It's tempting to brand Rollin as a schlock-meister. But he's so much more than that. His often bizarre and surrealistic films, filled with producer imposed erotica and gratuitous nudity may appear, on the surface, to be little more than trashy European exploitation films. Yet when one digs a little deeper you find recurring themes, surprising intelligence of construction, and original form. Rollin toys with our expectations, subverting convention at every turn. Whether or not those experiments are successful or not is up for debate.
Sure there have been some duds among them, chiefly his first film, the utterly nonsensical The Rape of the Vampire (1968). But more often than not, even when they are buried beneath seemingly needless sex scenes and hampered by his lack of budgets, Rollin's films exude a kind of life and energy that is hard to ignore.
A scene from THE LIVING DEAD GIRL. Image courtesy of Collections La Cinémathèque de Toulouse. |
The film centers around a young girl who is resurrected from the dead by a toxic spill, and is taken care of by a childhood friend in an old abandoned castle. The girl, Hélène (Marina Pierro), neither alive nor dead, must feed off the flesh of the living in order to endure, and her best friend, Catherine (Françoise Blanchard), must lure unsuspecting victims to the castle for Hélène to devour. While not twins, as is a recurring theme in Rollin's work (see Lips of Blood), the relationship between Hélène and Catherine provides the backbone for the film, something we see often throughout Rollin's filmography (Requiem for a Vampire, The Demoniacs, Two Orphan Vampires). In The Living Dead Girl, unlike in, say, a film like Friday the 13th, the killer is not just a symbol of faceless evil. Whereas Hélène remains symbolically innocent, almost pure, it is her friend Catherine, and her entrapment of unsuspecting victims, who is the true monster. Hélène cannot help the way she is, and is therefore relieved of any culpability in her own actions. She did not ask to be brought back to life. Catherine, on the other hand, absolutely knows what she is doing, yet does none of the killing herself. Rollin invites us to consider which is worse.
Two Orphan Vampires is, in some ways, an extension of the themes of The Living Dead Girl. Whereas Living Dead Girl is a more straightforward gore film (and is therefore more well known among horror fans), Two Orphan Vampires marked something of a return to Rollin's surrealistic form. It's strange, however, that a film released in 1997 is more dated than his work from the 1970s and 80s, but it feels like something of a relic. Even its transfer is subpar, surprising considering that the blu-ray of The Living Dead Girl is perhaps Kino's best work of the Redemption titles.
As one of Rollin's late period films, Two Orphan Vampires marked not only a return to form for the auteur, but a return to the vampire genre, which he had not worked in for over two decades since the release of Lips of Blood in 1974.
Rollin was in failing health when he made this "come back" film, often directing some scenes while laying down, and passing off the New York shoots to a second unit director. And indeed the film itself seems tired, more like an afterthought to an illustrious career.
A scene from TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES. Image courtesy of Collections La Cinémathèque de Toulouse. |
That makes Two Orphan Vampires a fitting companion for The Living Dead Girl. Whereas The Living Dead Girl is perhaps the most un-Rollin like of his horror films (not counting 1981's Zombie Lake, which has yet to be released by Kino), it still finds a way of subverting our expectations even in the face of crippling studio demands. Two Orphan Vampires, on the other hand, is a much more pure Rollin experiment. One that perhaps does not work as well as some of his earlier triumphs such as The Iron Rose or Fascination, but even his failures contained something special. Rollin was a unique talent, an artist working at the behest of smut peddlers (not unlike Val Lewton, who often elevated low budget schlock like I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People into a higher form of art) whose work, at long last, is finally being appreciated thanks to the miracle of home video, and can now be seen in their most stunning quality ever thanks to the folks at Kino Lorber.
THE LIVING DEAD GIRL - ★★★ (out of four)
TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES - ★★
Now available on blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber.
ENLACES/FUENTES:
http://www.fromthefrontrow.net/2012/09/blu-ray-review-cinema-of-jean-rollin-pt.html
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