Living Dead Girl (5 Stars)

"The Living Dead Girl" is Jean Rollin's 14th film, made in 1982. It's one of Jean Rollin's strangest and saddest films; a zombie movie that treats gore not as spectacle, but as tragedy. While many zombie films turn the undead into anonymous flesh-eating mobs, Rollin narrows the focus to a single resurrected woman and the emotionally destructive bond that ties her to the living. The result feels less like horror exploitation than a doomed romance infected by death.

The film begins with Catherine Valmont rising from her grave after toxic waste contaminates the crypt where she lies buried. In another director's hands this might become social commentary or apocalyptic terror, but Rollin is interested in something far more intimate. Catherine is not a monster in the traditional sense. She's confused, fragile and trapped somewhere between death and memory. The only thing anchoring her to existence is her childhood friend Hélène, who immediately devotes herself to protecting Catherine, even after discovering that Catherine must kill in order to survive.

This is where the moral ambiguity becomes fascinating. Catherine commits terrible acts, slaughtering innocent people and feeding on them with increasing desperation. Yet Rollin films her almost sympathetically. She doesn't appear to enjoy killing; she looks haunted by it. There are moments where Catherine seems aware that she's become something unnatural and horrifying. Her beauty decays in the course of the film, making her resemble a corpse wearing the fading memory of humanity. She's trapped inside a body that demands violence.

Hélène, however, makes conscious choices. She's alive, rational and fully aware of the consequences of her actions. Rather than helping Catherine die peacefully or alerting authorities, she becomes an enabler. She lures victims to Catherine, lies to protect her and treats murder as the price of preserving their emotional connection. The film quietly asks whether love can become monstrous when it values possession above morality. Hélène's devotion initially seems compassionate, but gradually it turns selfish. She cannot bear to lose Catherine again, even if preserving her means condemning others.

That makes the central question deeply uncomfortable: who is the real monster? Catherine kills because she's become a creature driven by hunger beyond her control. Hélène kills through choice. One acts from curse, the other from obsession. Rollin never gives an easy answer because he clearly sees tragedy in both women. Catherine is horrifying, but she's also suffering. Hélène is loving, but her love corrodes into moral blindness.

The film becomes even more poignant because Rollin presents their relationship with genuine tenderness. There is an unmistakably romantic undercurrent between the two women, yet it's portrayed less as exploitation and more as emotional dependency. Hélène clings to an idealised memory of Catherine from childhood, refusing to accept that the woman she loved is gone. In a sense, she falls in love with death itself. Catherine, meanwhile, increasingly recognises what she's become and seems almost ashamed of Hélène's sacrifices.

Unlike conventional zombie films, there's no triumph in survival, no restoration of order and no clear distinction between innocence and evil. The horror comes from watching affection transform into complicity. Rollin asks whether unconditional love is truly noble when it destroys everyone surrounding it.

Visually, the film carries Rollin's trademark dreamlike atmosphere; crumbling chateaux, graveyards and misty countryside landscapes that feel suspended outside ordinary reality. Yet compared to some of his more surreal works, this film has unusual emotional directness. The gore is graphic, but the lasting impression is melancholy rather than shock. Catherine is less a predator than a decaying memory refusing to disappear.

In the end, "The Living Dead Girl" suggests that monstrosity isn't simply about violence or undeath. The greater horror may lie in refusing to let go; in loving someone so absolutely that morality itself becomes secondary. Catherine is the monster created by death, but Hélène is the monster created by love.

Grapes Of Death (4 Stars)

"Grapes of Death" is Jean Rollin's tenth film, made in 1978. It's the film where Rollin finally stopped drifting through graveyards full of melancholy vampires and decided to make a proper gore film. The result is strange, uneven and occasionally repulsive; but it's also one of the most fascinating entries in his career precisely because it feels like Rollin wrestling against his own instincts.

