The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Posted on May 25, 2013 at 9:41 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Since 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer Films became associated with pushing the envelope of sex and violence, and initiated a long series of skirmishes with the moralistic British Board of Film Classification that would last until the studio ceased production. During that span, the times changed, and attitudes loosened like the unlacing of a corset. The Vampire Lovers (1970) was a benchmark film for Hammer in its depiction of nudity and suggested sex, but peekaboo glimpses of female flesh had already begun creeping into its films; it was the immortal Carmilla, in the form of the voluptuous Ingrid Pitt, who at last flung wide the bedroom shutters. The film would initiate the somewhat informal “Karnstein Trilogy” (completed with 1971’s Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil), undoubtedly the sauciest material Hammer would ever unleash, but really a frantic attempt to keep up with the times, as British cinemas were already hot-and-bothered with films like School for Sex (1969), Zeta One (1969), Groupie Girl (1970), and The Wife Swappers (1970), to name just a few. Hammer had long been proudly displaying the décolletage of its nightgown-sporting vampire victims, but The Vampire Lovers advances the motif to some explicit breast-biting.

Madeline Smith as the innocent Emma.

Still, at least in this stage of the game, Hammer retained some attachment to its classy and literary productions of years past. What makes The Vampire Lovers so entertaining is that it presents an almost staid veneer – dress balls, manor houses, Peter Cushing – constantly interrupted by orgasmic bursts of flesh, gore, and lesbian overtures. The Bram Stoker/Sheridan Le Fanu contrast between civilized society and repressed lust had never been presented to such an extreme. Another adaptation of Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the film is more mercenary and direct than Roger Vadim’s poetic Blood and Roses (1960). The Polish-born Pitt plays the anagrammatic Marcilla, the daughter of a wealthy Countess (Dawn Addams), who has an eye for beautiful young women, and whose presence over a prolonged period of time leaves the girls empty husks. After draining one girl (Pippa Steele) dry, she moves on to the household of Roger Morton (George Cole) and lavishes her attentions on his virginal daughter Emma (Madeline Smith). Emma only knows that this woman – who has been introduced to her as “Carmilla” – has a worldly attitude that deeply impresses her, and she accepts her as her new best friend. Emma lets Carmilla dress her in a sexy, translucent dress. She lets her undress her. In bed, she lets Carmilla do something just below camera while Madeline Smith somehow makes her doe-eyes grow all the wider.

Ingrid Pitt as Marcilla/Carmilla.

Carmilla’s affections toward Emma seem to arouse some jealousy in the Governess of the house (Kata O’Mara of The Horror of Frankenstein). Not to worry – Carmilla is soon dividing her attentions, and drawing the Governess into her spell. As the increasingly bedridden Emma begins to grow pale and sickly, the butler Renton (Harvey Hall, who appears in all three Karnstein films in different roles) calls for a doctor against the commands of the Governess. The doctor – played, ironically, by Ferdy Mayne, the Count from The Fearless Vampire Killers – recognizes the signs of vampirism and places an order for garlic. In the battle for the soul of Emma, the tide seems to be turning, at least until Renton succumbs to the sexual advances of Carmilla. Finally, it’s up to General von Spielsdorf (Cushing), the Baron Hartog (Douglas Wilmer), and dashing young Carl (Jon Finch of Polanski’s Macbeth) to find Carmilla’s coffin and put an end to her scandalous ways. The final scene shows an ancient portrait of the ageless Carmilla Karnstein transforming into a decayed cadaver, in tribute to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) and Baron Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) race to destroy the vampire.

