroticism, Annette Vadim is magnificent and this is an excellent movie superbly directed by Roger Vadim. This is subtle erotic horror and it’s very highly recommended.

For many years Blood and Roses was only available in English-friendly versions in a savagely cut version. Many of the online reviews you may across appear to be written by people who have only seen the cut version. The cut version of course makes very little sense. That’s what happens when censors butcher a movie. The version I have is the German DVD which is uncut and in the correct aspect ratio and it’s 16:9 enhanced. And it looks terrific. It includes the French-language track with English subtitles.

Incidentally the screencaps used here are not from the German DVD which has much much better image quality.

I’ve reviewed Sheridan le Fanu’s novella Carmilla. Hammer’s excellent 1970 The Vampire Lovers is a more faithful adaptation and it’s fascinating to see two such wildly different approaches to the same material.

Ninja Scroll (1993)

Ninja Scroll is a 1993 anime film written and directed by one of the anime greats, Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It combines action, adventure, swordplay, fantasy and horror and it is very much an anime for grown-ups.

It is set during the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868). A Koga ninja team has been sent to investigate an epidemic that wiped out an entire village. This may not have been a natural occurrence. The Koga ninjas encounter of of the eight Kimon demons and are wiped out with just a single survivor - a young woman ninja named Kagero.

As a result of this disaster she encounters Jubei Kibagami who seems to be a wandering ronin who makes his living as a mercenary. He has had a colourful past which he has perhaps not quite come to terms with. And Jubei encounters a strange little man named Dakuan who is a lot more formidable than he looks. He is a government agent. He’s on a mission as well.

Kagero, Dakuan and Jubei don’t have much in common but they do have a common enemy. The nature of that enemy is not clear at first but the Shogun of the Dark is undoubtedly behind it. The Shogun of the Dark is a member of the Toyotomi clan who ruled Japan before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate and he aims to restore his clan to power. That would unquestionably trigger a catastrophic civil war.

Jubei has little choice other than to help Dakuan. He has been poisoned. It is a slow poison but it will kill him eventually, and of course only Dakuan has the antidote. If Jubei carries out this mission for him Dakuan will give him the antidote and a hundred gold pieces. This is known as an offer one can’t refuse.

This ill-assorted trio will encounter more of the Kimon demons and each seems a bit more terrifying than the last one. One can produce huge swarms of killer wasps. Benisato is a female demon with several tricks up her sleeve. She can shed her skin in an emergency. She can also produce venomous snakes from her lady parts.

Jubei, Dakuan and Kagero have a few magic tricks of their own. They are after all trained ninja. One of Kagero’s tricks is that her whole body is poisonous. Any man who has sex with her will die. Kagero gives the impression that this doesn’t bother her but it does. She is a ninja but she is a woman also. And as much as she tries to deny it to herself she is strangely attracted to Jubei.

The chief henchman of the Shogun of the Dark is the sinister Gemma. Jubei and Gemma had clashed before, Jubei was certain he had killed Gemma. But Gemma is very much alive.

The key to the plans of the Shogun of the Dark is gold. A huge hoard of gold, enough to put the Toyotomi clan back in power.

There’s huge amounts of mayhem and plenty of gore and gushing blood. The violence gets quite extreme. There’s some nudity and sex and sex is certainly to some degree a motivating factor for several of the characters. This is a world in which sex can be rather dangerous, and sometimes nasty. Sensitive souls may find the violence and eroticism a bit confronting. This really is a story for grown-ups.

Ninja Scroll was one of the animes that at the time were pushing the edge of the envelope in terms of outrageous imagery. It still looks impressive.

The plot is a classic tale of power struggles and betrayals with both Jubei and Kagero being manipulated by both the bad guys and the good guys. They’d both be better off if they could learn to trust each other but trusting people does not come naturally to either of them. They’d also be better off if they could just accept that they’ve fallen in love but that’s not something they’re comfortable with either.

There is a certain amount of cynicism, or at least scepticism, towards authority. The Tokugawa Shogunate represents the good guys not because it’s especially virtuous but because it represents stability. It’s a whole lot better than the alternative which would be civil war.

If you love full-blooded action with lashing of slightly perverse eroticism there’s a great deal here to be enjoyed, and Ninja Scroll is highly recommended, and if you’re fascinated by the ninja thing then it’s pretty much a must-see movie.

Ninja Scroll belongs to the period from the mid-80s to the mid-90s when anime for grown-ups was gradually establishing a foothold in western markets. Vampire Hunter D (1985), Goku Midnight Eye (1989) and Wicked City (1987) were significant titles from this period and Yoshiaki Kawajiri was already becoming a major figure in adult-oriented anime.