Most of Rollin's films move like dreams. Stories barely matter. Characters wander through ruined castles, deserted beaches and cemeteries as if sleepwalking through somebody else's fantasy. Dialogue is sparse, the pacing is hypnotically slow and violence often feels secondary to atmosphere. Even when blood appears in films like "Requiem for a Vampire" or "The Nude Vampire", it rarely has much physical weight. Rollin was usually more interested in lonely women, surreal imagery and erotic melancholy than shock.

"The Grapes of Death" is different from its opening scene. The countryside here isn't mystical; it's diseased. A pesticide sprayed on vineyards has transformed local workers into rotting homicidal maniacs, creating something halfway between a zombie film and a rural plague nightmare. Rollin borrows openly from contemporary exploitation horror, particularly the splatter films emerging in Italy at the time. Faces split open, flesh peels away and bodies are mutilated with a level of nastiness almost absent from his earlier work.

Yet even while embracing gore, Rollin cannot entirely stop being himself. The film still contains stretches of eerie silence and bizarre encounters that feel disconnected from ordinary narrative logic. The heroine Elisabeth wanders from one pocket of madness to another, meeting traumatised survivors who seem trapped in their own isolated worlds. The atmosphere remains dreamlike even when the special effects become graphic. Rollin turns the French countryside into a place of decay and loneliness rather than pure terror.

What really separates the film from his earlier work is its anger. Rollin's vampire films are sad and romantic; "The Grapes of Death" feels bitter. The poisoned vineyards create an unmistakably environmental horror story, reflecting fears about industrial contamination and modern agriculture. The violence has a grimy physicality that strips away the fairy-tale quality usually found in his cinema. This is probably the closest Rollin ever came to making a conventional horror film for mainstream exploitation audiences.

The irony is that even here he could not fully conform. Beneath the gore and infected flesh lies the same lonely poetic sensibility that defined all his work. The film is rougher, harsher and bloodier than his usual output; but it still belongs unmistakably to Rollin. Nobody else would make a zombie film that pauses so often for melancholy, silence and strange beauty.

Two Orphan Vampires (5 Stars)

"Two Orphan Vampires" is Jean Rollin's 18th film, made in 1997. It's one of his last films, but in many ways it's his most typical film. It barely pretends to belong to the horror genre, even as it trades in vampires, blood and nocturnal wandering. The action, if it can even be called action, is downplayed. The film is like an abstract painting, creating emotions in everyone who watches it.

The film follows two blind girls who live in an orphanage. What the nuns don't know is that they're only blind in the daytime. At night they can see everything in a blue tint. They sneak out of the orphanage to drink blood, sometimes human blood, sometimes animals. They're not vampires in the conventional sense. They frequently live and die. How often they remain dead varies, but they always claw their way back to the surface. Dying is a time of rest for them. They've lived for a long time. In the 15th Century they were worshipped as Goddesses by the Aztecs. In a single ceremony 40,000 men were laid out for them to feed, all of them volunteers. Towards the end of the film we find out that they're much older, and there are hints that they've existed since the beginning of time, before Adam and Eve.

Rollin’s pacing is always languid, but here it feels almost defiant. Scenes linger far beyond what mainstream storytelling would allow; conversations drift, actions feel ritualistic, and long stretches pass where nothing much happens in a traditional sense. Yet this isn’t indulgence for its own sake. The slow rhythm creates a kind of trance state, pulling the viewer into the same suspended existence as the protagonists; caught between day and night, blindness and vision, innocence and predation.

The two leads carry the film less through dialogue than presence. Their performances are deliberately stylised, almost affectless at times, which only adds to their otherworldly quality. They don’t behave like typical horror figures, nor like realistic teenagers; they exist somewhere in between, embodying Rollin’s recurring fascination with fragile, doomed femininity. There’s an undercurrent of sadness running through everything they do, as though their vampirism is less a curse than an extension of an already isolated existence.

Visually, the film is steeped in a muted, dreamlike atmosphere. Rollin contrasts the drabness of daytime interiors with the freedom of the night, where cemeteries, empty streets and shadowy corners become spaces of strange beauty. His usual gothic imagery is present but subdued, less about spectacle and more about texture and feeling. The result is a Paris that feels detached from reality; familiar, yet ghostly and removed.

