Audience Member
Nuns & vamps & little people & nakedness. Dracula does make a very brief appearance at the end, if you can wait until then.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Some of the greats in cinema loose their touch at the end, but this film clearly states that Rollin has not. I have unfortunately not seen his movie he made after this, due to not being able to locate a copy with English subtitles, but this movie is fantastic. Sure it is not as special to me as, say, REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE or LIPS OF BLOOD, but this is an incredible film. Many bizarre trademarks of Rollin are found abundant in this film.
The man is a fucking genius. He is currently working on his last movie now, as his health is collapsing. I hope that one day he will be acknowledged as one of the greats of cinema. Search the internet for the greatest directors and laugh at the fact that Rollin has not surpassed MANY of those considered "the greatest."
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Possibly Rollin's best film.
It encapsulates all of the unique Rollin trademarks; the dreamy, eerie, meditative, Zen-serene visual atmosphere & beautiful, mysterious and most of all lethal women who are perverse, sadistic and innocent at the same time (ONLY Rollin could manage to depict women in such a way with complete credibility) & spooky and majestic castles & the unmistakably Rollin-eque somnabulistic/Zen pace of the going-ons in the film.
Tranquilizing, panoramic, slow moving cinematography and stunning locations, especially the beaches add a sense of mystery and "otherwordly-ness" to the film.
As regards the story, it is a bewildering and delirious collage of some of the most well known figures in the world of fantastic Gothic cinema (& literature as well); Witches, vampires, a super sexy Ogress who eats babies (only Rollin could make baby eating look sexy), a wolf woman (played by the glorious Brighitte LaHaie; pornstar turned exploitation queen), a vicious jester who is also the lover of the blue vampiress, a group of fiendish, plotting Nuns, and nonetheless than Satan himself, looking a bit like a hippie with long black hair and a baggy white woolen shirt, a vampire slayer, and last but not least a resurrected Count Dracula.
The film never becomes cliche. I know the aforementioned synopsis sound like a bit of a mish mash, but it's not. It's merely a structural tool for Rollin to conjure up scorchingly gorgeous fantastic, escapist and poetic images of the supernatrural, the erotic, the infinite and the immortal.
The famous beach (the very same beach which is used in a lot of Rollin films, eg Lips of Blood, Shiver of the Vampires, Iron Rose, etc) is gorgeously captured by Rollin's exquisite panoramic cinematography. This beach has become an important element in the art of Rollin, he has described it as a dreamy place; a transitory zone between the infinite and unknown (the ocean) and the familiar world (anything behind the beach) and he really manages to visually convey this notion.
As always with Rollin, the acting is superb, the sincerity of the actors make the seemingly ludicrous scenarios feel real and poignant.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
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