RIP Jean Rollin: 1938-2010

Terrible news for the world of cinéma fantastique today: director Jean Rollin has passed away after a long illness at the age of 72.

Image via Fascination: the Jean Rollin Experience

I've been a fan of Rollin's since first viewing his excellent, phantasmagorical, vampiric fairy tale Requiem for a Vampire, and since then have watched and enjoyed many of his films. Rollin was a director with an unbelievable talent for imagery, and a nearly faultless eye for beauty--in composition, colors, shadows, light, and story. He was an artist who developed his own cinematic language, and whose best films I count among the most gorgeous ever made by any director in any genre. He was also a tireless creator, continuing to make his own unique brand of cinema right up to the end. His death is a tremendous loss, not only to the horror and fantastique genres, but to world cinema as a whole.

Living Dead Girl (1982)

Shiver of the Vampires (1971) [image via Fascination]

Lips of Blood (1974) [image via Fascination]

The Grapes of Death (1978)

Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies sends out our heartfelt condolences to Jean Rollin's family, friends, and fans. He will be missed. His legacy will live on.

For more info on Rollin's life, work, and legacy, visit Jeremy Richey's excellent blog Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience--in my opinion, the best resource for Rollin fans and scholars on the web.

RIP, Jean, and thank you for all you gave.

Au revior.

Jean Rollin on MMMMMovies:

• Requiem for a Vampire (1971)
• Shiver of the Vampires (1971)
• Bacchanales Sexuelles (1974)
• The Grapes of Death (1978)
• The Living Dead Girl (1982)

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Summary only...

The Grapes of Death (1978): or, Gateway to Rollin's Realm

Conventional wisdom has it that The Grapes of Death (Les Raisins de la mort) is Jean Rollin's most "accessible" film. With its tale of a rural village in France suffering a bio-zombie outbreak thanks to some experimental insecticide sprayed on the local winery's grape harvest, the 1978 film follows a much more traditional, easily digestible narrative structure than much of Rollin's Expressionist lesbian vampire oeuvre (see previous MMMMMovie Reviews Shiver of the Vampires, Requiem for a Vampire), and is many kilometers away from his more surrealist modern efforts (e.g. Fiancee of Dracula, reviewed by the inestimable Tenebrous Kate here). More straightforward and less gorgeously brooding than the director's other zombie opus, Vicar-Top-Five mainstay The Living Dead Girl, this movie finds the director largely stepping back from his trademark style and trying his hand at a Romero-style horror ride.

Except, not really.

Under the credits we see a group of field workers, cloth masks over their faces, spraying a vineyard with insecticide. Upon returning to base, a worker named Kowalski complains of fever, difficulty breathing, and a pain in his neck. The winery boss Michael tells the slacker to get a drink and get back to work, noting offhandedly that they're expecting new masks tomorrow that will be "completely airtight." That's pretty much all we get as explanation for the upcoming plague of terror, but like the toxic waste barrels in the crypt in Living Dead Girl, it will have to suffice, since this trip out Rollin's not wasting any time!

The Biohazard Bandits strike again

Next we find ourselves on a train barreling through rural France, where Michael's fiancee Elizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) and a pretty blonde traveling companion talk excitedly about their future plans. Elizabeth is going to the vineyard in the rural village of Roublais, while her friend is continuing on to Spain. Both find it unusual and a little unsettling that apart from them the train seems entirely deserted. Nearing Elizabeth's destination, they take turns freshening up in the train's washroom, where Elizabeth leaves her friend to go back to their car and brush her luxurious locks in anticipation.

At the next stop a man boards the train, whom we recognize as the stricken Kowalski, probably on his morning commute to work. His eyes glassy, he stumbles past compartment after empty compartment, finally lumbering into Elizabeth's and flopping down on the opposite bench. We quickly realize something's not right with the fruitpicker, as a large spot on the side of his neck and face begins seeping blood! Elizabeth watches in terror as the spot pulses and grows bigger, in a bit of body horror and grody effluvia that's still effective. In obvious pain but still dazed, Kowalski attacks Elizabeth, causing her to escape the compartment in search of her friend. Of course the zombified Frenchman has already murdered the blonde in the W.C., so Elizabeth pulls the emergency stop cord and flees train, running down the tracks from her would-be killer. Kowalski gives half-hearted chase, but then sits on the tracks and buries his face in his hands.