Anyone approaching "Two Orphan Vampires" expecting tension, scares or even a clear narrative arc will likely come away frustrated. This is a film that resists those pleasures almost entirely. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it offers something rarer; a melancholy, dreamlike meditation on isolation, identity and the strange freedoms of the night. It’s less a story you follow than a mood you inhabit, and it lingers precisely because it never fully resolves into something concrete.

The Escapees (4 Stars)

In one of his most understated films, Jean Rollin trades gothic horror for something more intimate; a drifting, melancholic tale of escape and fragile connection.

The story follows Michelle and Marie, two women who flee a psychiatric institution together and form an immediate, almost instinctive bond. Their journey unfolds less as a conventional narrative and more as a series of encounters, shaped by mood, landscape and the constant tension between freedom and vulnerability.

Central to that journey is Sophie, the pickpocket who helps facilitate their escape and becomes an essential third presence. Sophie brings a harder edge to the film; she understands survival in a way the other two do not, and her pragmatism both sustains and subtly undermines the fragile, almost utopian world they begin to build together.

Equally important is Louise, a commanding figure within the dockside underworld. As a bar owner, she represents a very different kind of power; rooted not in escape, but in control. Where Michelle and Marie drift, Louise is anchored; she navigates the same shadowy spaces with authority and confidence. Her presence broadens the film’s perspective, suggesting that life on the margins is not only about vulnerability, but can also offer its own forms of dominance and self-determination.

Visually, the film is pure Rollin; empty beaches, decaying buildings and quiet, in-between spaces that feel detached from time. The pacing is languid and at times aimless, but that is part of its charm. This is a film that prioritises atmosphere over plot, emotion over structure.

"The Escapees" may frustrate viewers looking for a tight storyline, but as a mood piece it is quietly absorbing; a wistful, dreamlike exploration of freedom, survival and the fleeting bonds formed in the spaces between.

We see Louise on stage singing several times. Here she's accompanied by an unnamed man played by Jean Rollin. Louise is played by the actress Louise Dhour. She appeared in three of Rollin's films, and in each film her character was called Louise, even though they were three different people. There were rumours that she had an affair with Jean Rollin. They denied it, but it didn't stop people whispering.

Louise Dhour died on 27th December 2010, only 12 days after Rollin himself. Was it coincidence, or brought on by grief after the death of her lover? I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

The Night of the Hunted (5 Stars)

While watching Jean Rollin's films in 4K I'm giving them better ratings. Is it because I appreciate them more in better quality? Or am I simply enjoying them more after multiple viewings. Whatever the reason, I'm giving "Night of the Hunted" a five star rating for the first time. I don't understand why I ever gave it less.

A young man called Robert is driving home at night. He sees a woman yelling for help. He picks her up and offers to drive her home, but she doesn't know her address or even her name. As he soon discovers, it's not just amnesia. Her memories are breaking down. Within 30 minutes she forgets everything that's happened. She doesn't even remember getting into Robert's car. He takes her home with him and they become lovers, but the next morning their romance is forgotten.

The woman has been tracked by two mysterious doctors. They take her to a hospital where dozens of patients are suffering from the same symptoms. At least, they claim it's a hospital. It looks more like a bare apartment building. Anyone who tries to help a patient leave is shot. It's left open until the final scenes whether the doctors are trying to heal the patients or are responsible for their illness.

The narrative unfolds in a deliberately ambiguous way, focusing less on clear explanations and more on atmosphere, emotional disorientation and the terrifying idea of losing one's identity piece by piece. This ambiguity is what makes the film a beautiful masterpiece.

Fascination (5 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's tenth film, made in 1979. It's yet another vampire masterpiece. The film takes place close to Paris in 1905. A jewel thief called Marc has betrayed the other members of his gang and is on the run across the countryside. He takes a refuge in a mansion occupied by two women, Eva and Elisabeth. They claim to be servants looking after the mansion while the owners are away, but Marc doesn't believe them. Unknown to Marc, the two women are waiting for the arrival of five other women to perform a yearly ritual.

