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.

Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971)

If you define a cult movie as one that was commercially unsuccessful and wildly reviled at the time because it was not at all the movie audiences and critics were expecting, and as a movie that was hopelessly misunderstood but gradually gained a following who appreciated its engaging oddness, then you can’t get much more cult than Pretty Maids All in a Row. There was some excitement when the movie was announced. It was directed by Roger Vadim (just a few years after he had attracted a lot of attention with Barbarella), the script was written by Gene Roddenberry (yes, Mr Star Trek himself) and the cast was pretty promising to say the least, with Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas headlining. The setup, a series of murders of high school girls, maybe sounded a bit exploitative but it also sounded like the basis for a stylish adult-themed crime thriller.

It was released in 1971 and the critics savaged it and the public stayed away in droves.

So what went wrong? Maybe the critics hadn’t seen Barbarella. Maybe they hadn’t actually seen any of Vadim’s movies and maybe they actually thought he was going to make a conventional sexy thriller. Which, if you were familiar with his work, should have been the last thing you’d expect from him. What Vadim actually delivered was a bizarre sex comedy, with the humour being both black and outrageously sexual. There is no point in whining because a director doesn’t make the movie you wanted him to make. Vadim made the movie he wanted to make. And, as outrageous black sex comedies go, it works in its own delirious way.

We start with a typical 17-year-old high school student named Ponce De Leon Harper (yes, really) on his way to school on his motor scooter. It’s a nightmare journey for him. Everywhere he looks there are girls. Pretty girls. With short skirts, cute bottoms and pert breasts. Ponce spends far too much time thinking about such things. In fact he spends all his time thinking about such things. Like any normal 17-year-old he is obsessed with girls. One day he hopes he’ll actually get to sleep with one.

The nightmare gets worse when he arrives at English class and meets the new substitute teacher Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson) and of course all he can think about is her delicious body. He flees to the restroom and what does he find there? He finds a girl. And she’s dead. With a note pinned to her bottom.

Of course the whole school is soon in an uproar. Principal Proffer (Roddy McDowall) is in a panic, which is normal for him. Sheriff Podalski (Keenan Wynn) blunders in and manages to contaminate just about every piece of evidence. Captain Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) from the State Police has a challenge on his hands. The only one not worried is the school’s guidance counsellor and football coach, former football star Tiger McGrew (Rock Hudson). He’s busy giving one of the female students some hands-on guidance. It’s not until they get their clothes back on that Tiger figures out that something strange is happening at the school.

Tiger takes his job as guidance counsellor seriously. He wants these kids to develop their potential, learn to express themselves and become well-rounded confident young people. With the girls his approach is to sleep with them. What could give a girl more confidence than being bedded by an all-American hunk and living legend like Tiger McGrew? Tiger also worries about the male students. Students like Ponce.

Ponce’s problem is his lack of sexual confidence so Tiger manages to persuade Miss Smith to do something to help him. He tells her that Ponce’s problem is that he’s totally impotent (when in fact of course his problem is quite the opposite). Maybe she could invite Ponce to her apartment and find a way to cure the poor boy’s impotence? When she notices that if Ponce had ever had problems getting it up he sure isn’t having any problems now she is delighted. She is a dedicated teacher who wants to help her students. She’s really a sort of guidance counsellor herself and since she’s been without a man for quite some time after a messy breakup she finds counselling Ponce to be a most satisfying experience. This sub-plot is just one of the many reasons this movie could not possibly get made today.

The dead bodies keep accumulating. The school has been hit with so many murders that there is even talk of cancelling an important football game, but it’s decided that four murders is insufficient reason to take such a drastic step.

This movie is pretty crazy to begin with and it gets steadily more unhinged.

While contemporary critics were bewildered the cast clearly knew what was going on and they tailor their performances accordingly. They go ludicrously over-the-top. And it works. It’s one of Rock Hudson’s best performances. Angie Dickinson is superb, Telly Savalas (in a performance that is almost a dry run for Kojak) is terrific and Roddy McDowall is wonderfully demented. As for the pretty maids, they are genuinely pretty and there are lots of them and they take their clothes off a lot. The nudity is really not particularly graphic. This is titillation rather than softcore porn. It’s the ideas in the film that might shock over-sensitive modern audiences, rather than the bare flesh.

While the plot is a bit aimless the ending is rather neat as we discover the way Tiger’s counselling has made at least one of his students bloom.

Roger Vadim is a director for whom very few people these days seem to have a good word. I really have no idea why. His movies might not be conventionally good movies but they’re usually interesting.