Not Noxema-clean

Heading through a tunnel and then over a fog-shrouded railway bridge (an absolutely gorgeous shot from cinematographer Claude Bécognée), Elizabeth finds herself in a strange, mountainous region which also seems weirdly deserted. Eventually she finds an abandoned-looking house, and when her knocks at the door go unanswered she forces her way in, surprising the place's occupants, an old man and his beautiful young daughter. As she explains her situation and begs them to call the police, the country folk only stare at her blankly. She notices an ugly sore on the old man's hand, which he quickly hides, then tells her the phone and car are both inoperative and she'll have to stay the night. The daughter sends her upstairs to a room, where Elizabeth discovers the corpse of the girl's mother, her throat slit! The girl quiets her screams and tells her the old man has gone crazy, having killed the mother in a fit of rage. They resolve to escape together.

Things don't go well on that score, as the old man thwarts their attempt, ripping his daughter's clothes off before skewering her with a pitchfork in a gory, well-done FX scene (you can see the girl's rib cage going up and down around the tines as she gasps her last--still not sure how they managed that). Grabbing the keys to the car and running for her life, Elizabeth is blocked at the gate by the murderous dad, now also covered with pulsing, suppurating sores, who begs her to run him down before he kills again. She obliges, driving through the craggy landscape that is absolutley covered with ruins. In these ruins she runs into another pus-laden victim of the plague, who begs her for help and bangs his head on her car window, leaving a sticky splotch of gunk on the glass.

Having failed to make money guerilla-washing windshields, Pierre decided on a different approach.

Abandoning the car and fleeing on foot again, she soon meets an ethereal blind girl who fled the main village the night before when "the fighting started," and has now become lost. Accompanying her back to the village, Elizabeth finds a scene of apocalyptical carnage, houses burned out and bodies littering the ground. The blind girl breaks away from Elizabeth to find her brother, who like the other plague victims seems confused and frightened, but unable to control his violent tendencies, even against his beloved sister. Taking the Romero Barbara-gets-eaten-by-her-brother trope one step further, Rollin has the blind girl's brother engage in a monstrous act of sacrilege and mutilation, made all the more chilling by the perpetrator's emotion-wracked wails as he carries it out. (Later he goes even one step further, with the brother's good-bye kiss to his sister's disembodied head.)

As the village's inhabitants come out of the stonework in a full-scale zombie attack, Elizabeth finds shelter with a seemingly unaffected townswoman, gorgeous Rollin regular Brigitte Lahaie, who has holed up in the mayor's house. While her often-nude body is unmarked by the plague, her strange mannerisms and mysterious smile put Elizabeth (and the viewer) on edge. Soon the two flee and are rescued by a pair of hunters from the next town who've come to put down the zombie menace, and Brigette reveals more flesh and the true intentions behind her seeming kindness.

Lahaie: Not Just a Pretty Face

The two men and Elizabeth make their way to the winery at Roublais, with young hunter Paul (Félix Marten) and older, crotchety cuss Lucien (Serge Marquand) trading barbs on what it means to be patriotic, with reminiscenes of fighting the fascists in WWII. When they get to the winery and find it seemingly deserted, they manage to get through to Paris and learn that a helicopter is on the way. The men drink and smoke to celebrate, but Elizabeth goes in search of her fiancee, and of course finds him for a heartrending and somewhat shocking denoument.

I always feel like I should get myself an arts degree before I try to talk about one of Jean Rollin's movies. And this is not in any way a dis--it's merely to say that the director's films pack such a visual and emotional punch for me, seem so layered in illogical but nonetheless powerful imagery and narrative, that I don't feel equipped to talk about them in a way that would do justice to the feelings they inspire. I know many modern viewers are turned off by Rollin's usual lack of narrative continuity, his obsession with certain images, and the "dream like" ideal that some read as artistic pretension; but for me the director hits much more often than he misses--though I can't always explain why, particularly to those coming to his work for the first time.

That won't stop me trying, though.

A Bridge into Another World?

The Grapes of Death is definitely the most straightforward of Rollin's films I've seen in a narrative sense. It follows the standard zombie apocalypse storyline of "hero/heroine is separated from loved ones by zombies, then goes through hell to get back to them," and never strays too far from that plot. It's also probably the goriest Rollin flick I've seen: the body horror of the zombified/Crazies-ed townspeople is gross and effective, as is the emotional turmoil they display while fighting their murderous urges. The aftermath of the zombies' attacks are also very good--the Grand Guignol is evoked a couple of times, with one corpse showing a popped-out eyeball dangling by its optic nerve, and the fate of the blind girl both pre- and post-decapitation is a little hard to take, even for this seasoned viewer. Of course the fake head could have been better, and once or twice I'm pretty sure I saw a "corpse" breathe, but these are minor quibbles overall.

