French erotic film director Jean Rollin got my attention when one of his movies got reviewed on DVD-Beaver, which generally means his work has at least some merit (DVD-Beaver tends towards catering to the Criterion and Masters-of-Cinema crowd).
So when I got the chance to check out the new Salvation DVD-release of his second movie "La Vampire Nue" (English title: "The Nude Vampire") I grabbed it, hoping to be pleasantly surprised like I was with some other early 70's horror and giallo. Now that I have seen it this movie leaves me thoroughly baffled. It's one thing to place style over content but the complete dismissal of something like a coherent plot is something else!
Then again maybe this release is missing some bits and pieces?
Which would be a shame because for once Salvation has given one of their discs some sensible extras: content which actually has something to do with the main film and its makers, including the first (short) movie Jean Rollin ever released.
Read on (I've tried to keep it SFW, honest...).
In the sixties Jean Rollin had only directed a couple of short movies when it was decided to stretch one of these into a full-length feature film.
Well, stretch... Rollin didn't actually change his short movie. Instead, he added a 50-minute epilogue, inexplicably reviving everybody who died in the short and ditching the plot in favor of some psychedelic mish-mash of chases, nude scenes, flashbacks and mind-controlled memories. The end result was released in 1967 as "Le Viol du Vampire" aka. "Rape of the Vampire", allegedly the first French vampire movie (I doubt this but couldn't quickly find evidence to the contrary).
A pretentious mix of art-house cinematography and no-budget exploitation schlock, it was enough of a success to enable Jean Rollin to make a second feature film. This became "La Vampire Nue" aka. "The Nude Vampire", his first film in color, which was released in 1969 and is generally considered to be one of the director's lesser efforts.
Neither movie made a big splash, but Jean Rollin became known as a director with a talent for framing things nicely and with a special knack for erotic content. As such he has managed to stay in business and even get a loyal fanbase over the years, praising his movies for their dreamlike quality and disregard of regular storylines. Others criticize him for those exact same reasons although they'll add a couple of things like "style over content" and "pretentious".
One of the few people able to juggle both an art-house directing career and a hardcore pornography directing career (using a pseudonym), he still makes movies to this day.
The Story:
Pierre (Olivier Martin) is the bored and rebellious son of a decadent millionaire. During a nightly stroll he encounters a beautiful girl clad only in orange gauze. He is intrigued but before a word is exchanged they are both attacked and chased by men wearing sinister animal masks. The girl is shot but Pierre manages to escape, and of course he's determined to investigate what this was all about.
He soon discovers that the girl is alive and seemingly unharmed, but is a prisoner of his depraved father who believes her to be a vampire. In his special private laboratory she is used for research on immortality.
When a smitten Pierre tries to rescue this so-called vampire he has to deal with corrupt scientists, a weird suicide cult and a secret society of dimension-hopping immortals who have their own plans for the girl...
The Movie:
This is going to be a difficult movie to review. It would be so easy to just write this off as garbage, an example of eurotrash not worth your time. There is a story here but it has been lazily cobbled together, with plotholes that are insulting rather than annoying. It defies even its own twisted internal logic which, trust me, is seriously difficult if you see how much leeway Rollin allows himself.
Add to that a grating amateurism which keeps popping up in the oddest places, like with the wooden acting and the prop use (these must surely be the fakest guns ever) and you'd guess this should go straight into the bin.
The nudity is completely gratuitous but still relatively tame. There are no sex scenes (more on that later) but some of the women start stripping for no reason whatsoever except to make the frame look nicer, a typical Rollin trademark I'm told. Those few women who don't strip often don't need to, as their clothing is either translucent or ridiculously revealing.
The weirdest thing in this movie is the general leaden seriousness of the delivery, like you are being told A Great Truth. Pretentious doesn't begin to describe it: we're watching a softcore horror flick but it seems like Jean Rollin expects the audience to continually gasp and be bowled over.
When the movie suddenly turns all science fiction-y at the end I found this whole attitude to be extremely lame.
And yet... and yet...
Maybe the bin is still the right place for this disc but there's no denying that Jean Rollin occasionally shows he's got talent. No matter how daft the story gets at least it's prettily displayed. Some of the sets are nice and the animal masks used are quite effectively creepy. The way Pierre's acrobatic escape at the beginning is filmed is impressive, also for obviously being real (Olivier Martin must have been quite fit in 1969!). Later in the movie, the suicide cult encounter shows that Rollin does know a thing or two about building suspense but it's a shame he doesn't use it more often in this film, as in general it's not scary at all.
Conclusion:
I've been told Jean Rollin made far better movies later on in his career, so if you're interested in this sort of thing I'd go to IMDB and look for his more popular titles. This one can be safely left for the Rollin fans and collectors.
Sure it looks good and there are a few nice bits in it (some of those attached to womens upper bodies) but you'll have to wade through a lot of ridiculous drivel to see them. It's not totally bereft of charm but hard to recommend.
About the DVD:
Salvation's cover-art is not bad but it's a shame they didn't use one of the original French one-sheets which were pretty outrageous (an example of which you can see here).
Though IMDB lists the film as being 90 minutes long and the Salvation cover mentions 88 minutes, the film as on the DVD is only 81 minutes. This leads me to suspect we have a cut version of the movie as this difference cannot be explained away by any NTSC-PAL transfer issue.
Also, both included trailers show a disrobing which cannot be found in the movie itself although the start of that scene is still there. Context would make you assume the movie contained at least one sex scene, which was cut entirely from the version seen here.
Videowise it's not the worst I've seen from Salvation. Colors and contrast are good but the picture is non-anamorphic and dreadfully interlaced.
Soundwise we have only the English dub and no subtitles. Brrrr... The dub is pretty bad, with all voices doing some horrible wooden linereading and awful sound effects. I'll mention the guns again: they go "pop! pop! pop!".
I've heard soda bottles that sounded more threatening when being opened.
To be honest it looks like the actors were speaking English most of the time so it might be that this specific version only has the English dub attached.
Now for the extras, and Salvation scores points here although it starts bad.
There are several picture galleries. One is the ubiquitous pimping of the "Satanic Sluts" picturebook apparently found on all of Salvation's DVD's, but the others are actually Rollin related. The "Nude Vampire" gallery has a staggering four images (count them) in it, all stills from the movie. Wow...
Two trailers for "The Nude Vampire" have been included, a French one and an English one. Both are the same footage-wise but the French one contains more text and manages to better convey (or spoil, whichever you fancy) the ludicrous story. This is definitely a nice addition.
Three more trailers are included for other Salvation titles, one of which is another Jean Rollin title: "The Iron Rose". Again, if you're a Rollin fan this is a nice addition but it's strange that "Rape of the Vampire" is not included, as that title is somewhat linked with "The Nude Vampire" and has also been released by Salvation.
The best extra though is the complete short movie "Les Amours Jaunes" from 1958, which is the first released work by Jean Rollin. Unlike the movie this one has the original French soundtrack and excellent subtitles. It comes with its own picture gallery, with more stills than the one for the main feature, funnily enough.
The short concerns the thoughts of an artist living on a beach told through film, voice-over and animation. I didn't like it as it's just as pretentious (that word again!) as the other Rollin material I've seen, but fans should be delighted. I don't know of the availability of this short, but its inclusion on this DVD is very nice indeed and could be the deciding factor for collectors.
All in all a so-so disc for a so-so movie. But like I said, the man's got his fans, and some of the extras might make this disc worth buying for Jean Rollin completists.