While dancing with Elisabeth, she tells Marc, "At midnight you'll see what seven women can do to one man". There are only five women in this photo, but I'm sure they can handle a man as well. As a matter of fact, even one woman is too much for a man to handle. We see this when Eva kills the four gang members hunting Marc by herself.

Eva is played by the French actress Brigitte Lahaie. Jean Rollin met her when she took part in "Vibrations Sexuelles", a hardcore sex film that he made in 1977 when he was desperate to make money. He recognised her as a talented actress and promised he would give her a part in one of serious films. He hired her a year later for "Grapes of Death" (not yet available in 4K). She went on to appear in another three of Rollin's films, including "Fascination".

Lips of Blood (5 Stars)

This is Jean Rollin's eighth film, made in 1975. It's a beautiful, emotionally moving film. Many of Rollin's fans consider it to be his best film, and I can understand why.

When Frederic was 12 years old he got lost late at night. He found an old castle whose sole inhabitant was a mysterious pale woman. He immediately fell in love with her, as 12-year-olds do. She let him stay the night in his castle, and the next morning she sent him back to his mother. He promised to come back the next day, but he didn't.

Time went by. Frederic forgot the woman. 20 years later he's at a party with his girlfriend, when he sees a photo of the castle being used in a perfume advertisement. Memories come flooding back. He's determined to find the castle again. But there's some sort of conspiracy. He contacts the photographer who took the photo, but she's murdered by a vampire before she can tell him.

When he eventually finds the castle, the woman is still waiting for him. She hasn't changed. She says that she's loved him all these years.

That's an oversimplification of the plot. There are a few shocks on the way. But the atmosphere is still haunting and beautiful.

Jean Rollin has a cameo as a funeral caretaker.

He's killed by four beautiful vampires when he's on the night shift. To be honest, this scene is totally gratuitous. But I can understand Rollin wanting a scene where four scantily clad vampires are on top of him. If it were me I'd insist on at least twenty takes before moving on.

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 are larger and more extravagant than in 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.

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.

The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

I watched this film twice today, so I'm reviewing it twice. That's the rules. I can only remember two other films that I've watched twice on the same day, and both were before I started writing my blog. The first was "Downfall"/"Der Untergang", and the second was "Inland Empire".

I'll stick to a few things that I picked up from the excellent commentary by the film critic Tim Lucas.

The cemetery used in the film is the Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens. It's a small town, but it's famous as the burial place of Jules Verne. There's a special memorial to him, with a sculpture that's well known. Jean Rollin was careful not to show Jules Verne's grave in any scenes, because he wanted the cemetery to remain anonymous.

Most of the scenes were filmed at night. The caretaker was bribed with bottles of wine to allow the film crew to spend all night in the cemetery. I hope he didn't lose his job.

The unnamed man in the film was played by Hugues Quester, a moderately successful French actor. He was arrogant and thought the film was below his standards. He looked down on Jean Rollin and hardly spoke with him. He asked for his name to be kept secret, and many film posters called him Pierre Dupont. Ironically, in retrospect "The Iron Rose" is considered his greatest film.

When Jean Rollin died in 2010 an iron rose was placed on the lid of his coffin.

Tim Lucas also went into some detail about the question I asked about whether Karine died at the end of the film or returned to the beach. He's convinced that she survived, but he added some additional thoughts. He suggests that the old woman in the cemetery might be Karine years later, so the sealing of the crypt could be decades later. He also suggests that the beach scenes are Karine celebrating the man's death. It's possible (in Tim's opinion) that the nude scene never happened, it was just a dream she had when the man was locked in the crypt. I personally doubt this interpretation.

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The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

I'm really excited. This week I found out that all of Jean Rollin's films are going to be released as 4K editions. This brings my film collecting full circle. When I bought my first DVD player in 2003, Jean Rollin's films were among the first that I bought. Now, 23 years later, I'm rebuying them all on 4K discs. I ordered 14 of his films last week, and the first eleven have arrived. They're all in beautiful boxes with 80-page booklets, and the discs are packed with special features. The picture quality of "The Iron Rose" was always below average, as a poorly stored film from the 1970's. Now it looks glorious. The film's restoration is obviously a labour of love.

