Two Orphan Vampires (4 Stars)

This is one of Jean Rollin's last films, made in 1997. Towards the end of his life he made less films because he was concentrating on his career as a writer of horror stories. I find that a shame, because as far as I know none of his books have ever been translated into English. This film is actually based on one of the books that he wrote himself.

Louise and Henriette are two young girls who live in an orphanage run by nuns. Seemingly young, I should say. They're actually thousands of years old. They used to be Aztec Goddesses. Their fondest memory is of a ceremony when 40,000 men voluntarily presented themselves as sacrifices. The men were slaughtered by the priests on top of the pyramids, and the girls lapped up the blood from the floor.

Are the girls vampires? That depends on your definition of the word. They can walk in the sunlight, but they're completely blind during the day. After sunset they can see perfectly, which they keep as a secret from the nuns. They sneak out of the orphanage every night to find themselves victims. They need to drink blood to survive. This isn't as easy as it would be for traditional vampires. They don't have supernatural strength, they're just as strong as any other 16-year-old girls, so they have to kill people by hitting them with a rock or stabbing them with a knife. Nobody suspects them for the murders because they're only poor little blind girls.

The girls aren't invulnerable. They can be killed. In fact, they've often been killed. They can be shot or stabbed or killed in any way that normal humans can. When they're buried their wounds slowly heal below the Earth, and they can crawl out of their coffins a few years later. They don't always remember their past lives clearly. They remember that they used to be involved with circuses, but it's all so hazy. All they know for certain is that as soon as people find out they're vampires they're hunted and killed.

Whatever they are, they certainly look like vampires. They wouldn't need supernatural strength to kill me. All they would need to do is smile sweetly and kiss me. I would have been one of the 40,000 men at the ceremony, lying naked on the slab, trembling with fear and lust while I waited to be killed.

The girls aren't bad. All they want to do is find a way to survive in a modern world which will no longer worship them as Goddesses. Where are the mighty religions of the past that would give them the respect they deserve?

On their way they meet other creatures of the night, all of them female. They are also Goddesses of past ages, There's a werewolf, a ghoul and even a traditional vampiress who sleeps in a coffin all day and kills people at night.

The orphan vampires were the original all-powerful Gods. They lived in a time when the world was forever night. Then a male God appeared who said "Let there be light". He created the sun, and the girls didn't stop him because they didn't know what would happen. Then it was too late. When the world was divided into day and night they became weak.

Jean Rollin's films are always slow and surreal, but this is a slow film even for him. The girls walk, talk and philosophise. They kill when they have to. They hide from the most dangerous predator of all: Man.

I wish I could find an English translation of the novel. It's probably even deeper than the film itself.

Let me add a few words about Media Player Classic, which I've been discussing for the last two days. One of its features is that when it plays a disc, DVD or Blu-ray, it doesn't start with the root menu; playback begins with the main film. It assumes that the longest video on the disc is the main film, which is almost always the case. It's a matter of taste whether you prefer this or not. It speeds up the beginning of the film by skipping the annoying trailers at the beginning, but it hides the extra features. They're still available, but you have to search for them with the Navigate menu.

When I attempted to play this Blu-ray disc today MPC failed completely. It started with the second longest video on the disc, a 42 minute featurette. No problem, I thought, and I tried to start the main film via the Navigate menu. This also wasn't possible. The main film was missing from the video list, as the following screenshot shows.

Cyberlink's Power DVD played the Blu-ray perfectly. They still need to iron the bugs out of MPC. I can't delete my other software yet.