It’s almost beside the point that the plot is a muddle – there are far too many characters (I haven’t yet mentioned the mysterious vampire in black who commands Carmilla), and it all seems held together more by the audience’s familiarity with genre clichés rather than anything logical or coherent. What’s more important is the way the film integrates its lesbian theme into the comfortable vampire-movie framework. Lesbianism is so integral to the narrative that it is not even a subtext. We can see that Carmilla is sexually interested in Emma; we can see that Emma reciprocates the feeling, even though she doesn’t quite understand what she’s feeling. We can also see that Kate O’Mara’s Governess desires Carmilla even before the vampiress begins to control her actions. So this is really a film about proper society exterminating a plague of aberrant sexuality, and if that theme seems uncomfortable, the gleeful, exploitative angle taken by director Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit) and writers Harry Fine, Tudor Gates, and Michael Style certainly wards off any seriousness. It’s easy to root for Carmilla, despite the fact that Cushing brings his usual gravitas to the vampire hunter role. Pitt, leading a cast of essential “Hammer Glamour” gals, is a wonder to behold, though she gives an even better performance in the more cohesive – but slightly less fun – Countess Dracula (1971). Smith is beautiful but a bit clumsy in her performance; she would fare better in her reunion with Cushing in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973). The Vampire Lovers kicked off a subgenre of lesbian-themed vampire films, among them Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971) with Soledad Miranda, and Jean Rollin’s unique Shiver of the Vampires (1971); but for Hammer – whose subsequent Karnstein films would be less interested in the lesbian angle – this profitable film would be a second wind, however short-lived, that would allow the company to issue more genre product for at least a little while longer. The new Shout! Factory Blu-Ray is a significant upgrade from the previous MGM “Midnite Movies” release (which was a flipper with Countess Dracula as the B-side), and features numerous extras, though the packaging and menu design places a bit too much emphasis on a misleading vintage poster design that disguises its Hammer origins: “Taste the deadly passion of the Blood-Nymphs! Caution: Not for the mentally immature!”

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The Escapees (1981)

Posted on May 19, 2013 at 9:36 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Following the intriguing Night of the Hunted (1980), Jean Rollin was asked to do a more straightforward and mainstream thriller. Though he was handed a script to match the mundane assignment, what he ultimately turned in was a most unexpected, eccentric, and downright personal film, The Escapees (Les Échappées, aka The Runaways, 1981). I would imagine that no one was pleased. There is little suspense to speak of. The film eschews the horror elements that were his stock-in-trade. Despite some nudity and the fleeting presence of Brigitte Lahaie, the film also rejects sexual exploitation, to such a degree that revulsion of sex is a critical element of the plot. This was a return to the Rollin of The Iron Rose (1973), a lyrical, even slow-moving film that finds the director at his most stubbornly anti-commercial. At times it is difficult to see that the film was made for anybody other than himself and his crew – a kind of vindication of exploitations past – but in the film’s brightest moments he manages to evoke the work of Jacques Rivette, Andrzej Zulawski, and François Truffaut. It’s a flawed film, and – if you don’t catch it in the right frame of mind – at times a bit dull. But as a window into an unexplored realm of the Rollinverse, it’s fascinating, radiating a warmth and nostalgia that has never been so foregrounded.

Michelle (Laurence Dubas) and Marie (Christiane Coppé) peer out from the window of their prison during the film's opening titles.

Throughout his filmography, Rollin was obsessed with paired females, sometimes twins (and preferably the Castel twins). The Escapees is about two young women, alike in some ways but crucially different in others: the innocent, childlike Marie (Christiane Coppé) and the adventurous and reckless Michelle (Laurence Dubas). In the opening scene we see these two caged birds peering out from a window in a mental health facility, a chateau in a misty French countryside. Then we witness what must be routine for them: Michelle rebelling until she’s thrown into a straitjacket (shades of Night of the Hunted); Marie in a rocking chair placed in the yard, rocking back and forth while staring forward vacantly. Soon Michelle is persuading Marie to free her from her straitjacket and loan her clothes so she can make her escape; Marie, in a sudden burst of yearning, begs to go with her, and the reluctant Michelle accepts. They see themselves as embarking upon a grand adventure together, and throughout the film they will tell each other tales of all the wonders they’ll see in the world. Instead, they travel through a land of trash and smog, chilly industrial wharves and smoky nightclubs. The two are virgins, and while Michelle is eager for her first sexual experience, Marie dreads it, and speaks in horror of a previous sexual advance a boy made to her (or was it an assault?).

A traveling stripshow is deposited in the middle of a junkyard, just off the train tracks.

