The Mask of Medusa

The Mask of MedusaOriginal Title: Le masque de la Méduse
Directed by: Jean Rollin
2010 (09), France
Fantasy/Horror, 75 min
Distributed by: www.hors-circuits.com

Alas, the time has come to finally cast my eyes upon the concluding Jean Rollin movie, the short, shot on HD-video, piece Le masque de la Méduse.

With a name like that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the movie is going to be a take on the Gorgon, a character from Greek mythology that anyone who knows the slightest thing about horror will be familiar with. The Gorgon, or Medusa if you like with her snake hair and “turn-to-stone-gaze” have been portrayed in everything from kids cartoons and cheesy TV sci-fi shows, to the classic Ray Harryhausen stop motion flicks and Hammer horror classics. Supposedly Terrence Fisher’s 1964 Hammer Horror, The Gorgon serves as the main inspiration for this final movie which bookends Jean Rollin’s spellbinding career.

A while back I went off on a rant about how Perdues dans New York (Lost in New York) 1989 should have been the final Jean Rollin movie as it brought themes, emotions and traits to a full circle. It was as if Rollin finally came to peace with the defining traits and found what he was looking for - A return to childhood. Because that’s how I read a lot of Jean Rollin movies, as a metaphorical return to safety, a sense of belonging, a comforting return to sanctuary after a long and wide journey – a tabula rasa, setting things back to their right. Which is very much what Le masque de la Méduse is about too.

Le masque de la Méduse opens with Méduse [Simone Rollin] walking through an aquarium. A young woman [Gabrielle Rollin] plays the cello amidst huge constrictors and buzzards. Méduse gazes at the young woman who then turns to stone. Méduse takes to the streets of Paris and walks straight to the Grand Guignol where she enters the stage and holds a lengthy monologue regarding her former victims. The Janitor [Jean-Pierre Bouyoux] listens on and sympathises with her remorse.

Méduse moves again and comes upon two younger gorgons – her sisters. Steno [Marlène Delcambre] and Euryale [Sabine Lenoël] perform a ritual where pulverised human skulls are mixed with blood and devoured by Steno. In a scene which atmospherically feels very typical Jean Rollin, Méduse’s hair turns into snakes and she blinds Euryale before Steno struts out a little dance, not to unlike those previously seen performed in his movies. Returning to the Grand Gugniol Euryale confronts Méduse and pays the ultimate price, you won’t get away with threatening Méduse twice and in a rather shocking moment Méduse does away with her sister. Finally she comes to face the Collector [Bernard Charnacé], a man who in his possession has the statues of her earlier victims. Méduse’s guilt – yes our old friend guilt - drives her right back to the stage of the Grand Guignol where the Janitor is awaiting to willingly aid her decision to end her being. The first act comes to a violent climax and a customary cameo from Jean Rollin who buries the head of the Medusa in the sand…

Act two starts where the head of Medusa is dug up and we are taken to that familiar Rollin location, the Peré-Lachaise cemetery. Steno, now guardian of her sisters’ head lives in an underground crypt with the statue of Euryale. Steno lures Cornelius [Delphine Montoban] into her lair where she draws blood from Cornelius buttock… preparing the ritual we saw in the first act. Steno proclaims herself and Cornelius the vampires of Peré-Lachaise and they dance together as Philippe d’Aram’s La Valse Fascinante from Fascination 1979 plays on the soundtrack. Steno tells the tragic tale of her sisters’ fates and together they leave the crypt. With someone to tell the story of the three sisters to the world, Steno disappears.

My French really blows and I’m a long way from fully comprehending the language much of the above is my interpretation of what’s going on., and I’m quite content with that interpretation as it still feels very much what I’d expect from a Jean Rollin films. Also within the movie I can see several themes that I’ve come to recognise in his work. The theme of the search can be found in Méduse’s guilt, she is searching for redemption, and when she comes to the insight that she can’t avoid turning victims to stone – and a sinister collector who has her previous victims as trophies, hence wanting to keep her alive – she decides to take her own life, even if it’s with the assistance of the Janitor. This moment of insight and execution takes place on the Grand Guignol stage and is sliced into a splendid juxtaposition by editor Janette Kronegger. The Janitor later wanders the passages of Peré-Lachaise wondering if his actions had any effect on Steno. The guilt is passed on.