Despite its surface straightforwardness, there were other touches that seemed to be striving to evoke the dream-like expressionism of Rollin's earlier, more personal works. It's significant to me that the train on which Elizabeth arrives is almost deserted, as if she's on some kind of lonely dream journey. The shot of her crossing the railway bridge in the fog, I thought, could signify her "crossing over" into an otherworldly realm--a world of ruins, abandoned chateaus, burned out shacks, a world where pale crags dot the landscape like tombstones--it's clearly a Realm of Death.

Landscape, or Cemetery?

I found the acting styles more realistic here than in some of Rollin's earlier works too--at least among a few of the characters, and in a way that I think is significant. While the inhabitants of the Realm of Death have the same hypnotized, glaze-eyed stares of many of Rollin's other characters, the "living" here (Paul, Lucien, pre-infection Michael) seem natural and believable. In fact, it's this subtle difference that makes Brigitte Lahaie's performance much more memorable--though she looks like one of the "living," her mannerisms mark her as a denizen of the dream world.

Grapes of Death is therefore a great place to start for anyone wanting to get into Rollin's work but made wary by his reputation for surrealism and dream logic. It has notes of those elements, but also a linear story and goopy gore that any horror fan should find comforting in its familiarity. It also has some of the gorgeous compositions, poetic imagery, and stylistic flourishes that could give a novice a grounding in what to expect from the director's more "out there" works--a sort of fog-shrouded bridge from our world into his. For that reason--and because I fucking love Rollin--I give Grapes of Death 3+ Thumbs. See it!

Some more great images from Grapes of Death (1978):

Gateway to the Realm of Death

Pascal: Beautimus

The French are justly famous for their hospitality to tourists

Looking Beyond

Brigitte in a Symbolic Pose

Head joke here would be incestuous

Just because she's so purty

"Excedrin! Give me strength!"

Don't Cry (Blood) for Me

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Bacchannales Sexuelles (1974): or, Legs Wide Shut

Like many European genre directors of the 1970s, Jean Rollin sometimes had to finance his unique cinematic vision by accepting directing jobs that can kindly be called somewhat beneath his ability. Throughout the 70s and even into the 80s, Rollin (often using the directorial pseudonym Michel Gentil) directed several lucrative but slight sexploitation films that blurred the line between art and pornography, sometimes even stepping boldly over said line. These were films whose only purpose was to secure the money for his visionary, deeply personal genre projects like The Demoniacs, Lips of Blood, or Vicar-fave The Living Dead Girl, and for some viewers betray the director's lack of engagement in the subject matter to an embarrassing, even appalling degree.

But so vivid is the dream-world in which Rollin lived and worked, and so active and curious his prodigious intellect, that even his sex-for-sex's sake moneymakers contain many of the themes, symbols, and visionary imagery that characterize his more lauded, artistic works. For instance, Rollin's 1974 film Bacchannales Sexuelles (aka Fly Me the French Way, aka Tout le monde il en a deux) actually presents incisive ideas about duality in human personalities and relationships, together with themes of betrayal, secret societies, and the importance--nay, necessity--of masking one's "true" identity in order to get along in an aggressively duplicitous society. While on the surface the film reads as a light, insubstantial sex romp, repeated viewings reveal Bacchanales Sexuelles to be one of Rollin's most artistically challenging and subversive works.

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a porn.

Just a taste of what's to come

The film opens in the office of a magazine publisher, who has received a strange visitor named Malvina (harsh-visaged, statuesque Brigitte Borghese, credited here as Britt Anders), who is looking for the address of the rag's star investigative reporter. Using her feminine whiles and basilisk stare, Malvina is able to worm the info out of the pencil-stached Frenchman, and is soon on her way, toward what nefarious purpose we will soon learn.

Meanwhile, a young, naive, but not-so-innocent beauty named Valérie (the absolutely STUNNING Joëlle Coeur) arrives at her cousin's apartment in Paris, where he has graciously offered to let her crash while he's out of the country on business. The apartment--which according to internet sources (the BEST sources!) was in fact Rollin's own pad--is well stocked with books, booze, and fresh bedding, and soon Valérie calls her fun-loving friend Sophie (Marie-France Morel) for an impromptu sleepover. While Valérie gets refreshments, Sophie gets curious about the books on the top shelf of a precarious bookcase, and doesn't let her knee-high heel-boots nor dangerously short skirt prevent her from climbing up to have a look.