I watched the film twice today. The first time it was the film itself, the second time I watched it with a commentary track by the film critic Tim Lucas. I don't usually listen to commentary tracks from external contributors, I prefer the director or the actors, but in this case Tim has done an excellent job.

Every time I watch the film I ask new questions. This is the most Lynchian of all of Jean Rollin's films. The opening scene on the beach obviously takes place after the events in the film, but Karine seemingly dies in the final scene. That still confuses me, so I asked ChatGPT the question, "Does Karine die at the end of The Iron Rose or return to the beach?" I received a very insightful reply.

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That final movement in The Iron Rose is one of Jean Rollin's most deliberately unresolved endings; and it's meant to support both of the readings you're suggesting.

1. She dies in the cemetery

The most literal interpretation is:

Karine never leaves the cemetery.

She fully yields to its logic; calm, detached, almost at peace.

The male character collapses into panic, while she assimilates into the world of the dead.

In this reading:

Her "death" is not shown conventionally.

It’s more a spiritual or existential absorption than a physical event.

The cemetery doesn't just trap her; it claims her.

2. She returns to the beach

The alternative, and very compelling, interpretation is:

The beach scene represents a return or continuation after the cemetery.

Karine emerges changed; no longer frightened, but aligned with death.

The rose links the cemetery to the beach, suggesting continuity rather than escape.

Here, she hasn't escaped in any meaningful sense; she's simply carried the cemetery with her.

3. The key idea: transformation, not outcome

What matters isn't whether she "dies" or "leaves", but that:

She accepts the cemetery’s reality.

She becomes emotionally and symbolically one with it.

By contrast:

The man resists, panics, and disintegrates.

He experiences the cemetery as horror.

She experiences it as something closer to belonging.

4. Why Rollin leaves it open

Rollin avoids closure because the film isn’t about plot resolution:

Time is circular or collapsed.

Spaces bleed into each other.

Life and death are not cleanly separated.

So asking "did she die or return?" is almost the wrong question; the film's answer is:

    "those two states are no longer distinct".

Bottom line

Yes, you can read it as Karine dying in the cemetery.

Yes, you can read it as her returning to the beach.

But the strongest reading is:

She undergoes a transformation where death, memory and continuation become the same state.

That's why the ending lingers; it doesn't resolve, it echoes.

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The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

This is a film that I have to watch again and again. It's the best French film I know. I'm a big fan of Jean Rollin, but it's the only one of his films that has a place in my top 100 list. A problem that I have with my favourite films is that I have difficulty writing something new about them after repeated watching. Now I have a solution. I asked ChatGPT to write a review, and wow! It's full of praise for the film, as I expected, but it's also an eloquent document. Read it for yourself.

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The Iron Rose: A Poetic Descent into the Graveyard of the Self

Jean Rollin’s "The Iron Rose" stands apart even within his dream-soaked filmography. It is neither horror in the conventional sense nor romance in any predictable form. Instead, the film unfolds as a poem in images; a quiet, slow, and hypnotic meditation on death, identity, and the transformation that occurs when the boundaries between the living and the dead dissolve.

The Film’s Poetic Language

Rollin structures the film like a piece of free verse. Instead of plot-driven progression, the narrative circulates in loops, refrains, and echoes. Long takes drift through the graveyard like wandering lines of poetry. Dialogue is sparse and frequently metaphorical, often delivered with an incantatory tone that feels more written than spoken.

The pacing has the rhythm of a slow, dark lullaby. Rollin abandons conventional suspense and instead cultivates a mood of dreamlike inevitability. The imagery – faded tombstones, crumbling statuary, and the immense silence of the cemetery – creates a visual haiku: minimal, symbolic, and entirely dependent on atmosphere.

Even the lovers at the film’s centre are less characters than archetypes: the Man and the Woman, figures who move through the cemetery like allegorical presences. Their interactions acquire the abstraction of a poem about the eternal tension between Eros and Thanatos.