Then there’s the ultimate trait of Jean Rollin, which is the philosophical line of thought. It’s one magnificent trait that differs Rollin from other EuroGoth or EuroTrash directors. It’s almost like the judicious mindfucks of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Think about it, almost all Jean Rollin movies have leading characters who , at least for a genre movie, have some really profound thoughts about their being, their actions, the situations that they are in. That’s why you frequently find those poetic, lengthy pieces of monologue posing questions and philosophising within the Rollin universe.

Just like his debut feature La Viol de vampire (The Rape of the Vampire) 1968, La masque de la Méduse is a movie shot in two parts and then combined to make a longer feature. Screened at the Cinemateque de Tolouse in late 2009, Rollin was still uncertain if this would be the complete version of the movie. The version shown there was a 60-minute cut, and Rollin is known to have said [in interviews posted on PsychoVision.net] that he’d like to make a full feature length film out of the project. It was also said that he had another movie planned to shoot, La Fiancée du crocodile (The Bride of the Crocodile), a movie which now never will come to be, at least not as a Jean Rollin movie.

Location wise Rollin makes the most of what he has – just like he always did - apart from the simplistic stage representing the Grand Guignol, and what is left of the original location, the Palace of Golden Gate Aquariums is beautiful and really sets a great tone to the opening of the movie, and then there’s the final return to Peré-Lachaise which as always is pure magic.

Looking at the cast, it’s almost something of a family movie, Jean’s wife Marie-Simone holds the part of Méduse and their grandchild Gabrielle has a small part as the young musician seen in the opening attack at the aquarium. Actors who held small parts in previous works pop up, like Bernard Charnacé who you may recognise as Dr. Dennary from Les deux orphelines vampires (Two Orphan Vampires) 1997, Sabine Lenoël (Sister Martha), and Tomas Smith (Thibault) from La fiancée de Dracula (The Fiancee of Dracula) 2002. But I do miss some of the iconic Rollin actors and actresses, because even small walk on parts or cameos by Nathalie Perrey, Brigitte Lahaie, Françoise Blanchard, or Françoise Pascal or even one of the Castel twins would have had an impact, especially in that last act in Peré-Lachaise where they easily could have walked by or simply been cemetery inhabitants.

Still though, familiar names like long time friend and frequent collaborator Jean-Pierre Bouyoux, composer Philippe d’Aram and editor Janette Kronegger - who edited the majority of Rollin’s movies from La morte vivante (The Living Dead Girl) 1982 and forth - are all part of the film which helps tie it all in to the bookend which it in more than one way becomes.

Compared to something like Jess Franco’s Paula–Paula 2010, this is a more fitting final movie - although I sincerely hope Paula-Paula doesn’t become Franco’s last flick – La masque de la Méduse is a much better final film. This one has a story and it has a forward movement, it opens a door to possible new ways, it suggests new characters to the universe of Jean Rollin. Despite being shot on HD-video, it looks fantastic. I'm have a huge fetish for celluloid grain, but there's something here that I like, and the flat crisp digital look passes me by for a change. Lighting is very much Jean Rollin and in spite of the low budget of something like €150.000 there’s really nowhere that the movie feels cheap and rushed. There are no filler belly dances in front of a silver tarp here matey - this is all for real.

La masque de la Méduse is a beautiful looking movie and surprisingly one where special effects come to the most effective and elaborate use. Sure there’s been effects and gore in Rollin movies before, but this is hard stuff in the realm of Rollin, there’s a decapitation, decomposed corpses hung from nooses, the degeneration of Medusa makeup, snake hair, and an incredibly impressive throat slit that is really grim lingering on the sharp cut and pouring blood.

The recurrent meta referents at previous work can be found in La masque de la Méduse; an iron rose is used in an attempt to poke out an eye, there’s a nod at Two Orphan Vampires when parts of dialogue are recited, certain images of Steno definitely ring of Blanchard in The Living Dead Girl, Bouyoux recites passages of poems read in La nuit des horloges (Night of the Hourglas) 2007, Rollin’s almost obligatory cameo where he once again more or less taunts the camera with his mischievous face, certain parts of the soundtrack are d’Aram tracks from older movies, the remorseful monologues of Méduse certainly remind me of Nathalie Perry’s reoccurring character, mourning her losses, and you really can’t look at images of Père-Lachaise without thinking of movies like La rose de fer (Iron Rose) 1973, Two Orphan Vampires and Rape of the Vampire. In my book Pére-Lachaise is more Jean Rollin than anything else.