A constant dread hangs in the atmosphere; we await something terrible that will happen. (When the girls have their fortune read, we don’t see the crucial Tarot card, just the alarmed expression of the Tarot reader.) So it’s a pleasant surprise to see the two girls finding instead a loyal protector in the tough and leather-clad Sophie (Marianne Valiot), who’s so worldly that she’s not even offended when Michelle awkwardly tries to seduce her boyfriend Pierrot (Patrick Perrot). The girls drift from one extended family to another, first with a traveling troupe of exotic dancers, then the denizens of Sophie’s favorite dive, led by Rollin favorite Louise Dhour (Requiem for a Vampire, The Demoniacs). Such is the vibe of this film that at one point Rollin himself appears onstage at the club to introduce Dhour singing a sea-chantey. As for the stripshow, it’s an outdoor stage with tables and chairs hastily arranged in the junkyard before it; it appears to be a portal to another dimension, and indeed that’s another Rollin trademark, like the theater/wormhole in The Nude Vampire (1970). The actual onstage acts are dreary – some semi-clothed shimmying set to terrible contemporary music – but the enthusiastic reaction from the rowdy, pipe-sporting sailors is genuinely endearing (as is the fact that they seem to have emerged from a Popeye cartoon). In one of the film’s most surprising scenes – at least, for a Rollin film – Marie breaks into an ice rink at night, dons a skater’s uniform, and does a routine on the ice to the imagined applause of an invisible audience. Christiane Coppé had competed internationally as a figure skater, and Rollin uses the novice actress’ secret talent like an impressive card trick. Thematically, it works: we see Marie for the first time, and get echoes of her forgotten past, erased by the time spent in a mental institution. When Michelle arrives on the scene, she is our surrogate, sharing our surprise and wonder.

Marie, Michelle, and Sophie (Marianne Valiot) discuss escape plans.

The title’s meaning becomes clearer as the two girls make plans with Sophie to escape their gray lives by stowing away upon the ship that employs Pierrot. We know this grand scheme will not come to pass – there have been far too many bad omens. A late-night detour into a bachelor pad with some promiscuous couples turns suddenly to Repulsion-style violence, and Marie and Michelle finally find themselves bonded inextricably, committed to one another like two doomed lovers while the police gather outside the window with guns blazing. All this action happens in the last ten minutes of the film. Until then, it’s really a leisurely-paced study of life on the margins, examining sailors, hobos, prostitutes, and street thugs, all seeking escape, and sometimes just settling for escapism. It’s not a perfect film, and it may be best appreciated by those who have already traveled pretty far with Rollin, and are willing to indulge him a little (also, it helps to have a high degree of tolerance for low-key French dramas; I’m there already). But stick with it, and it makes for a pretty affecting love story.

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Double Feature: The Grapes of Death (1978)/Night of the Hunted (1980)

Posted on May 18, 2013 at 10:25 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Two of Jean Rollin’s most fascinating experiments have now come to Blu-Ray courtesy Kino’s Redemption line. They may also be two of his best films. The Grapes of Death (Les Raisins de la mort, 1978) and Night of the Hunted (La Nuit de traquées, 1980) both have titles which recall other, completely different films (The Grapes of Wrath and The Night of the Hunter, respectively), but Rollin’s use of exploitation was never all that straightforward – and these are very unusual, even by his standards. They bookend one of his best-known efforts, Fascination (1979), and both feature that film’s star, blonde-haired Brigitte Lahaie, who had appeared in hardcore films and was making the transition to mainstream thanks to Rollin. The director had reluctantly made pornographic films to continue financing his own personal projects, for he was not a populist entertainer, and surreal, gothic, erotic, and psychedelic films like his Rape of the Vampire (1968) were never bound for either mainstream or critical success. Though he was undoubtedly an auteur, his artistic style was just a little too specific, appeal would always be limited, and his only commercial outlet – according to his financiers, at least – was going to be porn. Lahaie appeared in one of his pseudonymous efforts, Vibrations sexuelles (1977), and Rollin felt that the actress had potential for the mainstream, so he gave her a significant part in The Grapes of Death. Reportedly, much of the Grapes cast refused to associate with this actress from adult films, and wouldn’t speak to her on the set; nonetheless, Rollin went on to grant her leading roles in Fascination and Night of the Hunted. She would subsequently appear in more Rollin films, as well as other pictures like the horror film Faceless (1987) and Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June (1990), the first film to receive the NC-17 rating. Today she’s something of a sex icon in France, an author and the host of the radio show Lahaie, l’Amour et Vous. Rollin, meanwhile, would remain prolific but obscure, a marginalized cult filmmaker, until Redemption Films began introducing his oeuvre to a wider audience in the 90’s via home video releases. He was able to enjoy a minor revival before his death in 2010, just before Kino partnered with Redemption to introduce the director to an even wider audience via these handsome Blu-Rays.