The Graveyard as a Symbolic Landscape

The cemetery setting is not mere backdrop but a symbolic field through which the film’s themes unfold. In Rollin’s hands, the graveyard becomes a liminal zone, a place where identity sheds its civilian clothes and the subconscious self emerges. Daylight scenes feel fragile and superficial; it’s only at night, when the couple becomes lost. that the real psychological descent begins.

The Woman’s growing attachment to the graveyard can be read as a spiritual awakening, a recognition of death’s beauty, certainty, and truth. For her, the graveyard is not morbid but authentic, a place of clarity where human pretensions fall away.

The Iron Rose: Symbolism and Meaning

At the centre of this symbolic landscape stands the film’s titular object: the Iron Rose.

Rollin uses the iron rose as a multi-layered symbol, its meanings shifting subtly throughout the film:

1. Permanence vs. Ephemerality

A traditional rose wilts and decays; an iron rose endures. The choice of iron is deliberate: it suggests a love, or a state of being, that aspires to transcend impermanence. In the context of the film, the iron rose represents the Woman’s movement toward the eternal, away from the transient world of the living.

In this sense, the iron rose mirrors the cemetery itself: made of stone, iron, and memory, a place that resists the decay it symbolises.

2. The Romanticisation of Death

The iron rose becomes a token of death elevated into beauty. Like Victorian mourning jewellery or graveyard flowers made of metal, it is both funereal and sentimental. Holding it marks the Woman’s surrender to death’s aesthetic power; its stillness, its certainty, its peace.

It is not a symbol of despair but of attraction.

3. The Fusion of Passion and Mortality

Roses are traditionally symbols of love, but iron carries connotations of coldness, weight, and inevitability. Their combination suggests the merging of erotic passion with death. This fusion is at the heart of Rollin’s film: the lovers make love in a crypt, and their intimacy becomes intertwined with the graveyard’s embrace.

The iron rose is the objectification of that union.

4. Identity Transformed

By the film’s end, the iron rose becomes a symbol of the Woman’s psychological transformation. What began as a romantic excursion shifts into a metaphysical claiming. When she walks away at dawn, barefoot and serene, clutching nothing but the iron rose, it signals her rebirth, not as a member of the living world but as a new inhabitant of the cemetery’s realm.

The rose is her new identity, forged in her acceptance of death’s truth.

Conclusion: A Film Made of Symbols and Silence

"The Iron Rose" is more dream than narrative, more poem than film. Its beauty lies in its stillness, its atmosphere, and its unwavering commitment to mood over action. For viewers willing to tune themselves to its quiet frequency, it becomes a haunting meditation on the allure of death and the thin, permeable line between the worlds of the living and the dead.

At the centre of that meditation stands the iron rose: a symbol of eternal love, of the seduction of death, and of the strange, potent poetry that arises when the human soul confronts the unknown and chooses to stay.

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The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

"You've never had a picnic in a cemetery before? You'll love it so much, you won't want to leave".

A young man is invited to a wedding. He recites a poem about suicide. The assembled wedding guests are confused, but they politely applaud. A young woman called Karine is so fascinated that she approaches him, and they agree to go on a date the next day. They meet at the railway station. and they ride their bicycles to the town's cemetery. The man (who isn't named) brings the food.

It's not just about eating. They have sex in a crypt, and they lose track of the time. It's dark when they come out. They can't find the exit. The cemetery is like a living creature, holding the couple prisoners. Whenever they think they've found the way out, there's yet another field with more graves. There's a graveyard for fallen soldiers. There's a chapel for dead children. There's even a mass grave, not yet sealed, in which long dead skeletons have been piled on one another.

Do they want to leave? The man does. He runs from field to field in a frenzy. Karine doesn't. She likes being surrounded by the dead, and she tries to persuade her lover to stay with her.

For the next two weeks I plan to watch films included in my top 100 film list. They're the greatest of the great. I shan't watch them in any particular order. "The Iron Rose" is in 96th place. "Tommy", which I watched yesterday, is in 43rd place.