Hopefully there will be an official wider release of this last Jean Rollin movie as La masque de le Méduse is an beautiful, intriguing, powerful and poetic movie, an important movie that shows where if allowed Rollin might have ventured to with projects to come and perhaps where he would have gone earlier if he’d been able too.

Image:

16x9 Colour

Audio:

Stereo 2.0. French Dialogue, no subtitles.

Extras:

A five minute Making of feature, although the main extra is the movie itself as it isn’t available anywhere outside of a limited edition of Ècrits COmpletes -1. Complete Writings Vol1 compiles six of Jean Rollin’s fantasy horror stories and a second volume is planned. This first edition though was available in a limited edition of 150 pieces (signed and numbered by Rollin) and included the movie, which would become his final piece, La masque de la Méduse.

Two Orphan Vampires

Two Orphan Vampires
Original Title: Les deux orphelines vampires
Directed by: Jean Rollin
France, 1997
EuroGoth / Horror / Drama, 104min
Distributed by: Njuta Films

In my continuing rediscovery of the great movies of Jean Rollin, I felt that the natural step to go after the fascinating wonder Perdues dans New York (Lost in New York) 1989 was forward - to the stuff that was made after I initially saw those old Redemption videos. I’m certain that the themes and motifs in his catalogue of work all culminate in that splendid movie, and as I consider it somewhat of a bookend which marks an end to Rollin’s exploration of themes and motifs he had used since his 1968 debut Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire) I was curious to see where he went with these elements when he returned to filmmaking a few years further down the road.

Two young women Louise [Alexandra Pic] and Henriette [Isabelle Teboul], partially blinded reside at an orphanage run by nuns – of course - who know nothing of the two girls background as they where abandoned as children, and Sister Martha [Nathalie Perry] looks at the two women as her little angels. Doctor Dennary [Bernard Charnacé] takes an interest in them and decides that he can help them to regain their sight. Later that night the two girls reveal that they actually only are blind (or colour blind actually) at day, whilst they at night can see and are in fact vampires as they feed on a stray dog in the nocturnal cemetery.

Dr Dennary takes the two girls into his care, but they take off again and at a near by circus a lost woman [Brigitte Lahaie], fails to believe that they are real vampires and provides the two girls with that precious blood the thirst for. Dennary goes away for the weekend leaving the two girls alone, and they obviously hit the town again where their bloodlust get’s the better of them. This childlike night of adventure ends with them being chased by an elderly couple that they scare in the cemetery, forcing them to hide out in a crypt with Venus [Véronique Dajouti] the second of three other night dwellers that they encounter on their way.

A final series of events see the girls taking to hiding back in the orphanage where Sister Martha’s heart is broken as she makes a shocking discovery. Running from the orphanage the farmer they scared at the cemetery earlier returns, and the movie gently moves into a traditional and poetic Jean Rollin climax.

Returning to the Vampire genre after taking a twelve-year absence from it - Fascination 1979 being the last one - there certainly are many things that Rollin could have done here to make Two Orphan Vampires feel like a rehash of vampire clichés. But instead he avoids them and actually takes a complete different path. Normal vampire lore and the rules associated with it are discarded in favour of other strenghts and weaknesses. Where the girls are completely unaffected by the crucifix – they actually start off by living in that catholic orphanage surrounded by nuns, and hide out there when the real world proves to fearsome – they can also wander in the otherwise deadly ultraviolet rays cast down by the sun. But they do have one trait that keeps them somewhat restraint, they cannot see in the sunlight, which has them blind at day and in search of blood at night.

There’s plenty of religious imagery throughout the movie, and the way it holds no power over the girls, along with their disregard for their otherwise traditional values these symbols hold is shown in a neat little scene where Sister Martha kneels before a cross and prays for the two girls who she has just put to bed, then Rollin cuts to the two girls giggling, engaging in a brief pillow fight before they take to the night wandering into a nearby cemetery and feeding off a stray dog. Keep your eyes open for Rollin in a cameo as the cemetery caretaker who later buries the dog.

