The Rape of the Vampire (3 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's first film, made in 1968. It unfolds in two distinct parts, almost like separate episodes loosely connected by theme and imagery.

Part I: "The Vampire Women"

A group of four enigmatic young women live in a secluded château in the French countryside. They are convinced they are vampires, though whether this belief is delusion or reality remains uncertain. They dress in white, move with ritualistic solemnity, and rarely interact with the outside world.

A pair of outsiders, including a psychiatrist named Dr. Samsky and his assistant, arrive to investigate the women. Their interest is clinical rather than supernatural, since they suspect a shared psychosis. The women’s guardians, an older couple who run the estate, seem both protective and evasive, offering little clarity about the women’s past.

As the investigators observe them, the women enact strange, ceremonial behaviours. They speak of vampirism not as a curse but as an identity, a state of being that separates them from ordinary society. Their isolation feels self-imposed yet also enforced, as though the château itself were a boundary between worlds.

One of the women, more curious than the others, begins to engage with the outsiders. There is a growing tension between rational explanation and the possibility that something genuinely supernatural is at work. This tension culminates when the investigators decide to “cure” the women. In a shocking act, they stake the women through the heart in a supposed therapeutic intervention, treating vampirism as a delusion that must be violently eradicated.

The act is brutal and ambiguous. Rather than resolving the question of the women’s nature, it deepens the uncertainty. The film refuses to confirm whether a group of deluded patients have been murdered, or whether actual vampires have been destroyed.

Part II: "Queen of the Vampires"

The second half shifts in tone and narrative structure, moving into a more overtly surreal and symbolic register.

A young woman named Jennifer wanders through the countryside and encounters a mysterious figure known as the Queen of the Vampires. This queen presides over a small, secretive group that appears to embody a more authentic form of vampirism than the women in the first segment.

Jennifer is drawn into their world, which operates according to its own dreamlike logic. The Queen and her followers inhabit abandoned spaces and ruins, moving through forests and graveyards as though detached from time. Their existence is less about feeding on blood and more about a kind of spiritual or existential otherness.

Meanwhile, Dr. Samsky reappears, now revealed as part of a secret society dedicated to controlling or eradicating vampires. His role becomes more ambiguous; he is no longer merely a rational observer but an active participant in a shadowy conflict. The line between scientist and fanatic begins to blur.

Jennifer undergoes a transformation, or at least a psychological shift, as she becomes increasingly aligned with the Queen’s perspective. Vampirism is presented less as a physical condition and more as a rejection of societal norms, a movement toward freedom, death, or transcendence.

The film builds toward a confrontation between Samsky’s organisation and the Queen’s followers. However, rather than a conventional climax, the narrative dissolves into a series of poetic and symbolic images. Characters appear and disappear without clear resolution. Death, rebirth, and identity merge into one another.

Ending

The film concludes without a definitive explanation of events. Jennifer’s fate remains ambiguous, as does the nature of the vampires themselves. The Queen’s presence lingers as a symbol rather than a resolved character.

Rather than offering closure, the ending reinforces the film’s central ambiguity: whether vampirism is a literal supernatural condition, a shared delusion, or a metaphor for alienation and desire.

Overall, The Rape of the Vampire is less concerned with narrative clarity than with atmosphere, symbolism, and the collision between rationality and myth. Its fragmented structure and dreamlike imagery anticipate many of Jean Rollin’s later films, where plot often gives way to mood and visual poetry.