Demoniacs (5 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's seventh film, made in 1974. He claims it was the first film for which he had a large budget available. This is obvious in the choice of locations, which differs from his previous films.

I was recently told, in a different context, that I overthink things. I denied this at first, but I can understand what my friend meant. Applying it to "Demoniacs", overthinking makes it difficult to enjoy the film. It's Rollin's most incomprehensible film so far. So much of it doesn't make sense. Maybe it would make sense if it were explained, but Rollin doesn't explain what happens. It just happens.

It starts with a real world background. A group of wreckers operate on the French coast. They're modern landbound pirates. They use lights and false signals to make ships run aground, where they steal the cargo and kill the survivors. The ship that they wreck in this film doesn't bring them great riches. The only chest that washed ashore contains clothes and a single necklace. But there are two survivors: the women shown above. Rather than killing them immediately, they rape the women first.

This is where the supernatural story begins. The two women haunt the wreckers as ghosts. Or are they really ghosts? In later scenes they're wounded in battle, but they heal from their wounds quickly.

The two women are found by a clown who takes them to a ruined castle to meet a bishop. He tells them that they can only get revenge by freeing a powerful being who's been held in the dungeons for centuries. A vampire? Don't overthink it. After releasing him, he gives them his power for 24 hours, so they can fight and defeat the wreckers.

The wreckers are men, with the exception of their leader Tina. She's cruel and sadistic, demanding that the men who follow her show no mercy on their captives. Do you recognise her? The actress is Joelle Coeur, who played one of the schoolgirls in "Schoolgirl Hitchhikers" a year earlier. This is her usual appearance, when she's not made up to look ten years younger.

Does the plot make sense? Not really. I didn't overthink it. You shouldn't either.

Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (3 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's sixth film, made in 1973. The title written on the box of the new 4K release is "Girls Without Shame", a literal translation of the original French title, "Jeunes filles impudiques". The title "Schoolgirl Hitchhikers" was given when it was dubbed for American audiences, to make it sound more racy. The film itself contains no hitchhiking, and the girls don't claim to be schoolgirls. The actresses were both in their late twenties when they made the film. The brunette Monica (Joelle Coeur) could just about pass for an older teenager, whereas the blonde Jackie (Gilda Arancio) looks more like a woman in her 30's.

It's a simple plot, a criminal story with erotic elements that borders on farce. Two young women are in the woods camping. They find an abandoned mansion and move in. What they don't know is that it's also being used by a jewel thief, who returns late in the evening. After a night of sex the two girls leave. The thief discovers that his jewels are missing and chases the girls. But it wasn't them.

This unnamed man is the thief. Do you recognise him? It's Jean Rollin himself. He did brief cameos in most of his films, but this is his only film in which he plays an important role. His name is missing from the credits.

Whatever the film is called, it's untypical for Jean Rollin's films and doesn't come up to the standard of his usual work. It's not bad, but there's nothing special about it. If you're a Jean Rollin fan like me you'll want it to complete your collection.

Requiem for a Vampire (4 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's fourth film, made in 1971. He's on a roll; four films, and they're all about vampires. Admittedly, his type of vampire is unlike any vampires shown in American or British films, but they're still vampires.

As any fan of Jean Rollin will tell you, the cinematography of his films is more important than the plot. He wants to paint luscious scenes. The pace often slows down so that the camera can pan across a gorgeous field, or a sunset. Enjoy the imagery.

You'll find recurring elements in Rollin's films. They almost all have cemeteries and castles. He's obsessed with vampires, clowns and lesbians; I can't say in what order. "Requiem for a vampire" begins with two clowns, Marie and Michelle, taking part in a car chase. They wander into a castle, where we see that they're lesbians. Later in the film they become vampires. The perfect mix for a Rollin film.

As usual, things aren't all explained. When asked why they're dressed as clowns, the girls say they were performing at a party. But they don't explain why they were being chased. Did they rob somebody? It's not important.