During the first scene in the cemetery – after we realise that they are vampires – the two girls hold a somewhat philosophical conversation about how they where killed at one point in time, but have come back in their current state. This works as a connection to the earlier vampire flicks of Rollin, linking it with that space created pre Lost in New York - or Fascination if you like, as that was his last vampire film. The two girls hear music playing and dance a waltz on top of a tomb; the music is Phillipe d’Aram’s La Valse Fascinante from the Fascination soundtrack. This is followed by a flashback where the two girls walk across Brooklyn Bridge followed by the first feed of the movie. They also run through the New York locations that the two women in Lost in New York ran though in a montage which att the same time mimics scenes seen in that movie. It's an intelligent montage obviously crafted to bond the movies, hence making them hold a colective place in the Jean Rollin universe. It's not to far fetched to asume that this is what happened to the two girs following the enigmatic climax of Lost in New York. As most of Rollin's movies are contextually linked in several ways, answers to questions posed in earliers films are answered in later entries.

Several of the familiar faces are back once again, and the typical Rollin imagery is here, the cemeteries, chateau's, New York, abandoned railway stations, the looming camerawork and several of his familiar themes. There may not be the persistent theme of “Longing” and “Searching” so commonly found in his work, but there is a strong element of not belonging, which also can be found in the earlier works.

Two Orphan Vampires undoubtedly deals with the theme of not belonging, or not having a place in what may be a reflection on a modern world. This is a theme in addition to "longing" and "searching" which I now see to be of importance in Rollin’s movies, as it reoccurs in several of his pieces. Lèvres du sang (Lips of Blood) 1975, Lost in New York and it’s definitely a core theme to La morte vivante (The Living Dead Girl) 1982 where Françoise Blanchard has serious issues finding her place in the world after returning from the dead as a bloodthirsty ghoul. During their nocturnal endeavours the two girls meet several other creatures of the night which interact with the girls and all make the same claims – they have no place in this world. There’s the She Wolf [Nathalie Karsenty], the Batwoman [Vèronique Djaouti] and finally the Ghoul [Tina Aumont], which you know is the original word for zombie. All of them are anguished characters that have their own stones to bear as they roam the nightly world looking for a peaceful place to be part of.

With the theme of not belonging or alienation in mind there’s an interesting recurrent of discussion whether the girls are in fact live or dead, life versus death that flows through the piece, as they talk several times about their last deaths in their last lives. They are also convinced that they are incarnations of Inca gods, which with a little ethnology understanding could be seen as a form or “not belonging” as the Inca culture only lasted some two hundred years where as the Mayan culture lasted for almost seven hundred years. Despite most of the cover art you will find for the movie, Two Orphan Vampires actually holds a more restrained approach to the nudity at times found in Rollin’s movies. Here he goes more for an emotion of the girls being childlike and naïve, which is noted in the scenes where they look at the book on Inca culture and decide which images in that book represent them. Later they change from claiming that they are goddesses and argue that they are magicians referring to a book of old magic show posters instead. They change their minds, just like children searching for a point of identification in their games.

Finally, Philipe d’Aram’s soundtrack. Like many of the earlier movies he composed scores to for Rollin this definitely has some splendid dreamy and suggestive parts – but at times it get’s very perky and almost too electronic to match the mood and feeling of some scenes, which unfortunately has parts of the score feeling somewhat dated. Although some parts are pure bliss, and it get's the job done.

Based on Rollin’s own pulp novellas – five of them all in all, (one, which I seem to recall being released by Redemption Books back in the nineties) - Two Orphan Vampires at times the films oozes classic Jean Rollin. There are moments evoking those superb movies that make up the wonderful Rollin universe, but at the same time there are parts that are very tedious and drag down the overall feeling of the movie – well at least the parts that get monotonous. This is a shame, as the movie with its whopping 103minute runtime also is the longest of any Rollin movie made and it could have done with a decent trim here and there. The only other movie close is his 1968 debut Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire) with its 100 min. Perhaps Rollin found the return to vampiric horror such a pleasure that he felt compelled to stay with the material.

Two Orphan Vampires is indeed a qualified entry into the Rollin universe, and despite lacking some of the traits of previous works, its still an entertaining piece that at times evokes the poetry and emotions from his previous works. Two Orphan Vampires is a meditative, tender and delicate piece of film which firmly finds it's place amongst Rollin's cannon, and is definitely worth checking out if you enjoy the older films of the great Jean Rollin.