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Orchestrator of Storms (5 Stars)

This is a wonderful documentary about the legendary director Jean Rollin. It's the second documentary about him; the first was "Le rêveur égaré", made in 2011. This is the better of the two documentaries, longer and more detailed. Whereas the first documentary concentrated on his films, the second gives more details about his life.

The film hasn't yet been released on disc. It's only available on the streaming service Arrow Player. I bet that's a streaming service that no one knows. I took out a 14 day free trial so I could watch it. That's better than nothing, but I still want to hold it on a shiny little disc. The only other films on Arrow Player that I'm interested in are ones that I already own.

The documentary answered a question that's always been bugging me: where is the beach that's featured in several of Jean Rollin's films, including "The Iron Rose"? It's the beach of Dieppe in Normandy. Evidently it's a popular destination for tourists, but Rollin always used a stony location by the cliffs where there aren't many visitors.

Jean Rollin struggled for money all his life. It was difficult for him to raise money for his films, so they were all low budget productions. One of the speakers in the documentary suggests that his films might not have been as good, or at least not as original, if he'd had money to spare. I don't know. There was a phase in his life when he made hardcore pornographic films as an easy way to make money. He said of these films that they were rubbish. He wouldn't have wasted his time making them if he'd had more money.

The documentary reminded me that I still haven't seen his last two films: "The Night of the Clocks" (2007) and "The Mask of Medusa" (2009). They don't seem to be available currently. They're the sort of films that should be made available on Arrow Player.

Le Rêveur Egaré (4 Stars)

I don't know why I watched this film today. I rarely watch a film at random, and I don't think I've ever watched a documentary twice. I wanted to watch a horror film with my son Benjamin, but he was tired and needed an afternoon nap, so I looked for a replacement. "Le Rêveur Egaré" is the first film that fell into my hands.

I said most of what you need to know in my first review. I'll just add a few things here. In interviews contained as extra features on his films he was often arrogant. He said, for example, "In the 1970's the critics didn't respect me, but now I'm recognised as France's greatest director". In the interviews used in the documentary he's more modest. I consider him my favourite French director, and so do many other horror fans, but I'm in the minority. The documentary points out that he's more popular in English speaking countries than in France itself.

It's said more than once that Jean Rollin didn't make films for the audiences, he made films for himself. He never strived for box office success. That's a very honest way to make films. As a low budget film maker he didn't have big studios breathing down his neck, telling him what to do.

Now he's dead. He passed away shortly after the documentary was made. His coffin is floating away into the Atlantic Ocean. Figuratively speaking. He's sadly missed by everyone who loves vampire films.

Another documentary was made in 2022. I'm trying to get my hands on it.

The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

What's the message of this film?

"When you take a girl on the first date, don't take her to a cemetery".

It's best to wait until you know her better. She might be a crazy woman who wants to trap you in a double suicide. There are women like that around, I've been told, but luckily I've never met any.

This 1973 French film is a masterpiece of horror. It doesn't have jump scares. It doesn't have monsters. All it has is a terrifying atmosphere of menace and foreboding. The unnamed man (that I like to call Tristan) is horny and just wants to be alone with the woman he's met at a wedding. Karine wants to commune with the dead. She feels like the dead are her friends, because they don't wage war, so she wants to be with them. That's not the sort of girlfriend to take to a cemetery for a picnic.

There are hints of supernatural occurrences, but nothing is stated explicitly. There are unusual visitors in the cemetery. Early in the film we see a man dressed as Dracula, but he's no danger to them. It's just a costume. We also see a monk and a clown in the cemetery. The monk in particular gazes at the young couple with an evil stare, but he doesn't approach them. He just adds to the atmosphere.

The only real supernatural element in the film is the iron rose itself. In the opening scene, Karine finds the rose on the beach. After examining it she throws it in the water. The following day, when she's in the cemetery, she finds it on the ground and shows it to Tristan. Is it a thing of beauty or ugliness? That's not clear, but it's a thing that can last. Karine sets flowers on fire, but the iron rose doesn't burn.

I can't explain the film. I can tell you what happens, but I can't tell you why it happens. That's typical for all of Jean Rollin's films. Watch the film for yourself. Feel it.

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