The Australian Madman DVD (which is the edition I own) offers a very satisfactory transfer. There has also been a Blu-Ray release.

Blood Shadow (2001-02)

Blood Shadow is an anime OVA from AT-2 Project comprising three episodes released in 2001 and 2002, directed by Nao Okezawa. I believe it has also been released as Crimson Lotus and Red Lotus. It was based on the PC game Guren.

The setting is Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). A brigade of elite warriors has been established to fight demons. They are the Crimson Lotus and they are answerable only to the shogun. They have been trained since childhood. They have all kinds of ninja skills as well as demon-hunting skills. Since this is anime you won’t be surprised to learn that most of the members of the Crimson Lotus are very cute young women. Their leaders are a young man named Rekka and a slightly older woman, Tsukikage. Tsukikage was Rekka’s mentor and he sees her as a kind of big sister.

The other members of the Crimson Lotus are girls, Misako, Akane and Ayano.

I’ve been able to find out very little about the production history of this anime. It seems to be regarded as rather disreputable and is often dismissed as mere hentai. Technically this is hentai. It includes hardcore sex scenes. I think it’s a little unfair to dismiss Blood Shadow as nothing more than hentai. There’s plenty of action and plenty of horror content. I’d call it erotic horror with both the erotic and horror elements being reasonably extreme.

Episode 1, The Demons, introduces us to the hero Rekka and Tsukikage as they are battling a particularly troublesome demon. Tsukikage sacrifices herself to save Rekka.

During another fight with demons Rekka encounters Haruka. She’s a sweet girl but she’s not entirely human. She has some demon blood, and she hates herself for this. She is shocked when Rekka wants to have sex with her - how could a man want to make love with a girl tainted by demon blood? She expects him to be repulsed by her but it turns out that they both enjoy themselves a great deal. Haruko is recruited into the Crimson Lotus.

They also hear a rumour of a mysterious group known as the Black Steel.

In Episode 2, Darkness, their mission is to persuade the legendary demon huntress Kureha to join the Crimson Lotus. At first she’s not interested but eventually she relents. There’s another mission as well - to destroy a powerful demon named Burai who preys on women.

They discover that the Black Steel (or Kagemai) is another demon-hunting group, but they seem more ruthless and perhaps more morally ambiguous than the Crimson Lotus. Rekka has by now made a discovery - not every demon is evil. That’s not just because of Haruko.

Rekka and Kureha also make a discovery - a hard day’s demon-hunting puts them both in the mood for a bit of bedroom fun.

Things get much more crazy in Episode 3, Laughter, as Rekka starts to figure out what is really going on. There’s evil afoot but the evil is much more complicated and twisted than he’d thought. Key characters will find out things about themselves. There have been betrayals by powerful people. Certain forces have been unleashed.

Blood Shadow is a pretty decent horror tale with lots of demonic mayhem and rivers of blood.

The idea of sex-obsessed demons isn’t really all that outlandish. Sex demons (such as succubi and incubi) are an important feature of many folklores and let’s face it every vampire story is to some extent about sex.

Whether you enjoy Blood Shadow or not depends entirely on how you feel about depictions of graphic sex and how you feel about hentai. If you can handle some of Jess Franco’s more extreme blendings of sex and horror (such as Female Vampire and Doriana Gray) you should be able to handle this. While it’s certainly scuzzy I think hardcore scenes are easier to take in anime form than in live-action form. The erotic content is part and parcel of the story here. But if you really don’t care for hardcore scenes you might not enjoy this anime.

I thought Blood Shadow was not outstanding but still pretty good. I recommend it, with the caveats alluded to above.

Blood Shadow has been released on Blu-Ray by Critical Mass. It offers the Japanese language version with English subtitles, and for those masochistic enough to want to watch anime in an English dubbed version that option is offered as well. The transfer is excellent.

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, released in 1989, is one of the most notorious of all animes. It was based on a manga series by Toshio Maeda. There were in fact several Urotsukidoji OVAs.

The first thing I want to say is that although it is often described as hentai I think that’s very misleading. There is some reasonably explicit sexual content but the sex is probably the least excessive and outrageous element in a very excessive and outrageous anime. I would certainly not describe this as hentai. And there’s a great deal more to Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend than sex.

There are three separate worlds - the human, beastman and demon worlds. After sleeping for three thousand years the Chojin (or Overfiend as it’s somewhat unfortunately rendered in the English title) is about to awaken. According to legend the Chojin will unite the three worlds. This will be a good thing. Perhaps.

The Chojin will be reborn in human form. Nobody knows the identity of the human in which the Chojin will be reborn. Various factions within the beastman and demon worlds are very anxious to find this human host, although they are not entirely sure what they then intend to do.