Two Orphan Vampires is due for release on the 6th of October from Njuta Films.

The Living Dead Girl

The Living Dead Girl
Original Title: La Morte Vivante
Directed by: Jean Rollin
France, 1982
Horror / Drama, 86min
Distributed by: Njuta Films / Redemption

If you think that zombie movies have to be dark, brooding and saturated with despair, then think again. The last few years’ stuff has been happening to the zombie genre that has been hailed as re-inventive, innovative and groundbreaking. George A. Romero has slowly been infusing a consciousness in the minds of his zombies since Night of the Living Dead 1968, and peaking with Survival of the Dead 2009. Recently Marc Price's independent flick Colin 2008 gave the zombie a modus operandi, and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead 2004 ended with zombie and man living together in perfect harmony.

But long before the crusty shufflers brought some quasi raison d’être to the scene... even further back, in the eighties, when Italian gut-munchers where on their last legs and the Americans started to bring goofiness to the zombie genre, there was one director who made a movie about a conscious zombie that even had the ability to feel love, grief and remorse, Jean Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl!

Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl is a pretty damned fascinating zombie movie. A zombie movie not a vampire movie like we are used to associating Jean Rollin with, but a zombie film – even if Catherine Valmont does rise from a coffin in a crypt and drinks blood… Rollin directed a couple of movies that could be categorised as films within the zombie genre – and what fascinates me with two of his best entries, Les Raisins de la mort (Grapes of Death) 1978, and The Living Dead Girl - is that he never states that we are dealing with zombies, but let’s us with our programmed minds and strong desires to pigeon hole everything determine that it is a zombie movie. A zombie movie where strong emotions are at play and therefore create one of the most romantic and poetic zombie flicks ever made.

Starting off with a pretty dorky opening where three guys arrive at a chateau to dump toxic waste in the basement – all because the bureaucrats have decided that toxic waste has to be confined – the movie takes a sudden twist into the dark when two of the workmen after disposing of the vats of toxic waste decide to take on a spot of grave robbery at the same time… Yes in the same crypt under the chateau lies the body of Mrs Valmont and her daughter Catherine [Françoise Blanchard – also from Rollin’s Les Trottoirs de Bangkok (Sidewalks of Bangkok) 1984]. A few seconds after lifting a hefty amount of jewellery from the corpses, a tremor shakes the landscape and causes the barrels of toxic waste to spill out on the ground. A small rivulet of green ooze runs towards the casket of Catherine and before you know it she pop’s open her hands out of the coffin and rams her sharp pointy digits into the throat of one of the men as if her fingers where a pair of scissors. He runs away with blood pouring from the holes that once held his eyes. The second man has fallen to the ground during the tremor and when the runnel of oozing chemicals pass by his face it dissolves into a smoky bloody mess, and as the third worker walks into the well lit crypt to see where his mates got to, Catherine slinks in from behind and rams those sharp claws into his neck sending a fountain of blood down the front of her white burial gown. It is an understatement to say that this opening sequence is by far the most violent and vicious of all Jean Rollin’s movies and it sets an auspicious tone that soon will contrast hard against the stronger emotions to be unravelled.

The subplot and secondary cast is set in motion when we are introduced to Greg [Mike Marshall] and Barbara [Carina Barone] who are vacationing in the area. She’s a failed actress trying to create an alternative career and is diddling around with photography when she spots a mystic figure strolling the landscape. She cracks off a few shots of the woman and returns to Greg, puzzled by the female figure she just took photographs of. This will make up a smaller part of the common Rollin theme of “the search” as Barbara will become obsessed with finding out who the strange woman is, and follow that trail into damnation.

With the subplot safely activated, the main narrative kicks in. Catherine returns to Château Valmont and moves through the house whilst a young real estate agent shows two elderly Americans around the place who are interested in buying a French castle. They old man is Sam Selsky, producer of Rollin’s stunning La rose de fer (Rose of Iron) 1973 in a rare cameo and the scene reminds me of the ending to José Rámon Larraz Vampyres 1974, where two Americans are interested in buying Oakley Court in England. It may be a possible statement on the economics of the time. As the old couple leave, the real estate agent makes plans to meet up with her boyfriend and spend the night in Château Valmont before she taking off too. The living dead Catherine starts to recognize items and signifiers in the château and this induces a series of flashbacks that are extremely important within the Rollin universe, the two little girls.