File under "A"

Of course this leads to a literary avalanche from which Valérie must rescue her friend, allowing for some groping before a few swigs of the cousin's vodka brings the girls' lesbian leanings out of the basement and into the light. We get some low-angle close-ups of Sophie serving Valérie Popov with her top off, and soon the girls are rolling like thunder across the floor and lapp-licking like a couple of Finnish puppies. This goes on for quite some time, and you'll get no complaints from me--Coeur is a living, breathing, humping work of art, and while Morel is hardly another pretty face, she does have quite an attractive bod.

After the loving, the still-drunken girls don some director-trademark diaphanous gowns and stumble into the sack. leaving the window open to let out the steam heat and sex stank. Unfortunately this allows a pair of petite cat burglars in skintight bodysuits and Lone Ranger masks to invade the apartment in search of some unknown, non-euphemistic booty. Their lack of stealth rouses Sophie from her sleep, and when she is unable to shake Valérie out of her vodka-induced stupor, she spends some time searching the darkened apartment for the source of the noise. This allows Rollin to engage in some light-hearted 1940s-style visual comedy, as the twin terrors hide behind chairs, curtains, and sometimes Sophie herself, who is unable to get a bead on them.

Should have worn blue

Spooked by the goings-on, Sophie telephones her friend Fred (Alain Bastin) and begs him to come over for (and with) protection. But before he can arrive, the home invaders (portrayed by Rollin regulars Marie-Pierre and Catherine Castel) jump out of hiding, roll Sophie in a rug, and exit the apartment through the front door. Because this is 1970s France and black-and-white bodysuits and masks were doubtless common attire, the doorman and other tenants suspect nothing.

Fred arrives, and thinking Sophie is playing sex-games with all her talk of intruders and such, climbs into bed with Valérie and attempts to mount her, mistaking her for his booty-call in the dark. This finally wakes her up, and after a bit of token resistance, brief introductions, and a perfunctory search for their missing friend, the two assume she's gone for a walk and take the opportunity to get it awn. Another lengthy sex scene ensues, which is a mixed blessing--we get more of Coeur's astounding nakedness, which is a plus, but it's often obscured by Bastin's bony, pasty Frog-butt and greasy long locks, which nobody really needs to see.

"Ooooh, Vicar!"

Meanwhile, the next day, Sophie is taken to a palatial estate and brought before Malvina, who ordered her abduction. Or rather she ordered Valérie's abduction, in the hopes of getting information about her cousin's description and whereabouts, since he is of course the investigative journalist she was seeking in the opening scene. Apparently Malvina is high priestess of the Cult of the Pure Flesh, a kind of coven-cum-sex club. Malvina holds her members (and their members) in check with incriminating photos, the negatives of which the cousin stole while undercover and writing a shocking expose for his magazine. Malvina wants the photos back, and will go to any lengths and depths to get them.

The priestess refuses to believe Sophie's protestations that she's not the Eurobabe they're looking for, thus cementing the recurrent mistaken-identity theme. Smoking a hookah while a nearly un-clad female servant sucks and licks at her feet, Malvina orders Sophie tortured in order to get the information they require. She's quickly taken to a dungeon where The Crimson Executioner's less-fearsome brother delivers a half-hearted lashing, while henchcouple Karl and Frida (Marcel Richard and Minia Malove) get all excited by the bondage and engage in energetic sex on a fur-lined bench. While the action has all been softcore simulation up to this point, some shots here of Karl feasting on Frida's furry funspot seem too up-close to not be legit.

"Hi, I'm Stan. I'll be your torturer this evening."

Back at the apartment and still unconcerned about Sohpie's disappearance, Valérie and Fred have each other for breakfast, complete with Nutella bodypaint, which is nowhere near as sexy as it sounds. When Sophie's torture yields no results, Malvina sends one of her twins back to the apartment, this time disguised as a maid, to try to find the negatives while dusting. It's not long before the faux-maid, Valérie, and Fred are in the bathtub together for a soapy menage a trois, which is really the only way to tip the cleaning staff imo. (The twin--I think it's Catherine, but I can't be sure--also displays some Euro-style hairy pits here, so watch for that if that's your thing.) After the lengthy three-way fizzles, the REAL maid shows up, leading to the first bit of awkwardness evinced by anyone in the story. Her livelihood threatened, Real Maid starts a knock-down drag-out catfight with Faux Maid, which surprisingly does NOT devolve into lesbian sex.