It seems likely that the human host is a student at a particular Japanese university. There are at least three students there who are possibilities. One is Nagumo. Nagumo is in love wth a sweet girl named Akemi. A muscle-bound athlete named Ozaki is another possibility, as is the socially inept Niki who is sexually obsessed with Akemi.

Amano and his sister Megumi are from the beastman world. They want to find the Chojin, preferably before the demons find him.

The problem is that the human host has no idea that he is the Chojin. Even when he finds out he still doesn’t know what his purpose is, or what his destiny is. Nobody knows what the Chojin’s destiny is. Nobody knows what will happen when and if he tries to unite the three worlds.

This is not a straightforward good vs evil story. The demon world might be disturbing but that does not necessarily make it evil. The Chojin might be good or evil. You have to bear in mind that Japanese concepts of the supernatural are very different from western Christian concepts.

Amano has been given a glimpse into the future and it worries him.

The rebirth of the Chojin certainly makes an impact, although whether it’s going to be a good thing or a very bad thing remains uncertain. Suffice to say that the Chojin is not what anybody expected. And it appears that whatever forces have been unleashed may be unstoppable.

There’s a weird romance angle which will have strange consequences. There are prophecies to be fulfilled and destinies to be achieved.

Along the way there’s a breathtaking amount of mayhem and carnage.

Amano is as close as this movie comes to having a hero. He and his sister Megumi and their odd little demon pal Kuroko are the good guys. Or at least they think they’re the good guys.

This is a movie in which there are forces that represent pure evil, but perhaps they’re not pure evil. It depends on your point of view, and on the price you consider worth paying to achieve goals that may or may not be desirable.

The violence is extreme but it’s so over-the-top that it’s less disturbing than more realistic violence would have been.

This movie’s reputation would lead one to expect truly shocking sexual content but I really don’t think there’s anything overly shocking here. It’s certainly an anime for grown-ups.

It’s the stylistic excess that is most shocking here. It’s stylistic excess pile upon stylistic excess to the point of madness. There’s a certain appeal to that. This is not an anime constrained by considerations of moderation or good taste.

It’s a wild ride but I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The Kitty Media release includes the movie version as well as a slightly different version on DVD. The Blu-Ray offers the option of watching in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dubbed version is included as well but I have no idea why anyone would want to an anime dubbed into English.

Whirlpool (1970)

José Ramón Larraz’s Whirlpool is an erotic horror movie with an interesting history. It’s an Anglo-Danish co-production shot entirely in England by a Spanish director and post production was done in Italy. It was released in 1970 and within a couple of years vanished completely. It became one of those legendary lost movies, to the great frustration of fans of the fascinatingly odd movies of Larraz. It was however not lost after all and a few years ago it received a Blu-Ray release from Arrow.

Tulia (played by former Penthouse Pet Vivian Neves) is an aspiring fashion model. She accepts an invitation from Sarah (Pia Andersson) to spend a weekend with her in the country. Sarah is a middle-aged woman with some vague connection to the world of fashion modelling. Sarah lives in a cottage with her nephew Theo (Karl Lanchbury). Theo is a keen photographer. He’ll be able to take some photos of Tulia. Theo and Tulia will both enjoy that.

Before this happens we’ve already had a scene in which an attractive nude young woman wakes up in bed next to Sarah. Whatever happened in that bed was clearly not to the young woman’s liking. She’s heading straight back to London pronto.

At this point one has to consider Tulia’s motivations, which are a little confused. Her problem is that having established a very tentative toehold in the world of fashion modelling she thinks she’s a sophisticated woman of the world, but while she isn’t totally naïve she isn’t as sophisticated as she thinks she is. She’s also a city girl and it has never occurred to her that spending a weekend in an isolated cottage in the country with a woman she’s met once and a young man she’s never set eyes upon might involve some risks. She’s also very young.

The fact that Sarah is a lesbian doesn’t shock her. The fact that Sarah takes an obviously sexual interest in her doesn’t shock her either. It might be an adventure.

A game of strip poker ends with Tulia and Theo getting it on on the living room floor. At which point something happens that should ring major alarm bells for Tulia, but Tulia is too inexperienced to recognise its significance.

There are some three-way games of flirtation and seduction. A drive in the countryside with Theo leads to a situation that should ring even louder alarm bells, but Tulia shrugs it off.

Of course Tulia’s lack of alarm may have something to do with those special cigarettes Sarah plies her with. The idea that they might contain ingredients other than tobacco doesn’t occur to her.

