The Rape of the Vampire (1968)

Jean Rollin's first full length movie, "The Rape of the Vampire", doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it is visually interesting.It's shot in black and white, and has some interesting images:An old man is surrounded by female vampires in hooded cloaks. He tries to fight them off weakly with his walking stick, but fails.The queen of the vampires (I assume), a young black lady, has a string of blood run down her mouth in extreme close up travel in different directions, probably through running the footage backwards and forwards in alternate takes and then layering them.A guy who looks like one of the Oasis brothers driving his Triumph pick up truck up to another car, climbing out mid-drive and climbing onto the roof of the other car, gaining entrance for a little blood suckage.Not sure why it was called "The Rape of the Vampire". Couldn't remember any rape or even any sex. There are quite a few women walking around with breasts hanging out and wearing see through clothing, however.All up I would've preferred this movie to make sense. I like visually arresting images, but find it more powerful when these images are in service of a plot.

Jean Rollin's premier feature is, unsurprisingly, highly abstract. It started out as a thirty-minute short before the director added an additional forty minutes. It starts out as straight-forward as he ever is. Four sisters live in an abandoned mansion and believe themselves to be vampires. One is blind, convinced a villager gouged her eyes with a pitchfork. The house is surrounded by crucifixes and the sisters sometimes take orders from a goofy-faced scarecrow who is also an old man? Someone bowls on a beach. A trio of college students appear and try to convince the sisters they are not, in fact, vampires. This goes badly for everyone. There's roving rioters and a guy with a hunch and a messed-up face.Part two: All the characters that aren't dead yet are on a beach. Some of them will be dead soon. The vampire queen appears. She has a trio of minions, a bearded guy, a guy in a white suit, and a girl in go-go boots. All three are annoying. The girlfriend of one of the students is now a vampire and she's very conflicted about this. The queen is secretly running a mental hospital. The guy who runs the hospital is looking for a cure for vampirism. The queen and her followers gather on a theatre stage to initiate the girl into the vampire lifestyle. There's a giant paper bat. Chaos breaks out. The vampires revolt against their queen. She drinks the cure and dies. Two people wall themselves up in a basement forever. A guy walks down the street, holding a dead girl in his arms, bemoaning the lack of innocence in the world. The end? Okay, it doesn't make much sense. The main reason to stick around is the images. The Gothic château is atmospheric. I like the idea of the blind girl who, after realizing she isn't actually blind, looses her eyes anyway. There's a wonderful sequence of the student trying to psychoanalyze the girl while the camera whirls around them. A scene of one of the vampires standing on top of the mansion, pleading with her invisible lord, sticks out.The film looses a lot of momentum in the second half. A shot of two straight-jacket bound characters writhing, two giant gum-ball-machine-like receptacles full of blood standing next to them, is goofy. The vampire queen is odd. The film can't decide if she's meant to be the villain or not. Why she wants to cure vampirism is never explained."Rape of the Vampire" is claptrap, though occasionally interesting. Rollin's images don't burn as much in black-and-white as they do in color. His complete abandonment of narrative isn't as freeing as it should be. Either way, he's an amazingly consistent filmmaker when it comes to the content of his films. There's lots of nudity, even a little sadomasochism. Vampires, beaches, old buildings, casual lesbianism, it's all here. I wish I had enjoyed it more.

Jean Rollin is a director who certainly divides opinion. Even amongst the horror community his films are at most marginally appreciated. The reason for this is that his movies don't really follow conventions of that genre very much at all. They are usually more interested in capturing surreal imagery than scaring the audience. The atmosphere in these films is less sinister and more melancholic. His movies often owe more to experimental cinema than Hammer horror. That said, Rollin's movies certainly belong in the horror genre. It's just that he uses typical iconography of the genre – vampires, graveyards, crumbling Gothic buildings – in unusual ways. The Rape of the Vampire is his debut feature and while it is atypically filmed in black and white, it is essentially pure Rollin. It's basically a template film and he would rework its basic ideas time and again but mostly with better results.A psychoanalyst visits a château which is inhabited by four vampire sisters. He tries to convince them that they are not in fact vampires at all. An old charlatan seems to be manipulating these women into thinking thus and he eventually turns the local villagers against them. This ends in bloody vengeance. But just as events turn most tragic, in from nowhere enters the Queen of the Vampires. It turns out that these sisters were actually vampires after all.Are you confused? Yeah well, it doesn't entirely make a lot of sense it has to be said! It wouldn't be very unfair to say that it's a somewhat baffling movie overall. It doesn't really have a very coherent plot-line. Or rather it sort of does and then gets mighty confusing as it progresses. This is down to the fact that it was originally a thirty minute short film that Rollin extended to feature length by adding additional material. Part one is called 'The Rape of the Vampire' and part two 'The Vampire Women'. The first half is easily the best. It's much more cohesive with some excellent photography. The second part of the film introduces several new characters, including the Queen of the Vampires. The problem with it is that it feels like it's tagged on primarily to extend the running time, and there isn't enough ideas to do this effectively. It becomes confusing and lacks the overall style of the earlier part.The best way to appreciate the film – and Rollin movies in general – is to just take in the odd atmosphere and bizarre imagery. The plot is not ultimately very important to be honest. Like all of the director's films, this one has pretty bad dialogue and amateur acting. So really there's quite a lot the average viewer needs to overlook if they are going to enjoy one of Rollin's films. This one, like all his films, isn't accessible at all. It's extremely left-field and will understandably irritate many who watch it. But for those of you who have a fondness for the strange style of this horror auteur, well this is where it all started and there is plenty to appreciate. It's not one of his stronger efforts to be fair but it's certainly typical enough.

'The Rape of the Vampire' is split up into two parts. While the first segment is rather linear and 'normal', with super-expressive, daring camera angles, the second part, "La Reine Des Vampires" is a lot more confusing, while exhibiting the same level of visual excellence and dreamlike, naive atmosphere. The story is very fragmented and it's hard to follow the ever-multiplying characters. I find films like Franco's 'Succubus' or Jodorowsky's 'Holy Mountain' to be slow and pretentious, but I didn't have have any problem with the similarly haphazard and unstructured 'The Rape of the Vampire' doesn't feel artificial because it's got its heart in the right place, which can be said about majority of Rollin's films. He may not have professional actors, but he nevertheless gets them to deliver emotional performances and create moving, if not realistic, characters. The acting may be unpolished, but Rollin has a gift for drama which he displays more consistently then the other Eurotica directors(Franco, D'Amato) with whom he often gets bundled as a sexploitation director. The story is a mess, but a poetic one, and images are arresting. In terms of cinematography 'The Rape of the Vampire' is more more adventurous than director's more popular films 'Fascination' and 'La Morte Vivante'. I have the warmest feelings for this very brave film and will be re-watching it again.