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.