Tulia does wonder what happened to Rhonda. Rhonda was a girl who also spent some time at the cottage. Tulia has seen nude photos of her shot by Theo. Apparently Rhonda just suddenly went back to London. We, the audience, know that Rhonda was not the naked girl in bed with Sarah at the beginning of the movie so we know that a number of young women have accepted invitations from Sarah.

Tulia eventually figures out that there’s more going on than just an older lesbian looking for pretty bed companions. The fact that Sarah is middle-aged is important but in more complex ways. Sarah and Theo are both wanting to drag Tulia into their sex games but there’s another occasional player as well. All the sexual motivations in this household are perverse in very complicated ways. There’s also something significant about the differing motivations of Sarah and Theo but to say more would be to risk spoilers.

Tulia is hopelessly out of her depth and would be wise to leave, if she can.

The acting, which is a little stilted on the part of all the key players, could have been a problem in a straightforward realist movie but in a movie such as this the fact that it’s a bit off just adds an extra layer of strangeness. The real problem was probably not the dialogue but the script. It’s a fine complex twisted story but the dialogue is very stilted and doesn’t ring true. This may simply be that Larraz, who wrote the screenplay, was Spanish and just hadn’t yet developed an ear for natural English speech patterns and colloquialisms. It’s a problem that isn’t so noticeable in his later films which makes sense. As he made more movies in England he would naturally have become more comfortable with the language. Whirlpool would have benefited from some dialogue polishing from a native English speaker but the budget presumably would not have stretched to that.

There’s plenty of nudity and sex which earned the film an X rating in the United States. The sex is rather graphic for 1970. There’s also some reasonably graphic violence.

This is a non-supernatural horror movie. Or at least that’s probably the case. There are sequences that can be interpreted in various ways, and which can be seen as hinting at the supernatural, or perhaps the paranormal. It’s another way of increasing our sense of unease.

There are certainly things in this story that make no sense. The first act of violence not only makes no sense in plot terms, it makes no sense in character terms. At times you wonder to what extent Larraz is being deliberately mystifying and to what extent these problems are simply a sign that this was his first feature film and he was still learning his craft.

One thing that strikes me about Larraz’s films shot in England is his relationship with the English landscape. Of course to a Spaniard the English landscape was as exotic as the Spanish landscape would be to an Englishman and I get the feeling that Larraz saw it as offering interesting cinematic possibilities. He certainly uses it here to create an atmosphere of isolation and menace.

The most interesting thing about Whirlpool is that what appears to be a linear plot is in fact cyclical. Whirlpool is a flawed movie but an interesting one. Recommended, and if you’re a fan of Larraz’s later work you’ll certainly want to see this one.

The Arrow Blu-Ray offers an excellent transfer and there’s audio commentary by Tim Lucas.

I’ve also reviewed Larraz’s Vampyres (1974) and Symptoms (1974). Both are very much worth seeing.

Night of the Devils (1972)

Night of the Devils (La notte dei diavoli) was directed by Giorgio Ferroni and was based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's 1839 short story Sem'ya vurdalaka (The Family of the Vourdalak).

It begins with a young man in hospital in Italy. We will later discover that his name is Nicola. He was found wandering in a confused state. He may have crossed over the border from Yugoslavia. At times he seems quite normal but he panics when the lights are turned out. Various tests are carried out but they’re inconclusive. He may be suffering from amnesia.

A young woman visits him in hospital. She claims to have met him a week earlier. She is concerned about him. When he sees her he freaks out completely.

We then get his story in a flashback. He was driving in the country and swerved his car to avoid hitting a woman. His car is now undriveable and the woman has vanished. He asks for help from the inhabitants of a nearby cottage. The head of this little household seems surly but since he has just buried his brother that might be understandable. We, the audience, witnessed the burial and it was rather strange.

The man lives with his grown-up sons and daughters. Also living here are the brother’s pretty young widow and his children. There’s some tension with the oldest of his sons.

Nicola is welcome to stay but he must not leave the cottage after nightfall and must on no account unbar the windows. There is a knocking at the door, but everybody assures Nicola that it is just the wind.

It’s as if Nicola has found himself back in the Middle Ages. These people have no electricity, no telephone, they have never seen a television, they have no motor vehicles. And they appear to be steeped in superstition. The children tell Nicola about the witch that tries to enter the house every night. Nicola hears varying accounts of the death of the brother.

The old man decides to put an end to the curse once and for all. If he can. If he fails it will mean disaster.

Nicola is a city boy. He thinks this stuff is all nonsensical superstition. And of course he may be right. He has seen and heard some strange things but they all could and almost certainly do have perfectly rational explanations. That’s what he is determined to believe.

Things get complicated when a tentative romance blossoms between Nicola and one of the daughters, Sdenka (Agostina Belli).

