A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Requiem for a Vampire (Jean Rollin, 1972)

Mireille Dargent and Marie-Pierre Castel in Requiem for a Vampire

Cast: Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe Gasté, Dominique, Louise Dhour, Michel Delesalle, Antoine Mosin, Olivier François, Dominique Toussaint, Angès Petit, Agnes Jacquet, Anne-Rose Kurat, Paul Bisciglia, Jean-Noël Delamarre. Screenplay: Jean Rollin. Cinematography: Renan Pollès. Film editing: Michel Patient. Music: Pierre Raph. 

We never find out why the two young women dressed as clowns are fleeing a pursuing car at the start of Jean Rollin's Requiem for a Vampire or how they got the guns or why they never seem to run out of ammunition. It's clear that Rollin will do anything within his budget (which includes torching the car they're escaping in) for an effect. It's part horror movie, part skin flick, cobbled together from whatever's available, which includes a picturesque setting, the Château de la Roche-Guyon and environs in Normandy. There are vampires, of course, cheesily outfitted with fake fangs. For Rollin, vampirism is a form of rape, of which there are several exploitative scenes involving naked women in chains. Our heroines get naked, too, cuddling in bed until they're interrupted by creepy noises. It comes as no surprise that, in order to make his "serious"  films, of which this is considered to be one, Rollin also directed porn. The effect of this film on me was mostly "what the hell?" 

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