The Cinema of Jean Rollin, Series One: The Vampire Films

Boxed set containing Jean Rollin's first four films: The Rape of the Vampire, Nude Vampires, Requiem for a Vampire and Shiver of the Vampires. In THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE, a psychiatrist (Bernard Letrou) ventures to a remote castle to convince a brood of four vampire sisters that they are misguided, brainwashed by superstitious villagers, and not truly creatures of the Supernatural. The villagers (including director Jean Rollin) confuse and abuse the sisters, before finally storming the castle. The cast descends on a hospital run by a young doctor (Jean-Loup Philippe), charged by the Queen of the Vampires (Jacqueline Sieger) to discover a cure for vampirism. The bewildering action culminates in a blood wedding presided over by Sieger, in her regal hot pants, on the legendary stage of the now-defunct théâtre du Grand Guignol. In THE NUDE VAMPIRE, wealthy industrialist Georges Radamante (Maurice Lemaitre) has dreams of immortality. Not through his own achievements, but by finding a way to share the biochemistry of the mute, orphaned vampire woman (Catherine Cartier) who has been raised by hooded needle-stickers in isolation, deprived of exposure to human faces. Radamante's son Pierre (Olivier Martin, Rollin's real-life brother) innocently complicates matters while trying to infiltrate his father's private club. It is love at first sight and Pierre determines to liberate his beloved, a goal which attracts the companionship of other vampires, who plan a torch-carrying siege of Radamante's palatial compound. REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (Requiem pour un vampire) was Jean Rollin's favorite of all his films. Because he dredged the scenario from his subconscious, and because it was rushed into it's written form so quickly (Rollin claimed that he wrote the entire script in only two days), he felt it was his purest work. THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES (Le frisson des vampires) is a most unorthodox vampire film; by turns, it is magical, eccentric, poetical, erotic, philosophical and, whenever the vampire cousins are onscreen together, surprisingly funny. It is also unique among vampire films for offering some sort of backstory of warring paganism and Christianity that explains why a vampire would feel revulsion for the sight of a crucifix.