Nicola is confronted by some extreme acts of violence but it’s still possible that the violence is driven purely by superstitious fears. He is definitely anxious to get his car back on the road. Things are getting too disturbing for him. He’s not exactly frightened, yet. It has crossed his mind that it would be a good idea to leave and take Sdenka with him.

A conversation with an old man in the nearby village gives him some more information. The old man tells him of the legend of the Vourdalak. The vourdalak are not exactly vampires, but there are similarities. When the original story was written in 1839 there had been vampire stories such as Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) but the vampire was not yet established as a major literary trope. There was however a growing interest in both folklore and the occult and vampire-like monsters such as the succubus and the lamia had attracted the attention of writers. There are also mentions of witches in the movie so it was drawing on various occult influences.

When the real horrors kick in they do so in a big way. There’s a fair amount of gore but it’s the stifling atmosphere of fear and suspicion that really makes the horror work.

The twist ending is not entirely unanticipated but it still packs a real punch.

There’s also plenty of eroticism, some of it being perhaps not entirely healthy. The vourdalak is a more overtly sexual monster than the vampire. And perhaps a monster driven more by emotion than by bloodlust.

Night of the Devils is both very effective and very interesting gothic horror with the transposition of mediæval beliefs into the modern world being done pretty well. Highly recommended.

Giorgio Ferroni is better known for his superb 1960 gothic horror film Mill of the Stone Women which I also highly recommend.

The Raro Video DVD looks great (they’ve also released this film on Blu-Ray).a

Dracula's Fiancee (2002)

Dracula's Fiancee (La fiancée de Dracula) was one of Jean Rollin’s last films, made at a time when serious health problems meant that there were long gaps between his movies. These late movies don’t get as much attention as his earlier vampire and zombie movies and this is a pity. These late movies represent a distinctive phase in his career which in its own way is every bit as interesting as the earlier phases.

Two men, an elderly professor and his much younger assistant Eric, are trying to track down the Master. In a conventional vampire movie we would assume that these are the good guys and that the Professor is a Van Helsing analogue. In a Rollin vampire film we should be very careful about jumping to such conclusions. The Professor believes that the key to finding the Master is a woman named Isabelle. Isabelle (Cyrille Gaudin) is a madwoman confined in a convent. Her madness has infected the nuns and they’re all quite insane.

The Master is in fact Dracula.

The Professor is told that the Parallels have the answer. The Parallels represent a new element in Rollin’s ever-shifting vampire mythology. The Parallels are monsters. There’s the dwarf court jester Triboulet, the Vampire, the Ogress, the She-Wolf (played by the always wonderful Brigitte Lahaie) and others. The Parallels have their own reasons for seeking the Master.

Others are looking for the Master.

Isabelle is destined to be Dracula’s bride. Whether Dracula survives, whether he currently exists in our reality, whether he exists in another universe entirely or whether he exists only in an imaginary universe remains unclear. What will happen if the marriage between Dracula and Isabelle goes ahead? We eventually get the answer but it’s not the kind of straightforward answer most people would like.

Most vampire movies draw their inspiration, directly or indirectly, from Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla or from Stoker’s Dracula but not Rollin. In his vampire movies he creates whole new vampire mythologies. And he created several totally distinct vampire mythologies. The vampire mythology of The Nude Vampire is radically different from the vampire mythology of Requiem for a Vampire or Fascination.

When he returned to the vampire film with his superb 1997 Two Orphan Vampires he did it again, with a mythology based on the pop culture of the past that he loved so much. The two blind orphan vampire girls inhabit a world created out of adventure fiction, 19th century French serial fiction, comics, children’s books and old movie serials. Whether they simply inhabit this world or whether they themselves have created it is an open question. The two girls understand nothing of what the rest of us think of as reality.

Amazingly with Dracula's Fiancee, so late in his career, he does it yet again. Even though there’s a Dracula in the story the movie has no connection with Stoker’s Dracula (in fact the the use of the name Dracula may have been forced on Rollin by distributors for commercial reasons). This is the strange world of the Parallels. As with all of Rollin’s mythologies you will have to decide just how imaginary this world might be and whether it has any connection with reality.

We might be dealing with a parallel universe or with the world of the imagination, or perhaps the world of madness. Or is it the world of art and literature? Is this universe more real or less real than the reality most of us take for granted.

Two Orphan Vampires deals with similar themes but in a different way, as does Rollin’s very underrated and very neglected Lost in New York. Rollin had played with such themes many times but always with interesting variations. If a theme interested him he would look for different ways to approach it.

Like Two Orphan Vampires this movie showcases Rollin’s fascination with fairy tales and the gothic.