Jean Rollin says this is his best film. I disagree, because I find the BDSM scenes where the women are whipped distasteful.

A beautiful girl sitting on a grave. This is the sort of beautiful image that you'll find in Rollin's films. The actress is Marie-Pierre Castel, who has an identical twin sister Catherine who appears some of Rollin's other films. Supposedly, he always wanted them to appear together, but Catherine had to skip this film because she was pregnant.

The Shiver of the Vampires (4½ Stars)

"The Shiver of the Vampires" is Jean Rollin's third film, made in 1971. It opens with a newly married couple, Isabelle and Antoine, travelling through the French countryside on their honeymoon. They intend to spend their honeymoon at the remote castle of Isabelle's cousins, the enigmatic brothers Paul and Frederic, whom she hasn't seen since childhood. For reasons that are left unexplained, they're her only living relatives.

They arrive just too late. They're told that Paul and Frederic died the previous day. This unsettles Isabelle so much that she tells Antoine that she wants to sleep separately on their wedding night. But she isn't completely alone. In the middle of the night a mysterious woman called Isolde enters Isabelle's room and seduces her.

The next day Isabelle remembers nothing about Isolde. Food is served by two young women who say that they were Paul and Frederic's servants. At night the apparent reality of the situation begins to unravel. Paul and Frederic reappear, very much alive, revealing that their "funeral" was part of a secretive rite. They are members of a vampiric cult led by Isolde, who is not merely an associate but a commanding supernatural presence. The brothers attempt to draw Isabelle and Antoine into their world, treating vampirism less as a curse than as a decadent, liberating philosophy.

Antoine reacts with hostility and disbelief, clinging to rational explanations. Isabelle, however, is increasingly mesmerised. The castle becomes a liminal space where ordinary rules dissolve; its rooms are filled with symbolic objects, mirrors, and shadows, while strange music, including the now-famous psychedelic organ score, heightens the sense of dreamlike unreality.

Isolde begins to exert a powerful influence over Isabelle. Unlike traditional depictions of vampires as predatory monsters, these figures present vampirism as an ecstatic release from repression, particularly sexual repression. Isabelle is seduced not only physically but psychologically, drawn into a state where fear and desire merge. She forms a deep, almost trance-like bond with Isolde, whose authority over the cult is absolute.

Antoine, increasingly isolated, tries to rescue his wife. He seeks rational solutions, including consulting anti-vampire lore and attempting to destroy the brothers. However, his efforts are clumsy and ineffective; he is an outsider in a world governed by different rules. His inability to understand what is happening only accelerates Isabelle's transformation.

As the nights pass, Isabelle's allegiance shifts. She becomes less responsive to Antoine and more attuned to Isolde and the brothers, embracing their nocturnal existence. The film presents this transition ambiguously; it is both a loss of identity and a form of awakening. Isabelle is not simply victimised but appears to choose her fate, surrendering to the allure of immortality and erotic freedom.

The climax sees Antoine making a desperate attempt to break the spell. Armed with traditional methods, he confronts the vampires, leading to violent confrontations in the castle. Some of the vampiric figures are destroyed, yet the victory is partial and uncertain. The narrative does not resolve cleanly into good triumphing over evil.

In the final movement, Isabelle is fully absorbed into the vampiric realm. The ending suggests that she has crossed an irreversible threshold; whether this is damnation or liberation remains deliberately unclear. Antoine's efforts to reclaim her fail, and he is left either defeated or irrelevant in a world that has moved beyond him.

Like much of Jean Rollin's work, Shiver of the Vampires resists conventional storytelling. The plot unfolds less as a logical sequence of events and more as a series of hypnotic tableaux. Vampirism here is not merely literal but symbolic, representing desire, transgression and the seductive pull of an alternative existence that rejects societal norms.

