Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

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nTitle: Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

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nDirector: Jean Rollin

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nCast: Marie Pierre Castel,  Mireille Dargent,  Philippe Gaste, Louise Dhour

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nReview:

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nRequiem for a Vampire starts off with two teenage girls,ndressed as clowns riding a car that’s being chased by another; the passengersnof both cars shoot at each other relentlessly. What are these girls  running away from? What happened before?nDirector Jean Rolling doesn’t want us to know, but apparently it involved ancircus, or a clown show of some sort. Nice way to start the movie I must admit,nto keep us in mystery as to why these girls are in clown attire, but whatever,nit adds to the weird vibe of the film, which by the way just gets weirder andnweirder as it goes along. I’m having a blast checking out Jean Rollin’s films,nlast night I had the pleasure of seeing Requiem for a Vampire for the firstntime. I have to hand it to Rollin for sticking so obsessively to his favoritengenre monsters for practically his whole career; I don’t believe any other directornhas ever explored vampires on film as extensively as Rollin has. The way I seenit, Rollin did for vampire movies what George Romero did with zombie films, henexplored them as much as he could, till vampires became synonymous with hisnname.

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nRequiem for a Vampire is an early Rollin film, this wasnRollin’s fourth film, before it he’d made The Rape of the Vampire (1968), ThenNude Vampire (1970) and The Shiver of the Vampires (1971). Requiem for anVampire is a film that has all the things you can come to expect from a Rollinnfilm, I of course talk about lesbians in love, vampires, bats, graveyards, skulls,ncastles, beautiful scenery and lots of nudity. The difference is that this onenisn’t as poetic or surreal as some of his later work. As some of you mightnknow, Rollin had a background in porn films, and what he’d do is make thesenvampire films in between some of his hardcore porn films. I haven’t seen hisnearlier stuff, but it is my estimation that the further back you go in hisnwork, the more porn like his vampire films will be. 

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nFor example, Requiem for anVampire is filled with a whole lot more sexuality and nudity then other filmsnof his that I have seen. On this one girls are frequently either topless, ornbeing raped, or having sex with each other or with men, I mean the sexualncontent on this one is extremely high.  Thesentwo girls stumble upon a castle filled with violent sexually depraved vampiresnwho start to rape them and torture them in many ways because get this: in thisnmovie, in order to become a full vampire, you cannot be a virgin! You areneither one or the other, but not both; so at one point it’s all about thesengirls losing their virginity! The nudity in Requiem for a Vampire, is notnerotic or beautiful as opposed to other Rollin films where it is. On this thensexuality is savage and depraved. This film will probably seem offensive to anlot of people out there, so if you can’t take that sort of thing, then don’tneven bother with this one, this is a violent and sexual film every step of thenway, strangely enough, there’s also a lot of visual beauty to it which isnsomething that Rolling always excelled at, orchestrating these beautiful images.nBut then again, you ever wanted to see a bat giving oral sex to a girl? Look nonfurther!  So yeah, expect a Rollin filmnwith a slightly higher sexual content than usual, there’s this rape scene that simply takes for ever. 

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nFor a long time, Requiem for a Vampire functions almost likena silent film, with no dialog whatsoever.  In fact the two main characters don’t talk toneach other until about fifty minutes into the film! The films entire first halfnis without dialog, it’s just the girls escaping, running, hiding, having sexnwith each other and enticing men to have sex with them all without a singlenword spoken.  It’s a different kind ofnfilm in that sense, I guess Rollin did this for the same reason that directorsnof Spaghetti Westerns used as little dialog as possible: to facilitate andnminimize the dubbing process. It could also have something to do with the factnthat Rolling wrote this screenplay in a stream of thought sort of way, he wrotenit without any constraints in his mind, many say it’s the most purely Rollinnfilm out there, so this makes it an important part of his body of work, many ofnhis later films would have many elements found on Requim for a Vampire, so thisnis a seminal Rollin film, if you don’t like this one, chances are you won’tnlike any Rollin film.

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nAnother element that characterizes this film and this is onenthing I didn’t really love about it is that it’s kind of cheesy. I mean, thenlead vampire that the girls meet, the one that wants to turn them into hisnvampire lovers…he is this old man, he looks like a washed up Bela Lugosi,ndressed in this clichéd red and black cape? So freaking cheesy, this headnvampire looked anything but menacing. He looked like this old man dressed up asnDracula? To top things off all the vampires in the film have these ultra fakenlooking fangs that looked simply terrible. In one scene the vampire can’t evenntalk right because he is trying to hold the fake fangs in his mouth. I hatednthat cheesy stuff on this one, because the film looks so beautiful at times,nbut then bam, the cheesiness sets in and brings it all down. On the plus side;ncheesy elements were eschewed in Rollins future films, Rollin got a whole lot morenpoetic as his films evolved.

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nThankfully, the film has more good elements to it than badnones. Apparently Rollin’s always had an eye for beauty in nature andnarchitecture because once again his cinematic eye focuses on beautiful vistas,ntrees, mountains, night skies, he often times focuses on breathtaking  sunsets and cloud formations. He also shot thenfilm inside this ancient castle, it just looks haunting. The visualncompositions that Rollin comes up with is the element of his films I love thenmost and on Requiem for a Vampire he demonstrates that he’s always had that eyenfor beauty. All in all, this is an extremely simplistic film, Rolling himselfnsays that it was an exercise in simplifying the structure of film, the film isna stream of consciousness effort, something coming straight out of Rollinsnmind; this is probably why the film has such an emphasis on sex and violence,ntwo of the most purely human traits. This is very much a Rollin film, only anbit cheesier and a times even child like. It seems to me that Rollin’s body ofnwork is one that should be explored by any self respecting lover of vampirenfilms. I love how his films all have a familiarity to them; Rollin has saidnthat his films function as a series of connected dreams and stories, and Inbelieve him. When you watch his films you feel as if they all exist within thensame universe, a universe I will be visiting more frequently in the days toncome.

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nRating:  4 out of 5

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