Rollin is often misunderstood by those who expect vampire movies to be horror movies. Rollin only ever made two movies that can truly be described as horror movies (The Grapes of Death and The Living Dead Girl) and even those two films are hardly conventional horror films. Rollin’s movies belong to the genre the French call the fantastique which combines science fiction, fantasy, horror, gothic and thriller elements with healthy doses of the surreal and the world of fairy tales in an intoxicating and playful (and very French) way and also combines artiness with pop culture.

There are no twinned girls in this movie but there are plenty of other classic Rollin elements. There is a clown (a jester being a species of clown). There are girls in filmy see-through nightdresses, almost naked and yet not naked. There is an obsession with clocks. There is his famous beach at Dieppe. There are ruins. There are vampires, but each Rollin vampire movies offers a different type of vampire. Some really are vampires. Some might be actual vampires. As always Rollin provides us with more questions than answers.

I’m learning to like Rollin’s late movies very much indeed. In some ways he was returning to his surrealist roots but it’s not quite the surrealism of his early movies. These late movies have a kind of magical vibe. At times they resemble the Latin American literary genre magic realism. There’s no attempt to explain the magical elements. And the line between dream and reality becomes steadily more blurred. Dracula's Fiancee is highly recommended.

Redemption have released this movie on Blu-Ray. The transfer is excellent. And as an extra they have included the absolutely wonderful Lost in New York making this Blu-Ray a must-buy.

Cat People (1982) revisited

If you want to properly appreciate Paul Schrader’s 1982 Cat People you have to avoid thinking of it as a remake of the 1942 Cat People. It is not a remake. Schrader took the basic idea of the 1942 film and used it to make an entirely different movie. Simply remaking a movie is a pointless exercise and it’s even more pointless in the case of a masterpiece like the 1942 Cat People. Schrader understood this.

Taking the premise of an earlier movie and doing something radically different with it, as Schrader did, can however be very worthwhile. It can result in a new movie that is in its own way just as interesting and just as good as the earlier film. The 1982 Cat People falls into this category. If you approach it determined to accept it on its own terms then you’re in for a wild and exciting cinematic ride.

Incidentally with the benefit of hindsight Schrader believed that he should have changed the title.

Irena Gallier (Nastassja Kinski) arrives in New Orleans to be reunited with her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell) whom she hasn’t since since she was four. They are orphans. Their parents had been circus folk.

Almost as soon as she arrives Paul disappears. We know that in fact he is still around. He is in a cage in the zoo. He is now a leopard.

Irena has encountered a nice young man named Oliver (John Heard) who is a curator at the New Orleans Zoo. He gets her a job there. There is an immediate strong attraction between Irena and Oliver.

Irena doesn’t know that the zoo’s new black leopard is Paul but she senses something strange about the animal, something that fascinates her.

Irena gradually learns the truth, that she and Paul are not wholly human. They are like lycanthropes, but they transform into leopards. That truth about her nature will have consequences for her relationship with Oliver. And then bodies start to accumulate. Irena can’t believe that Paul could be responsible although the evidence seems to point that way.

Irena is a virgin and that’s significant. There’s a reason she is afraid to have sex with a man, and she slowly figures out what that reason is.

The movie invents its own cat people mythology, or cat people lore. Irena and Paul are cat people, as were their parents. They can only safely have sex with their own kind, in other words with each other. If they have sex with outsiders they transform into leopards. They then must kill. When they have killed they revert to their human form.

Paul knows all this, which is why he exhibits such an obvious sexual interest in Irena. This horrifies Irena. She does not want to accept the truth about herself and she does not want to accept the consequences to which that truth will lead.

Oliver has a bit of an obsession with Dante and sees Irena as Beatrice, which adds another wrinkle to the movie.

The ending of Alan Ormsby’s screenplay did not satisfy Schrader. He came up with his own very different ending, which was what was filmed. Schrader was correct. His ending is vastly superior, and it’s a truly great ending.

Schrader was heavily influenced by European film-making of the 1960s and Cat People is an American film set in America but with a definite European sensibility. He liked New Orleans as a setting because he considered it to be the least American of all American settings. He also wanted Nastassja Kinski (she was his first choice for the rôle) because she looked European. It works. It gives the movie a mysterious exotic quality, as if it takes place in a slightly different reality.

Immense thought and effort and imagination were put into the visuals of this movie and the effort paid off. It has its own distinctive unsettling mysterious look. It really is visually superb.

And it was all done in the old school way. These were the pre-CGI days. This film uses matte paintings and in-the-camera optical effects and coloured gels and makeup and the end result is stunning.

Malcolm McDowell is terrific. This was the kind of outrageous off-the-wall kind of rôle at which he excelled. He’s scary and creepy and strange.

