The Nude Vampire (1970)

The Blu-ray had very good visual restoration and concentrated less on the audio, which was almost untouched. A son takes an interest in his father's experiments on a woman in a see-thru garment who feeds on blood and can not be out in the sun. She has that immortality thing which he wants. The killing scenes were rather campy, especially the candlestick which killed two people while being waved through the air. The roll down the stairs scene lasted long enough to make me laugh. The shot to the head was also a laugh. The movie didn't have that great of a plot. Gratuitous nudity, but I expected more from the title character.

With no dialogue for about the first 8 1/2 minutes, The Nude Vampire begins with a woman being pursued by a bunch of masked cult members. Seeing that she is in distress, a young man tries to assist her with her escape, but to no avail. She is gunned down by a man in a deer mask and carried away. The man helping her flees up a train bridge (in fear for his life), but makes an attempt to follow the men carrying her away.The young man turns out to be the son of some elite member of the cult. But despite warnings to steer clear...he can't resist.He tries to get in, but is denied without an invitation. So he mugs someone with an invitation and cons his way in. Now he can find out, first hand, what this odd sect of individuals are up to...As soon as he gets in, a young woman seems to be randomly chosen...and willingly commits suicide. Bags are put over everyone's heads. Another young woman comes down and drinks blood from the suicide victim.Little does he suspect that he is next to be chosen... He pretends to go with it, until they give him the gun. Then he kills the unmasked leader and attempts to flee. Luckily for him, some spies on the inside- who have a connection with his family- help him make it out alive and in one piece. After which he is told to report to his father, "where more mysteries await".Turns out that his father is running a cult based around this vampire chick- who can heal right away as along as her internal organs aren't damaged. His goal is to absorb her immortality for himself. But to do this he needs a vampire of the same blood type- so that he can breed them. In the meantime, he has organized a separate suicide cult in her honour...as means to keep her fed.There also seems to be another cult working against the boy's father...one trying to free the vampiress from her life of captivity. Other vampires perhaps? Whoever they are, they have chosen him (or he has been destined) to become an initiate. But perhaps not everything is as it seems...The film concludes on an incredibly philosophic note with a positive message...in another dimension!!! (haha) I absolutely loved this film! It's certainly not your typical "vampire" story; and the whole cult angle makes it particularly intriguing. Everything is beautifully framed and shot. And, well, if you came here for the tits...there's lots of those too.However, I enjoyed it most for the gnostic themes revealed in it's final twist.An underrated gem. Check this one out, especially if you are philosophically inclined.8.5 of 10

This film essentially begins with a scantily clad woman (Caroline Cartier) being stalked at night by men wearing animal masks. She happens to come across a young man named "Pierre Radamante" (Olivier Rollin) and although she doesn't say a word to him appears to be attracted to him all the same. But as luck would have it, the stalkers corner the young couple and shoot the attractive woman. They then allow Pierre to escape while they take the woman's body back to a large mansion. Not long afterward, Pierre manages to enter this mansion and discovers this same woman drinking blood from the body of a woman who has just killed herself. It's all rather strange but this is essentially how most of the movie plays out with one bizarre occurrence after the other and the audience is left trying to make some sense of it all. Throw in some gratuitous nudity here and there and that pretty much sums up the overall plot. Only at the end does the director (Jean Rollin) tie it all together. The acting is bad, the costumes were pathetic and the dialogue (which was originally recorded in French and later dubbed in English) is extremely basic. On the other hand, I liked the artistic use of nudity and the way the director maintained the mystery from start to finish. Be that as it may, I felt that the good attributes failed to outweigh the bad and for that reason I have rated the film accordingly. Slightly below average.

It all begins with a little mystery as we see a pretty girl trying to escape from a bunch of masked guys wearing smokings (really). The girl comes across Pierre, a young playboy whose father is a bored millionaire experimenting on all kinds of artificial youth. The girl gets shot, the masked murderers escape with her body, and later Pierre finds out that the nymph is his father's prisoner. All that without a word being said. But when the dialogues kick in, it just goes down, because Jean Rollin sure isn't a real convincing poet. There are also a lot of useless nude scenes, where some girls dance to the sound of fake tam-tams. The movie was maybe daring in '69, but it is a little dated now and we can't help but laugh when we see the improbable ending, where some guys on a beach pretending to be in another dimension and wearing blue make-up tell the viewer to take care about the mutant race of the future... Awful.