Caught in her lies and with a vicious house servant yanking on her pubes (seriously), Faux Maid spills the beans about Malvina's scheme and the photos. Fred, who found the negatives while looking for hashish the previous night--offers them to her if she will tell them where to find Sophie. Seeing a way out from under Malvina's stiletto sandals, Faux Maid readily agrees, and Fred and Valérie head out to rescue their friend at last.

Before agreeing to a blind date with the Duke, Valérie has a few questions.

Surprisingly, back at the manor house there's even MORE sex going on, with Malvina's servant Paul (Jean-Paul Hazy) failing to satisfy his mistress and being "punished" by having to go downstairs and service Sophie in the dungeon. (Oh, please don't throw me in the briar patch!) We also get a strange scene with Malvina practicing her handgun marksmanship on a bunch of well-dressed mannequins, shooting one in the crotch before making out with it, and Lips of Blood star Annie Belle shows up as a new recruit to the club. Valérie and Fred arrive just in time for the club's latest ritual meeting, which is of course the centerpiece of the flick. Men and women wearing long black robes, robber masks, and nothing else line the walls, while Malvina (resplendent in chainmail lingerie) pronounces the rites of the Pure Flesh and then goes around fluffing everyone prior to the ritual. Seriously.

If you insist.

Valérie and Fred are discovered, they're chained to the wall with Sophie, and the orgy commences in a scene so reminiscent of the bacchanal from Eyes Wide Shut that I wouldn't be surprised if Kubrick had been taking notes. Paul takes Annie Belle on the altar while Malvina chortles with glee, but at the height of the ceremony the Faux Maid busts in and announces she has the negatives, which she then throws in the fire, thus freeing all the partygoers from Malvina's thrall. No longer under the threat of blackmail and thus required to have sex with gorgeous French people for Malvina's enjoyment, everyone quickly gathers their laundry and leaves. In a final twist, Paul reveals himself to be Valérie's cousin--he was there all along!--and turns the whole master-servant table upside-downy on his former mistress. With Sexy Results.

Depending on your point of view.

Okay, so Bacchannales Sexuelles is not going to go down in any Rollin scholar's book as one of his best, but a perv with a thing for arty 70s genre cinema (not to name any names...) will find some stuff to like here. The plot is silly but never boring, even if the sex scenes can try one's patience (or endurance) at times. And Rollin did manage to sneak in a few of his favorite themes and symbols--the young and sexy doubles, the secret masked cults (please to see The Nude Vampire), the diaphanous gowns--even in the service of a money-grabbing wank-facilitator. He even gets off a few striking compositions with the exteriors of the villa and Malvina's target practice, and slips in a few interesting angles during the sex scenes, particularly when the focal point is Joëlle Coeur, who also made an impression as The Wrecker in Rollin's slightly less sexy opus The Demoniacs.

Every Occasion is a Special Occasion

It's no wonder Rollin and his camera love Coeur--she is SMOKIN' HAWT. The long dark hair, the gorgeous features, the frankly astounding and frequently undraped body--we're almost at Edwige Fenech levels of ridiculous sexiness here folks, absolutely DANGEROUSLY seductive. Added to her miraculous gorgeousity, Coeur shows a certain impish playfulness that is absolutely winning--she looks like she's having a blast, and it's hard not to go along for the ride.

The rest of the cast is serviceable (ba-dump), with the standouts being Brigitte Borghese's commanding performance as sexy ice-queen Malvina and Marie-France Morel as the frequently-fastened-and-fucked Sophie. On the upside, all the women, even in bit parts, are lovely and unshy about dropping their miniskirts. On the downside, the men are just as brave, but nowhere near as nice to look at. Apparently the Unwashed Anorexic Anemic chic was big in Paris in 74, because these are some fugly individuals who in no way deserve the beauteous bounty bestowed upon them by Rollin.

Seriously, ladies?

So while Bacchannales Sexuelles doesn't approach the director's more poetic, lyrical, genre-centric fare, for me it definitely passed the entertainment test, in more ways (and more times) than I care to count. It's a film that rewards multiple viewings, and I can see myself returning to it again and again in the future, IYKWIMAITYD. Therefore, 2.75 thumbs for this Rollin sex-romp.

And if you're in the neighborhood, could somebody check in on the Duke? He hasn't been answering his phone since I loaned him this flick a few days ago...I'm starting to worry he might be dehydrated.

"OBEY!"

A few more images from Bacchannales Sexuelles (1974):

Me too!

Malvina proudly displays her 100th-visit commemorative portrait of the Duke of DVD

Only a maniac would ever leave

Slide it in

Hint: you're the one with the boobs.