A bloodthirsty Brigitte Lahaie leads two dogs on a hunt in "Grapes of Death."

Newcomers to the Rollin canon will inevitably pay extra (and undue) attention to spotty acting and unconvincing special effects; but Rollin aficionados will note the better-than-usual acting and a few scenes of notable FX, including a very convincing severed head. With a high-def transfer and Kino/Redemption’s usual sprinkling of extras, including insightful and thorough liner notes by Tim Lucas, the film is easier to appreciate for what it is: a macabre, dreamlike take on Night of the Living Dead (1968) filtered through the director’s haunted imagination. I watched this one a week ago for the first time, and the images and morbid tone have stuck with me to a potent degree. Technically, it is not a zombie movie, but a horror film about disease; one could as easily compare it to Romero’s The Crazies (1973) but for the telling, somnambulistic gait of the infected. So for all intents and purposes, it’s a zombie movie. But what a zombie movie! Rollin dials down his usual erotic elements – though they are present, as when Lahaie strips down (apparently in freezing cold temperatures) to prove she’s not infected. He emphasizes instead the nightmarish, almost stream-of-consciousness quality of the story, which follows a woman, Élisabeth (a riveting Marie-Georges Pascal), who finds herself stranded in a mountain village populated by psychopaths. The residents have consumed wine fermented from the local grapes as part of its annual Grape Harvest Festival, but the drink is tainted by a mind-and-body-altering pesticide. The chemical causes the skin to boil, burst, and decay, like some flesh-eating virus, and as the brain deteriorates, psychosis sets in.

Lobby card for "The Grapes of Death" featuring Mirella Rancelot as the blind, doomed Lucie.

As with Requiem for a Vampire (1972) and The Iron Rose (1973), dialogue is absent for long stretches, relying instead upon images – always Rollin’s strength. Élisabeth’s journey through this dark Wonderland begins as she’s riding with a friend in an eerily empty train into the mountains; when her friend leaves their compartment briefly, she’s murdered by one of the local grape-harvesters, who is the first poisoned by the pesticide, his face leaking blood and goop. He then walks down the aisle of the passenger train and takes a seat in the compartment next to Élisabeth: a scene which is a minor masterpiece of polite awkwardness, as the poor girl tries to ignore this unwelcome, unpleasant intruder, until finally she realizes that his face is starting to melt right off. So begins her journey – fleeing into the village where she meets some bizarre characters, the first being a beautiful blind woman, Lucie (Mirella Rancelot), whose eyes are pupil-less contact lenses that bring to mind The Plague of the Zombies (1966), though, ironically, she’s one of the uninfected. Lucie is searching for her guide, but the man has consumed the wine and begun to transform – something which she can’t perceive through her blindness. “Je t’aime, Lucie,” says the man after killing the poor girl, fulfilling his unrequited love with a kiss only after severing her head from her body, which has been nailed to a door. More horrifying is the parade of villagers who follow him through the streets, chanting “Je t’aime, Lucie,” in a hollow echo. Vintage Rollin.

Élisabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) reunites with her fiancé Michel (Michel Herval), whose body is transforming from the poisoned wine.

