400-419 Jean Rollin

[MichaelB]

It will indeed be completely uncut - the BBFC issued the certificate this afternoon.

[MichaelB]

• The Nude Beaver
• The Beavoniacs

[MichaelB]

Final specs for the latest Rollins.

The Nude Vampire:



The Demoniacs:

[therewillbeblus]

Making my way through these - I had previously enjoyed Fascination and still do. Rape of the Vampire was a little less consistent - though that's by design. The first section was a wonderful, near-experimental short film, but the bifurcated structure invites another hour that doesn't quite gel - either formally or tonally with the first. It's fine, but the style alone pares back as if Rollins needed to sober the lens to focus on the narrative, and that's just not what's interesting about his films.

The Night of the Hunted was a strange departure - a kind of sterile sci-fi slow-burn that recalled (very) early Cronenberg, Resnais, and late Antonioni(?!) It's probably the weakest link for me so far, but I appreciated what it was doing once I made the connections to that shocking dish of elliptical influences. It's a deliberately alienating and static movie to depict characters who are so out of touch with their identity and environment that they cease to understand their own characterization, mirroring our own lack of a throughline to connect to them. That doesn't necessarily make for a compelling experience, but it's an interesting approach.

[therewillbeblus]

My experience watching The Nude Vampire was little more than peering through a pair of Beer Goggles at the version of Eyes Wide Shut that its detractors see, and I was so relieved to take them off. Amateur prep work for The Night of the Hunted, whilst retaining a vampire edge, with the same distance from everyone and everything.. it's a shame Rollins forfeited his more intimate experimental-stylistic strengths in favor of a detached enigmatic atmosphere that has no reason to exist.

Man, this guy's all over the map for me, but I hope the current pattern of my Rollins Count/LB score of each subsequent film is pure coincidence, since it's a very linear and pessimistic graph

[MichaelB]

I wasn't going to say anything before because I thought it was a one-off typo, but for the record Jean Rollin is no relation of Howard, Sonny or Henry Rollins - he's singular in a great many ways, including that pretty fundamental one.

[therewillbeblus]

Well in that case, I’ll take back the opinions too