Malvina prefers the Unreal Doll(tm)

L'affaire de Coeur

Be sure to visit Jeremy Richey's essential blog Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience for more about Rollin's career and collaborators, in a decidedly more scholarly vein.

Read F:TJRE's review of Bacchannales Sexuelles here
And don't miss F:TJRE's fascinating focus on Joelle Coeur Here

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Behind Convent Walls (1977), Part 3 of 3: My Only Friend, The End

So here it is at last, parishioners and subjects: the third and final installment of the Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies review of Walerian Borowczyk's infamous nunsploitation effort, Behind Convent Walls and the first-ever Duke/Vicar tag-team! When we last left our transcription, the Duke and the Vicar were getting ever more inebriated, waxing poetic on the mysteries of nunly seductiveness, the wonders of Avery Beer, and the beefy slab of Awesome that is Paul Naschy.

Today in this ultimate post in the series, the Vicar suggests a new beatitude, the Duke confesses to the molestation of an inanimate object, the Damnable Duo engage in yet more entirely inappropriate Naschy love, and we deliver our final verdict on the film itself.

The contents of today's post are NOT suitable for young readers, women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, or people with heart conditions or well-developed senses of morality. For everyone else, though, it should be a blast. ;)

And if you've enjoyed this double-team (and who doesn't enjoy a nice double-team, eh?), let us know in the comments--I mean seriously, would it kill ya? If the fan reaction is positive and/or outraged enough, who knows? It may inspire more reviews such as this one in the future.

But enough of my yakkin'! Whattaya say? LET'S BOOGIE!

Click Here to continue reading Part III

V: Well, Duke, as to the larger meaning of Behind Convent Walls, I think it’s about the way that human sexuality is restricted in a lot of ways that are unhealthy to everyone. Because in the end, sex is a gift from God.

D: Amen. He gave you these parts, you might as well use them.

V: And the more sex you have, the greater the grace! In fact Veronica says at one point, “And if from this hour on I commit any mortal sin, it shall be only to get punished even more vehemently!” Because the more you get punished, the more grace in the forgiveness. And I think that’s something that the Church at some point must have edited out of the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the Fuckers.

D: For they shall inherit something or other.

V: Yes.

D: Probably Chlamydia.

V: God Bless ‘em. But the idea, which I think is an idea Rasputin had, was the more you sin, the more grace is required to absolve you, and the more grace, the more good Jesus is doing.

D: It’s a net gain.

V: Exactly. So really, sex in the convent has more to do with redemption than damnation, I believe.

[TheBar Wench returneth]

D: One more round, trollop! I want a Pinkus Wheat. I can’t leave without a pinkus in me.

V: Now you’re doing it on purpose.

[Bar Wench leaveth, requesteth a shift change]

V: So to sum up: naked nuns—always good. I have to say in Walerian’s favor that pretty much all the flesh he gives us is Grade-A.

D: Oh, absolutely. Like I was saying before, if you were to go to a real convent I guarantee you it’d be full of wrinkled old crones that I wouldn’t touch with *your* dick.

V: ...

I would.

D: Be that as it may. There is one scene I wanted to talk about that I thought was really awesome. I didn’t gather what it was they were using, but when they were in the library they kept using some kind of cloth screen they could flip up sideways—was that a loom or something?

V: They were doing some kind of embroidery. Veronica was the one doing that.

D: Anyway, it was really cool because they could flip it up, and then just go fuck underneath!

The sisters sew a few more notches onto the Communal Fuck Shield.

V: The explicit scenes in this movie were mostly with Claire—and then Claire kind of goes crazy at the end and says—and I quote—“Roderigo deflowered this body…and it was BEAUTIFUL!”

D: YES it was!

V: Roderigo deflowered the HELL out of that body.

D: There were no petals left.

V: And she was seeing—she was getting that mystical experience that you get from really good sex—

D: I mean, when you’re getting rogered righteously by a rascal named Roderigo, you’re gonna see God. Reminds me of my most recent trip to Miami.

V: Duke, your experiences in these matters—I’ve spent too long in the ecclesiastical cloister.

D: You really need to get out more.

V: I hear about your adventures when you return, and it makes me green with envy. And also a little nausea.

D: Such is love.

V: After the frolic in the chapel, there’s this whole frenetic release of pent-up sexual energy in montage form—I mean, we’ve got the Meat Man fucking the nun over the crate of live chickens, we’ve got more nude yoga and bicycle exercises, we’ve got a couple of nuns on their beds next to each other, grasping one another. And then we’ve got the violinist—and I think really there’s not enough sex and violins on TV.