The Nude Vampire (4 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's second film, made in 1970. I need to stress that I'm only going to be numbering his serious films. What I mean is that Rollin wasn't successful in the 1970's. His talent wasn't recognised by film critics until the late 1990's, and the release of his films on DVD in the early 2000's exposed him to a larger audience. To make money, he made about 20 hardcore sex films from 1975 to 1984, using pseudonyms to distinguish them from his serious films. These films have never been officially released on DVD. The lucky few who have seen them say that they're pretty awful. I'll take their word for it and only write about his serious films.

"The Nude Vampire" unfolds as a strange, dreamlike narrative that deliberately blurs the line between reality, delusion and the supernatural.

The story follows Pierre, the son of a wealthy industrialist, who becomes obsessed with a mysterious young woman he glimpses being pursued through the streets of Paris by a bizarre group of cloaked figures wearing animal masks. She appears fragile, almost spectral, and is eventually captured and taken to a secluded mansion that Pierre later discovers belongs to his own father.

Inside the mansion, Pierre uncovers a suicide cult composed of aristocrats and scientists who are convinced that the young woman is a vampire; more specifically, they believe she is part of an ancient, possibly immortal race whose blood holds the key to eternal life. Unlike traditional depictions of vampires, she shows none of the usual traits; no fangs, no overt predatory behaviour, no clear aversion to daylight. Instead, she is silent, passive and almost otherworldly, often dressed in a sheer gown that emphasises her vulnerability rather than any sense of menace. When the cult meets they draw lots to decide who should shoot himself to offer his blood to the vampire.

Pierre, increasingly disturbed by the group's clinical cruelty, develops a deep emotional attachment to her. He comes to see her not as a monster but as a victim; a captive subjected to endless experiments by men who project their own fantasies of immortality onto her. His father, by contrast, is coldly rational. He insists that their work is scientific, that the woman's nature will eventually be proven, and that her sacrifice is justified by the potential rewards.

The central question of whether she is truly a vampire is never resolved in conventional terms. Rollin avoids any definitive confirmation. There are hints that support the society's belief; her apparent agelessness, her enigmatic presence, the suggestion that she does not belong to the ordinary world. Yet there is no concrete evidence. She never displays supernatural powers and never behaves like a predator.

By the film's final act, Pierre rejects his father's world entirely. He rescues the woman and escapes with her, abandoning the rationalist framework that sought to define and exploit her. In doing so, the film shifts away from the question of scientific truth and towards something more poetic and ambiguous.

The ending suggests that the woman may indeed belong to a different realm, but not necessarily in the literal, folkloric sense of a vampire. She is less a creature of horror than a symbol of mystery; something unknowable that resists categorisation. Whether she is really a vampire becomes almost irrelevant. What matters is that the men who sought to define her were driven by obsession and control, while Pierre's response is one of empathy and surrender to the unknown.

In that sense, the film leaves the question open. She may be a vampire, or she may simply be a woman onto whom others have projected their desires and fears; Rollin ensures that both interpretations remain equally possible.

Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie (4 Stars)

Made in 1980, this is the second film that Jess Franco made based on Marquis de Sade's novel "Philosophy in the Bedroom". The first film was "Eugenie", made in 1970. Jess Franco expressed dissatisfaction with the 1970 film, which is ironic, because it's now considered a cult film. On the other hand, "Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie" has been forgotten. With the exception of a heavily censored German version, it's never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray. The only version available to me is a poor quality rip from television.

The film is structured around Eugenie herself, played by the German actress Katja Bienert, who can be rightly considered to have been Franco's muse. She functions as both participant and narrative anchor. Rather than arriving as an innocent to be educated in the manner of "Philosophy in the Bedroom", she's already integrated into the decadent world of Alberto's coastal villa. From the outset, she moves through it with familiarity, suggesting that her memoirs are not about initiation, but about immersion.

Alberto, a wealthy libertine, presides over the villa, while his sister Alba shares his life in a relationship that carries an incestuous charge the film treats as entirely normal. Sultana, their slave, completes the central arrangement, her status clearly defined and repeatedly reinforced. Eugenie circulates within this closed system, interacting with each of them in turn, and often acting as the point through which their relationships are expressed.