But Nastassja Kinski is even better. This is her movie and she gives her career-best performance. She’s sexy in a weird exotic unsettling way, she conveys Irena’s confusion and anguish very effectively and she manages to seem subtly cat-like. Her performance is all the more impressive when you remember that she was just twenty when this movie was made.

Schrader’s Cat People is in its own way just as good as the ’42 movie. An erotic horror movie, with the emphasis on the erotic. Very highly recommended.

The DVD includes a very enlightening audio commentary by the director plus some other worthwhile extras.

Lips of Blood (1975)

Lips of Blood (Lèvres de sang), released in 1975, marks the end of the first phase of Jean Rollin’s career as a director. This was the period in which Rollin tried to combine unconventional erotic horror with full-blooded surrealism. It’s the most interesting phase of his career.

For a while it seemed as though the financial failure of Lips of Blood would more or less end his career and this his only future would be churning out adult movies. He had a rethink and then bounced back in 1978 with Grapes of Death, which began a much more overtly commercial period.

There were various reasons for Lips of Blood box-office failure. It appeared at a time when X-rated movies were all the rage in France and the softcore erotic horror of Rollin and similar film-makers was of little interest to distributors. The movie also had a very troubled production history, with Rollin forced to work with an unenthusiastic and unco-operative crew.

Rollin co-wrote the script with the film’s star Jean-Loup Philippe. Rollin considered it to be the best script he ever filmed. In retrospect Lips of Blood is one of his best movies, a dream-like poetic vision.

The movie starts with a prologue, with a body being put into a coffin which is sealed in a room. The body is shrouded but does not appear to be dead. The significance of this prologue will not become clear until late in the movie.

A young man, Frederick (Jean-Loup Philippe), sees a photograph of an old ruin. It triggers an odd disturbing poignant childhood memory. Or does it? Frederick is sure he has never seen this ruined chateau before, but the memory is so vivid. The truth is that there are gaps in Frederick’s memories of his childhood.

Perhaps if he can find the photographer he will be able to find the chateau. The photographer tells him that she has been paid a lot of money to keep that information from him. But, if he meets her at the Aquarium at midnight, she might tell him.

The meeting at the Aquarium is a beautifully shot scene and it begins the movie’s plunge into an increasingly dream-like mood. Frederick finds it difficult to distinguish between reality, illusion, dream and memory. The memories might be true, or they might be false.

He remembers a young girl at the chateau. He was wandering lost. He was twelve at the time. She was a teenager. He developed a crush on her, as 12-year-old boys are wont to do. But his mother is evasive when he asks her about the incident now.

After the meeting at the Aquarium Frederick is pursued by a man with a gun, the pursuit being a series of strange transitions of settings.

And then the vampire girls appear. Four vampire girls. Including the Castel twins, always a bonus in a Rollin vampire movie.

Rollin was always obsessed with the past and in this movie the hero has to unravel a mystery from his own past. He does eventually do so. We do get an explanation towards the end. And then the movie takes another turn into the fantastic and the surreal with a typically poetic Rollin ending.

Rollin was definitely a surrealist but you can’t appreciate his movies unless you know something about his other obsessions. One of these obsessions could be called vintage pop fiction. Rollin loved the feuilleton, the cheap sometimes trashy always breathlessly exciting serial stories that were so hugely popular in 19th century France. Rollin was no arid intellectual. He was an intellectual, but one with a taste for the pleasures of pop culture.

His vampire movies are horror movies, but don’t expect to be terrified or confronted by buckets of blood. Rollin liked vampires because he liked the idea of the past and the present being hopelessly intertwined and vampires by their nature exist outside of time. Time has no meaning to a vampire. And Rollin also liked vampires because they were mysterious and romantic and poetic. If you compare this movie to vampire movies made by other European directors at the time, such as Jess Franco’s Female Vampire and Jose Larraz’s Vampyres (both great movies) it’s obvious that Rollin approached vampires in a very different way.

This is a movie about searching. Searching for the past, for memories, for identity, for meaning, for love. It’s both melancholy and strangely romantic.

This certainly qualifies as erotic horror. There’s an amount of female frontal nudity. But it’s part of the texture of the movie - Frederick’s memories are amalgams of lost love and eroticism. The vampires in this film are not particularly scary or evil but they are very erotic. From the time that the vampire first appeared in European literature (in Coleridge’s poem Christabel in 1797) eroticism was implicit in vampirism. Vampires symbolise both life and death and eroticism is the key to life.

The Redemption Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer. Extras include a very brief introduction by Rollin, an informative interview with his frequent collaborator Natalie Perrey and excellent liner notes by Tim Lucas.