D: [Groans] Oh, you had to go there.

V: I did. And then we actually have a scene of the violin nun “fiddling” with herself, as it were, actually masturbating with her instrument!

Who says it's better to play with a group?

D: And what true music lover hasn’t done that?

V: Indeed, I’m regularly intimate with my lute.

D: I fucked a cello.

V: I tell you what you need—you haven’t had it till you’ve had a piccolo.

D: I’ll have to remember that the next time My Lady of Laserdisc visits. She’ll be all “Do you want the Big Bertha this time?” And I’ll say, “No—I’m going for the PICCOLO.”

V: “Blow on it! Play the scales! PLAY THE GODDAMN SCALES!”

D: [sings] “Mary had a little spooge, she had it on her cheek—and everywhere that Mary wiped…she couldn’t get it off her cheek.”

V: This has to be the foulest conversation I’ve ever had in my life.

D: You could do that so many ways: [sings] “Mary had a little spooge, it shot across her chest…”

V: “And even though it stained her dress, she swore it was the best!”

D: “And everywhere she licked her tongue, she said it tasted best.”

V: You’re a poet. Anyway, I don’t even know where we were…oh yeah, that second frolic where she’s fucking the violin, the girl who has had her dildo confiscated is MADLY whittling another dildo.

D: I thought that was awesome. “Take *my* dildo, will you? I’ve got PLENTY of these!”

V: “I’ll sweep out the chapel, just GIVE ME THE BROOM.”

D: Oh, man.

V: So what do you think Walerian’s beef was with the whole convent idea was? Did he go to Catholic school, maybe?

D: He obviously had some hang-up with the Vatican.

V: I know when I was in school, and I had a particularly stringent teacher, it was always kind of fun to imagine her bent over the Wedge of Sorrows. Which probably actually happened.

D: I think it’s really just the general principle: who *wouldn’t* want to fuck a nun?

V: Not me! I do not *not* want to fuck a nun.

D: Exactly…I think. So maybe Walerian simply *wants* to fuck a nun.

V: I think we may have unearthed the secret of the whole nunsploitation genre.

You'd Do It

V: So, to sum up—we’ve got this wonderful nunsploitation entry.

D: Where would you rank it? Would you put it above Images in a Convent?

V: I don’t know, I’d have to go back and rewatch that one. I liked it a lot.

D: I’d say it’s definitely below Alucarda. But then again, how can you reach that high? Baths of blood, naked backbends…

V: Oh, my god, when she rises up out of the blood-filled coffin? Holy shit. I’m getting turgid right now just thinking of it.

D: Tumescence: Achieved!

You're Soaking In It

V: As long as we’re going off-topic let’s talk about Alucarda, because I know it’s one of your favorites.

D: It just doesn’t get any better. And we’re not alone in this point of view—Kitty of Killer Kittens from Beyond the Grave and others have said as much.

V: You’ve got Dirty Thieving Gypsies—

D: Is there any other kind?

V: There’s not, as Paul Naschy has taught us.

D: Every gypsy is thieving and dirty.

V: If only they would leave the silver dagger where it is—WHY do they always go straight for the silver dagger?

D: That little glint of silver, and it always ends with Paul doing LEAP ATTACKS that defy all gravity.

V: Curse of the Devil—the greatest leap attack ever. He’s on the balcony, he looks down and he sees the BLIND OLD WOMAN just standing there, and he thinks, “I’ve GOT to fucking GO for this!”

D: He thinks in his head, “This is it! This is the LEAP ATTACK that I’ve been waiting for my whole life! Never mind that it’s a blind old defenseless woman!”

V: And he does a SOMERSAULT off the balcony, onto the woman, and nails the landing! It just doesn’t get better than that.

D: Cinematic brilliance.

V: You haven’t seen Naschy’s Exorcismo yet, have you?

D: No, I haven’t.

V: That’s a good one. A lack of nuns in that one, but Naschy playing the priest doing the exorcism is worth the price of admission.

D: He already has the greatest lines ever—like “I’ll see you bitches in chains!” Jesus Christ, I thought I was going to explode! Literally the best 2 seconds of film ever.

V: Naschy has got to be—

D: He’s the Sex God of Cinema.

Dream a Little Dream for Me

V: And he’s got such confidence in himself.

D: Even when he’s playing a hunchback.

V: Dude, he gets LAID as a hunchback!

D: Exactly! What fucking hunchback in cinema HISTORY has ever gotten laid? NONE! Except for Paul Naschy.