The narrative unfolds as a series of encounters that Eugenie either participates in or observes. At times she seems aligned with Alberto, sharing his detached, voyeuristic perspective; at others she mirrors Alba's more active, manipulative role, drawing Sultana or other figures into increasingly elaborate situations. This fluidity is key to the film's structure; Eugenie is not fixed in a single position, but shifts between observer, instigator and participant.

Sultana's role as a slave provides a recurring axis for these interactions. Many of the film's sequences revolve around how Eugenie relates to her; sometimes exercising power alongside Alba, sometimes appearing more ambiguous, as though testing the limits of the system she inhabits. These variations do not lead to change so much as repetition with slight differences, reinforcing the sense of a closed world.

Alba remains the most consistently active presence besides Eugenie, often initiating scenarios that Eugenie then enters or reshapes. Alberto, by contrast, begins largely as a spectator, watching the women, but gradually becomes more directly involved, drawn into the same cycles he once merely observed. Eugenie's position links these shifts together, giving the film its loose continuity.

There is no conventional plot development or resolution. Instead, the film accumulates episodes that revolve around Eugenie's movement through the villa and its inhabitants. By the end, she has not "changed" in any clear sense; rather, the film has revealed the full extent of the environment she inhabits and her ease within it.

In contrast to the 1970 film, which retains at least a trace of de Sade's didactic framework, this later work by Jess Franco uses Eugenie less as a character to be shaped than as a constant around which its repetitions and variations can revolve.

The Rape of the Vampire (3 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's first film, made in 1968. When it was first released it was met with hostility by cinema-goers. The vampires in the film have almost nothing in common with the vampires shown in American horror films.

"The Rape of the Vampire" begins like an exposé and ends like a dream; what initially appears to be a rational investigation into supposed vampirism gradually reveals itself as something far less easily dismissed.

The first part centres on four young women living in a secluded château under the guidance of an older guardian. When journalists and sceptics arrive, they assume they are dealing with a hoax, or at best a case of shared delusion. The women are pale, withdrawn and oddly ceremonial in their behaviour; they claim to be vampires who have lived for 400 years, yet show none of the expected traits. They do not hunt, they do not display supernatural strength, and they seem almost fragile, as if the slightest disturbance might shatter them.

It would be easy to read them as frauds or victims of manipulation. Rollin encourages this ambiguity by filtering their world through the intrusive, rational gaze of the investigators. The château becomes a stage on which belief and scepticism clash; the women are probed, questioned and ultimately violated, both psychologically and physically.

Yet the film quietly resists the sceptics' interpretation. The more the outsiders attempt to expose the women, the less convincing their explanations become. The women's detachment from ordinary life, their strange unity and their apparent disconnection from time and consequence all suggest that they are not merely pretending. Their vampirism is not expressed through conventional horror imagery, but through atmosphere and persistence; they exist according to a logic that does not align with the human world around them.

The act of violence implied by the title is crucial here. It is framed less as titillation than as an assertion of control, an attempt by the intruders to force the women into a recognisable, human framework. If they can be dominated, the logic goes, they can be explained. But the effect is the opposite. The brutality only deepens the sense that the women belong to another order of being; they may be physically vulnerable, but they are not reducible to the terms imposed on them.

By the time the film drifts into its more overtly surreal second half, the question of whether the women are real vampires has already been answered in everything but explicit statement. They are not frauds, nor are they simply mad. Instead, Rollin presents a form of vampirism stripped of its usual theatrical power; these are creatures defined by frailty, isolation and an almost mournful remove from the living. Their weakness does not negate their nature; it redefines it.

What remains is a haunting inversion of the vampire myth. Rather than predators, these women are survivors of an existence that offers neither release nor fulfilment. Their authenticity lies not in spectacle but in persistence; they endure, quietly and inexplicably, beyond the reach of those who would explain them away.