This is truly a weird little film but it is also, in its deranged and politically incorrect way, very funny. It’s certainly not the movie MGM were hoping for but it is a treat for anyone with a taste for oddball movies. Very highly recommended.

Sadly there’s been no major restoration done but the Warner Archive release offers a reasonably good transfer.

Barbarella (1968)

Barbarella is a movie I’ve seen a number of times but oddly enough until now I’ve never gotten around to seeing it on DVD. Or in its correct Cinemascope aspect ratio. Which makes a wonderful movie even more wonderful. I also suspect that I’ve never seen this film completely uncut before. I certainly don’t recall seeing quite so much of Jane Fonda before. Her opening credits striptease in this version is certainly guaranteed to get your attention. It has to be said that this Franco-Italian co-production is a movie you either love or hate. If you don’t appreciate high camp silliness then you’re well advised to sit this one out. And if you have a thing for Serious Film-Making that has profound things to say about the human condition, this is not the movie for you. Jane Fonda was later embarrassed at having made this movie which just shows how humourless you can become when you start taking yourself way too seriously. In fact it’s arguably her best ever performance. Based on a French adult comic book, and directed by Fonda’s then-husband Roger Vadim, the plot is slight to say the least. Barbarella is 41st century Earth’s top astronavigatrix and she’s just been assigned to a vital mission to track down missing Earth scientist Durand Durand who has disappeared taking with him he ultimate weapon, the positronic ray. Unfortunately Barbarella is forced into a crash-landing when her spaceship is damaged. After being menaced by feral children she is rescued by a hirsute stranger in a weird wind-powered sled vehicle. She ask what she can to repay him and he tells her they could make love She naturally assumes he’s referring to the civilised 41st century version of sex where you first make sure your psychocardiograms are aligned and then you each take an exaltation pill and then touch hands. She is shocked to find out that he means sex in the old-fashioned sense of the word, a practice long abandoned as being too distracting. But she’s willing to give it a try. And she discovers that she likes it. She likes it a lot. Even if it is very very distracting. This is perhaps the key to the film - Barbarella’s sexuality drives pretty much the entire plot. Barbarella has another astronautical mishap and finds herself in the Labyrinth. The enemies of the Black Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg) are consigned there for all eternity, including a hunky angel named Pygar (John Philip Law). Pygar has lost the will to fly. There’s no physical reason he can’t fly; it’s just a matter of morale. Luckily Barbarella knows a surefire method for restoring morale and after a roll in the hay (or in this case a roll in the feathers) with Barbarella his morale is fully restored. Barbarella finds that old-fashioned sex really can be remarkably useful. Pygar and Barbarella journey to the notorious city of SoGo, the headquarters of the Black Tyrant. SoGo is a city dedicated to evil, and to sexual depravity. The Concierge runs the city for the Black Tyrant and he turns out to be none other than Durand Durand. The stage is set for a confrontation between two contrasting views of sexuality. The Black Tyrant and Durand Durand represent sex as a destructive force, while Barbarella represents the positive life-affirming side of sex. This comes to a rather effective climax (if you’ll pardon the pun) when Durand Durand imprisons Barbarella in an infernal machine, a kind of musical orgasm machine, where she is destined to die of pleasure. But Barbarella’s healthy and innocent but alarmingly prodigious sexual appetites overload the machine. SoGo is fueled by a monster called the Mathmos but it will be no match for Barbarella’s essential goodness. Many of the criticisms levelled at this film seem to miss the point. Comparisons to Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik are misplaced. Bava and Vadim were making very different films. Danger: Diabolik remains the best comic-book action/adventure movie ever made but Vadim’s movie is a high camp erotic psychedelic fantasy and must be judged on its own terms. Terry Southern’s involvement in the script is a major clue here to the importance of camp in the appreciation of this movie. The most delightful surprise in the movie is David Hemming’s very funny turn as an inept revolutionary. Anita Pallenberg isn’t given enough to do. She certainly looks suitably spectacular though. But the movie belongs to Jane Fonda. She has never been more gorgeous, and she has never been sexier, but this is also a delightfully witty performance showcasing her considerable gifts as a comic actress. Barbarella remains a unique film, and one that has had little direct influence on the evolution of cinematic science fiction. Its mix of whimsicality and kinkiness had more influence on some of the more offbeat European exploitation movies of the 70s than on mainstream science fiction, but then it never tried to be mainstream science fiction in the first place. One of the true masterpieces of camp, and immensely enjoyable if you accept it for what it is. Paramount’s DVD release is barebones but quite impressive. Perhaps one day we’ll see special edition, or even a Blu-Ray release?