Title: Requiem for a Vampire (1971)
Director: Jean Rollin
Cast: Marie Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe Gaste, Louise Dhour
Review:
Requiem for a Vampire starts off with two teenage girls,
dressed as clowns riding a car that’s being chased by another; the passengers
of both cars shoot at each other relentlessly. What are these girls running away from? What happened before?
Director Jean Rolling doesn’t want us to know, but apparently it involved a
circus, or a clown show of some sort. Nice way to start the movie I must admit,
to keep us in mystery as to why these girls are in clown attire, but whatever,
it adds to the weird vibe of the film, which by the way just gets weirder and
weirder as it goes along. I’m having a blast checking out Jean Rollin’s films,
last night I had the pleasure of seeing Requiem for a Vampire for the first
time. I have to hand it to Rollin for sticking so obsessively to his favorite
genre monsters for practically his whole career; I don’t believe any other director
has ever explored vampires on film as extensively as Rollin has. The way I see
it, Rollin did for vampire movies what George Romero did with zombie films, he
explored them as much as he could, till vampires became synonymous with his
name.
Requiem for a Vampire is an early Rollin film, this was
Rollin’s fourth film, before it he’d made The Rape of the Vampire (1968), The
Nude Vampire (1970) and The Shiver of the Vampires (1971). Requiem for a
Vampire is a film that has all the things you can come to expect from a Rollin
film, I of course talk about lesbians in love, vampires, bats, graveyards, skulls,
castles, beautiful scenery and lots of nudity. The difference is that this one
isn’t as poetic or surreal as some of his later work. As some of you might
know, Rollin had a background in porn films, and what he’d do is make these
vampire films in between some of his hardcore porn films. I haven’t seen his
earlier stuff, but it is my estimation that the further back you go in his
work, the more porn like his vampire films will be.
For example, Requiem for a
Vampire is filled with a whole lot more sexuality and nudity then other films
of his that I have seen. On this one girls are frequently either topless, or
being raped, or having sex with each other or with men, I mean the sexual
content on this one is extremely high. These
two girls stumble upon a castle filled with violent sexually depraved vampires
who start to rape them and torture them in many ways because get this: in this
movie, in order to become a full vampire, you cannot be a virgin! You are
either one or the other, but not both; so at one point it’s all about these
girls losing their virginity! The nudity in Requiem for a Vampire, is not
erotic or beautiful as opposed to other Rollin films where it is. On this the
sexuality is savage and depraved. This film will probably seem offensive to a
lot of people out there, so if you can’t take that sort of thing, then don’t
even bother with this one, this is a violent and sexual film every step of the
way, strangely enough, there’s also a lot of visual beauty to it which is
something that Rolling always excelled at, orchestrating these beautiful images.
But then again, you ever wanted to see a bat giving oral sex to a girl? Look no
further! So yeah, expect a Rollin film
with a slightly higher sexual content than usual, there's this rape scene that simply takes for ever.
For a long time, Requiem for a Vampire functions almost like
a silent film, with no dialog whatsoever. In fact the two main characters don’t talk to
each other until about fifty minutes into the film! The films entire first half
is without dialog, it’s just the girls escaping, running, hiding, having sex
with each other and enticing men to have sex with them all without a single
word spoken. It’s a different kind of
film in that sense, I guess Rollin did this for the same reason that directors
of Spaghetti Westerns used as little dialog as possible: to facilitate and
minimize the dubbing process. It could also have something to do with the fact
that Rolling wrote this screenplay in a stream of thought sort of way, he wrote
it without any constraints in his mind, many say it’s the most purely Rollin
film out there, so this makes it an important part of his body of work, many of
his later films would have many elements found on Requim for a Vampire, so this
is a seminal Rollin film, if you don’t like this one, chances are you won’t
like any Rollin film.
Another element that characterizes this film and this is one
thing I didn’t really love about it is that it’s kind of cheesy. I mean, the
lead vampire that the girls meet, the one that wants to turn them into his
vampire lovers…he is this old man, he looks like a washed up Bela Lugosi,
dressed in this clichéd red and black cape? So freaking cheesy, this head
vampire looked anything but menacing. He looked like this old man dressed up as
Dracula? To top things off all the vampires in the film have these ultra fake
looking fangs that looked simply terrible. In one scene the vampire can’t even
talk right because he is trying to hold the fake fangs in his mouth. I hated
that cheesy stuff on this one, because the film looks so beautiful at times,
but then bam, the cheesiness sets in and brings it all down. On the plus side;
cheesy elements were eschewed in Rollins future films, Rollin got a whole lot more
poetic as his films evolved.
Thankfully, the film has more good elements to it than bad
ones. Apparently Rollin’s always had an eye for beauty in nature and
architecture because once again his cinematic eye focuses on beautiful vistas,
trees, mountains, night skies, he often times focuses on breathtaking sunsets and cloud formations. He also shot the
film inside this ancient castle, it just looks haunting. The visual
compositions that Rollin comes up with is the element of his films I love the
most and on Requiem for a Vampire he demonstrates that he’s always had that eye
for beauty. All in all, this is an extremely simplistic film, Rolling himself
says that it was an exercise in simplifying the structure of film, the film is
a stream of consciousness effort, something coming straight out of Rollins
mind; this is probably why the film has such an emphasis on sex and violence,
two of the most purely human traits. This is very much a Rollin film, only a
bit cheesier and a times even child like. It seems to me that Rollin’s body of
work is one that should be explored by any self respecting lover of vampire
films. I love how his films all have a familiarity to them; Rollin has said
that his films function as a series of connected dreams and stories, and I
believe him. When you watch his films you feel as if they all exist within the
same universe, a universe I will be visiting more frequently in the days to
come.
Rating: 4 out of 5
9 comments:
Gotta love that vampire bat on the vag. Simply riveting!
That is definetly one of the more original visuals on this film...gotta admit I'd never seen anything like that on any film before! Well, maybe in Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, but still, quite the image!
That little blonde bird was such a gorgeous little darlin` back in the early 70`s, i`d have loved to have buggered the bird senseless back in those days.
I haven't gotten around to seeing this one yet. I have recently ordered a Jean Rollin double feature though-Fiancee of Dracula and Two Orphan Vampires! I'm gonna have a fun night full of vampire lesbishenanigans when that arrives!
I'm loving Rollin's films, I'm sure not everyone does though, these films are deliberatelys slow and atmospheric, but if you're the kind of person who can appreciate that, plus beautiful nude ladies and beautiful cinematography...then you are in for some fun for sure! Never seen those two you mentioned, but I am looking forward to checking out all of Rollins work, have a blast Chris, looking forward to your reviews.
Have you seen Rollin's first (first non-porno that is) film The Rape of the Vampire? It's definitely a film I've heard many conflicting things about. I plan on watching/reviewing that one tomorrow, to see whether or not Rollin's first foray into lesbian vampires was any good.
Nope, haven't seen it, but it's on my list, looking forward to reading your thoughts on it. I love it when I see a director's films for the first time, gotta enjoy that cause it never happens again. But from what I've read, I hear 'Requiem' is a very influential one.
I tried to watch a few Rollin movies, they are too slow for my tastes
A lot of people find them too slow, I like the atmosphere and slow pace in them.
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