V: From the first time I saw Vengeance of the Zombies…I was basically gay for Naschy.

D: Let me just say, coming into this meeting, I absolutely KNEW it was going to turn into a Naschy love-fest. We can’t get together and have beers without Paul Naschy coming up.

V: And apparently—I have this from good sources—Naschy transcends sexuality, really. Women love him, men love him.

D: Like I told you before—if Paul molested me in a dark alley, I wouldn’t report it.

V: In fact you’d slip your phone number in his pocket.

D: Exactly.

V: In Vengeance of the Zombies of course he plays the Hindu guru, he plays the burnt brother, and he plays Satan.

D: “I’m his Infernal Majesty!” Is that what he says?

V: No, that’s in Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror.

D: I get my Naschys blended together.

V: “Haven’t you guessed? I’m his Infernal Majesty!” FUCK YEAH you are, Naschy!

D: Like I said, as he walks across the room, you can hear the panties drop. He comes in, and it’s moist—it’s like Niagara Falls.

V: All the guys want to be Naschy, all the women want to have Naschy—

D: All the MEN want to have Naschy.

V: I don’t think I could maintain my heterosexuality around him—in fact, I know for certain I couldn’t.

D: There’s a couple of “Get out of jail free” cards with regards to your heterosexuality that every man gets to burn in his lifetime, and Naschy would be one of them.

V: So Behind Convent Walls—3 thumbs up.

D: We can agree that Alucarda is the pinnacle, but I think Behind Convent Walls is either second or third behind it. From a pure nunsploitational point of view.

V: We talked about the church cover-up a little bit, the Jack Palance guy and the Inquistion…[belch] …We’re going to have to shut this off because I’m too fuckin’ drunk.

D: Same here.

V: But while I’ve got you here--Horror Rises from the Tomb, how about that one?

D: Gah!

V: Horror Rises from my PANTS, more like!

D: With alarming frequency! One thing I love about his movies just in general are the titles. I mean, where else is Horror gonna rise from? It’s gonna come from the fucking TOMB.

V: Another director we haven’t talked about who’s one of our favorites is Jean Rollin.

D: Rollin, yes.

V: Who in Requiem for a Vampire has the girls in there, they start out dressed in clown outfits. And at some point they stop in an abandoned barn somewhere and change out of their clown outfits, into their SCHOOLGIRL outfits.

D: Exactly, because what *else* would they wear?

The look is Casual, but They Mean Business

V: They’ve got the short skirts, the knee socks, the pigtails…and at that point I’m thinking “Whoa, this guy’s a visionary.”

D: A GENIUS!

V: A *FUCKING* genius! In Requiem and in Shiver [of the Vampires] he’s got the scene with the blonde girl, whose name I can’t remember right now, but she’s in several of his movies , and her partner on this fur-covered bed.

D: Yeah, and the whole set-up to that is fantastic as well. It’s like “Oh, here’s this abandoned castle, let’s go check it out…Oh, here’s a fur bed—let’s have SEX on it! Let’s get all LESBONIC on this shit,” for no fucking reason!

V: It’s at a point where the truth of the visual overwhelms the truth of the narration. You don’t need a coherent narrative thread when you’ve got two hot schoolgirls lezzing it up on a fur-covered bed.

D: It needs no explanation.

V: It’s just one of those images that sticks in your head and will not go away. Rollin has done more for lesbian vampires than any other person in the history of the world, and he is owed a debt of gratitude for that…He’s like Naschy—you either get him or you don’t. If you watch VotZ and you hate it, you’re never, NEVER going to get Naschy. But if you watch it and enjoy it, there’s really nothing better. It’s the same with Rollin—if you watch Shiver of the Vampires and think “Oh, this is boring, there’s nothing happening, they never even talk until 40 mins into it.”

D: “I don’t like these teenage lesbians, I just don’t get it…”

V: Right, you’re never, ever going to enjoy Rollin. And I feel sorry for you, I do.

D: Because YOU’RE DEAD INSIDE.

V: Indeed.

V: In closing—BCW, awesome.

D: Three thumbs up—not as good as Alucarda, but then nothing is as good as Alucarda. Still a must-watch for any fan of the subgenre.

V: Definitely so. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking with you about violated nuns and Paul Naschy today, Duke.

D: As if we ever talk about anything else!

V: So from the Slaughtered Lamb, I’m the Vicar of VHS for the Duke of DVD, saying good night, and get thee to a nunnery!

"Don't say you're sorry to me...say it to Him!"

Click Here for Part I
Click Here for Part II

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