As you may recall from my previous pieces on Jean Rollin’s cinema, the two little girls, sometimes twins, sometimes-just friends, reoccur in most of his work, and they frequently represent the important lost childhood themes that are found in his films. In Perdues dans New York (Lost in New York) 1989 he goes as far as having the two girls wander through important pats of his back catalogue though dialogue which creates a fantastic red line through the works that phenomenally ties them all together. I don’t think that there ever has been another director to give you a rush of insight that spans through twenty odd years and forty something movies. That is something unique to the masterful Jean Rollin.

In The Living Dead Girl the case is the same – the two little girls are the young Catherine and her best friend Hélène seen through flashbacks as they promise a to love each other to the end of time and after becoming blood sisters through a naïve bloodletting ritual, swear to follow whoever goes first into death. There’s also a music box, which figures in the flashback – a gift from Hélène to Catherine – that will play an important part in the movie and almost acts as the inciting incident that makes the movie happen. Whilst Catherine now back in real time painfully tries to figure out what has happened to her and is emotionally tormented by all the mementos of a time past, the phone rings, Catherine more or less automaton knocks the receiver over and it’s Hélène [played as an adult by the lush Marina Pierro] calling. Having just returned from a journey abroad and not hearing of Catherine’s passing until she came home, she calls only to hear that music box playing on the other side of the line. It’s a sound she reads as a sign that Catherine isn’t dead at all, but still very much alive.

This is where the superb platonic love story shifts into gear; Hélène arrives just after Catherine has killed the real-estate agent and her lover Louis who have returned to the chateau for some nocturnal enjoyment. Hélène walks in on the bloodbath and is both shocked at what she sees and relieved that Catherine is alive. She washes Catherine, disposes of the bodies and even let’s her settle her bloodlust in a scene symbolically reminiscent but much more erotic than that childhood ritual. The love story is driven by that strong Rollin theme - loss and the search for it. Hélène thought she had lost Catherine and certainly she did in adult life. But now reunited after Catherine’s death, Hélène won’t let go and will stop at nothing to keep Catherine in the realm of the living, pulling her back to life with her love and human sacrifices that she brings to the château for Catherine.

Barbara continues her search and is the main threat to the two women, as she also knows that Catherine is dead – which is what the whole village told her as she asked around with the photograph she took earlier. Keep an eye open for Rollin’s cameo as a street vendor during this part. But Barbara isn’t only the antagonist of the piece as she also works as a catalyst for Catherine’s insight and realisation that she’s dead. An insight that generates a great paradox as with the realisation that she is dead, Catherine looses all lust to live. Barbara wouldn’t be much of an antagonist without taking some action to disrupt the micro cosmos that Hélène has created with Catherine, and this is exactly what she does, but more along the line of her own search more than to actually destroy Hélène and Catherine’s relationship – although her interference costs her dearly as Hélène won’t loose Catherine a second time.

With the antagonistic forces put out of play it would be easy to let the two women get on with their relationship, but as that seed of despair has been planted in Catherine and she has no longer a lust to live… reluctant to accept Hélène’s sacrifices and most likely unaware of the murder’s Hélène has committed to protect their necrophillic love affair – yeah necrophilia isn’t about shagging corpses, it’s about being aroused by the presence of death, which Hélène obviously is. Catherine tries to take her own life, and die a second time, but still refusing to let go and give in to loss; Hélène saves her and reminds Catherine of their childhood oath one last time. It’s a heartbreaking moment and the movie comes to the only climax that it really could come to. A dark and ironic ending where justice is served, the pact is honoured and Rollin’s themes of loss makes one of it’s most profound impacts ever.

The Living Dead Girl is in many ways a rather unique entry into Rollin’s horror catalogue – gone are the iconic windy beaches of Dieppe, gone are the luscious vampire maidens, gone are the castle ruins and moonlit rendezvous. But this does not mean that he has cast his most important themes aside, merely the settings and locations. The Living Dead Girl is very much a part of the Rollin universe. The themes are there and the two young girls. The main question is really what is it in that misplaced childhood that he is searching for in all these movies? I hope to find an answer at some point in time, because it's been the modus operandi for the majority of his films.