Lips of Blood is Rollin at his best. Very highly reommended.

The Garden of Torment (1976)

The Garden of Torment (Le jardin des supplices) is a 1976 French film based very loosely on Octave Mirbeau’s 1899 novel of the same name (the title of which is sometimes rendered in English as The Torture Garden). Mirbeau was one of the major writers of the Decadent Movement of the 1890s. Part of the novel is set in China. The movie takes China in the late 1920s as its setting. It’s an interesting choice. China was in chaos. This was still the warlord era but it was increasingly clear that the real struggle for power would be between the Communists and the Nationalists.

Dr Antoine Durrieu (Roger Van Hool) has been involved in a scandal involving the supplying of cocaine. His friend the Minister protects him from the worst consequences but it seems advisable for Durrieu to leave France for a while. He is sent to China to run a hospital. His predecessor in the job mysteriously disappeared.

On board the ship en route to China Durrieu gets a taste of the kind of decadence he will find among the European community in China. He has to treat a priest for a venereal disease. There’s a sex murder. There’s lots of sexual activity. There’s also an air of hopelessness.

Running the hospital is an exercise in futility. Drugs and anaesthetics are sent regularly but they never reach the hospital. They are held up in Customs. The Customs service is controlled by an Englishman named Greenhill (Tony Taffin). He diverts the drugs for his own purposes. They end up going to warlord armies. Greenhill seems to be involved in some very murky political activities.

Durrieu is also an avid collector of Chinese art, a passion he shares with Greenhill. But no-one in Canton can buy Chinese art objects without Greenhill’s permission.

Dr Durrieu is not a terribly moral person but he does take being a doctor seriously. He decides it is necessary to get to know this Mr Greenhill.

He does get to know him. He also gets to know Greenhill’s daughter Clara (Jacqueline Kerry). And her friend Annie, a Chinese girl obsessed with death and sex.

Antoine Durrieu is a rather conflicted man. He thought of himself as being a bit of a hedonist and a decadent who had no interest in traditional morality but the things he sees in China make him realise that he isn’t as cynical as he thought. He is shocked by the violence and cruelty that he sees, much of which is intimately connected with Greenhill and his daughter. His outlook is complicated by the fact that he falls in love with Clara although he is deeply shocked by her obsessions with sex, death and cruelty.

Antoine is even more shocked when he discovers the things that go on in the garden attached to Greenhill’s mansion - the torture garden of the book’s title.

The European community in China has been enjoying a life of outrageous luxury and self-indulgence but that may be coming to an end. There seems to be revolution in the wind. The smarter Europeans are getting out.

Antoine knows that getting out would be a sensible option, but he is obsessed by Clara and won’t go without her. And Clara doesn’t intend to go anywhere. Clara is more than a little in love with death.

Antoine is a bit of an innocent. He liked to have his fun with whores and we see him doing just that at the start of the film but we get the impression he treated them very decently, and even with affection. He finds himself drawn into a world of cruelty but he is a man who is incapable of cruelty.

There’s definitely a strong de Sade influence at work in this film (as there was in the novel). There’s also a political subtext but it’s worth pointing out that Mirbeau’s novel was political in the context of 1890s politics, and the political obsessions of 1926 were not those of 1899 (or of 1976 when the movie was made). Mirbeau was attacking capitalism while the movie is more concerned with colonialism. I’m not sure it would be correct to see this as an anti-colonialist film though. It’s about corruption and power and cruelty as integral parts of human nature (which perhaps makes it more Sadeian). In fact I don’t see any overt political content here. The movie makes it clear that if there’s a revolution that sweeps away the old order the new order will be just as bad. Political power always corrupts. It’s a profoundly pessimistic view.

1976 was the height of the European cinematic craze for mixing art and erotica, with some film putting more emphasis on the art and some emphasising the erotic. It was obviously Emmanuelle that kicked off the craze. Other notable films of this type include The Story of O, Walerian Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974).

Lionel Legros’s cinematography is impressive. On the whole it’s a visually lush film although quite shocking in places. And at times the costumes and hairstyles really are outrageously 1970s.

Christian Gion had mostly directed comedies and had never made anything remotely like this movie before. He thought it would be an interesting challenge and he does a fine job.

Nucleus Films have released this as a region-free Blu-Ray with extras including an extremely informative audio commentary by David Flint and an interview the film’s director. The transfer is excellent.

The Garden of Torment is erotic and it is arty, and it’s provocative and disturbing and convincingly decadent. Antoine Durrieu is passive but likeable figure, an observer of life rather than a participant. Clara Greenhill is a fascinatingly complex woman, both evil and weirdly sympathetic. Interesting stuff. Very highly recommended.