More ingenious is the character played by Lahaie, a beautiful woman occupying the mayor’s manor in a white nightgown and a too-happy smile. Her body bears no signs of corruption, but, as with the character she’d play in Fascination, her physical beauty disguises a dangerous madness within. She betrays Élisabeth to the village, then leads the hunt when she escapes, in one hellish scene pulling two black dogs by a leash past a burning cottage. Her end, poetically, comes as she rages at the disintegration of her porcelain face – her corruption finally made physical. All this is foreshadowing for Élisabeth’s reunion with her fiancé Michel (Michel Herval), the White Rabbit she’s been pursuing all along. Michel is responsible for the pesticide, and though he’s been infected, he’s managed to keep hold of his rationality for just a little while – long enough to confess to his lover and ask for absolution. Just when you see where this is going, Rollin adds a twist – one tied into a final, macabre image which is one of those that’s stuck with me so vividly this past week.

Lahaie as the lost Élisabeth in "Night of the Hunted."

There is a different Élisabeth in Night of the Hunted (1980), and she is now played by Brigitte Lahaie. As with the protagonist of Memento (2000), she lacks the ability to create permanent memories. We meet her as she emerges from the woods, running from something (she can’t remember what), and rescued by a passing driver, the young, handsome Robert (Vincent Gardère). The opening is rich in Grimm’s fairy tale overtones – the black forest, the lost girl – and it becomes all the more Jungian when we glimpse a naked woman (Dominique Journet) kneeling in the woods calling out to Élisabeth, unseen and unheard as the car drives off. The fairy tale feeling continues when Élisabeth is abducted by two mysterious strangers and taken to a place which is only referred to as “the black tower.” The building of steel and glass is a kind of mental institution, but all of the patients share Élisabeth’s strange affliction: a worsening amnesia. The rooms and corridors are lacking in decoration, cold and soulless. One of the attendants is a serial rapist, exploiting his power over women who can never find their way back to their rooms, and won’t be able to remember that they were raped. Élisabeth is told that she’s been here before, and is “reunited” with her roommate Catherine (Catherine Greinier, aka hardcore performer Cathy Stewart, another marginalized exile entering the Rollinverse). Catherine not only suffers from amnesia, but also a lack of motor control, and can barely feed herself. One of the more fascinating moments in the film comes when Catherine invents a past for herself and Élisabeth, “old friends” – breaking into tears as she pleads for the vacant-eyed Élisabeth to confirm her false memories. One is reminded of Rachel’s struggle with her invented past in Blade Runner (1982).

Amnesiacs Élisabeth and Catherine (Catherine Greinier) explore the "black tower" in "Night of the Hunted."

Indeed, science fiction elements begin to intrude upon Night of the Hunted as the plot gradually reveals itself. The amnesia, we learn, is an illness brought on by a disastrous radiation leak. The infected were brought to the “black tower” as part of a government cover-up of the incident. With overtones of the Holocaust, the ultimate fate of each patient is to be taken aboard a train and shipped off to be exterminated. But all that knowledge comes later. Night of the Hunted, like The Grapes of Death, is firmly fixed to the POV of its Élisabeth. She falls in love with Robert, and spends the rest of the film looking for him, even though her memory is fading fast. When she is discovered in the institution by that girl we glimpsed naked in the forest, we see the happy recognition in Lahaie’s eyes – elated to discover that someone is familiar, even though she doesn’t know why or who this person truly is. All of this leads to one of the most powerful endings in Rollin’s filmography, a beautiful image married to a tonally-perfect metaphor. But it comes attached to an imperfect film; such are the pangs of being a Rollin fan. Gratuitous sex scenes, forced upon the director by the money-men, go on for too long and compromise the film’s higher intentions. It’s an exploitation movie bowing to “commercial” interests, and women doff their clothes for no other purpose than the demands of the market. To keep the budget low, Rollin reportedly shot the film in seven days, a Corman-esque feat that, thankfully, doesn’t hurt the film too much. The important thing is that enough of Rollin’s sensibility pushes through to make this a truly memorable B-movie, one that’s strangely touching. It’s compelling evidence that Rollin and Lahaie could transcend the seedy industry that fed them, and produce something with more than a passing resemblance to Art.

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