The collaboration between Jean Rollin and Françoise Blanchard is extraordinary and she gives Rollin one of the best on screen performances ever seen in one of his films. Blanchard plays the part just right, really bringing all those delicate emotions to the character. It could have all to easy gone over board and become a parody as it sometimes does in low budget cinema, but Blanchard and Rollin hit the mark perfectly and Blanchard delivers an amazing performance… But also Marina Pierro – from several Walerian Borowczyk films, among them the splendid Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne) 1981 - also gives a phenomenal performance, almost as an anti thesis to Blanchard at times. Perhaps the fact that Rollin was given the luxury to actually go through scenes in rehearsals and take time on set to block obviously shows what a talented director he was when he was allowed to work under the right circumstances.

The movie also features a stunning score by Philipe D’Aram that definitely talks the same volatile language as the wonderfully composed set pieces do. It moves through the same emotions as the characters and reflects the mood perfectly.

Jean Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl is a damned fine example of his rich, moody, atmospherically and emotionally potent cinema outside the frequented Vampire niche that he sternly etched out for him self during the seventies. It's something not to be missed!

For more on Jean Rollin and related news, take time to visit Jeremy Richey's The Jean Rollin Experience. It's a gem of the net.

Image:

Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1

Audio:

Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0. French Dialogue, optional Danish, Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian Subtitles.

Extras:

A slideshow of stills, Original Trailer and trailers for other Jean Rollin movies and a selection of other titles released by Njuta Films.

Lost in New York

Lost in New York
Orignial Title: Perdues dans New York
Directed by: Jean Rollin
France, 1989
Fantasy, 52 min
Distributed by: Njuta Films

In every good filmmaker’s catalogue there is more than often one movie that kind of feels like a perfect bookend to their immense careers. David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ 1999 feels like an inventory of themes and structure that he’d explored until there was no where else left to go, David Lynch’s The Straight Story 1999 was the perfect non-confusing, linear tale that induced a feeling that it was the end of the line. I felt that it was the master of the cryptic narrative presenting a straight story and was done with the movies. Lucio Fulci’s shock/fantasy/biography Cat in the Brain 1990 with it’s original ironic ending gave a sensation that this was his “signing off and commentary on his life as a horror film director... You get the idea, that one movie that more or less sums up their fascinating catalogue of work. That one piece that feels like the final movie.

Obviously none of these directors stopped making movies after these significant films, but the movies that followed in the wake of these great bookends, where never as powerful or as impressive as the ones that had gone before, which is why I feel that these movies should have been the full stop exclamation mark of their careers – that said without taking anything away from the movies they did make afterwards.

Jean Rollin’s dreamlike fantasy Lost In New York is precisely one of those movies – and that is no revelation as Rollin himself even admits to this in interviews, but I'm going to show you how this can be seen within the movie.

One could argue that Jean Rollin’s debut feature Le viol du vampire 1968 acts as a trailer for the works he would produce for the rest of his career. The tone, the dreamlike imagery and locations (the beach, the cemetery, the railroad station), the recurrent characters, (the female vampire, the twins, the clowns, the fool, the mourning older woman etc.) are all apparent parts of his catalogue of work. Most of what is seen in that breakthrough film is reflected upon and revisited throughout the movies he would make from there on after. And with that said, there’s obviously a bookend movie somewhere along the line, and I find that movie to be personal and splendid Lost in New York.

An elderly woman – Michelle [Nathalie Perrey] sits alone reminiscing over times gone lost. Se holds an ancient artefact in her hand, a moon goddess that she has held onto since her childhood. She starts to share her childhood tale with us, and we are shown how she as a child meets Marie - in a cemetery of course - another young girl with whom she shared the most amazing adventure.

Together the two of them take part in a fantasy journey as they travel through time and space via the pages of their most cherished childhood stories. A final trip takes sees them as teenage women in New York, a town filled with dangerous threats posed by muggers and vampires. But the biggest threat is being separated from each other and the main part of the film sees them searching high and low for one and other again. Eventually they are reunited and after a joyful reunion we come back to where we started – The elderly Michelle sits alone in that back yard talking about the journey she and Marie took, but still with a sorrow as the rules of the moon goddess always separates the travellers during transportation. Michele and Marie have been apart since that ecstatic reunification in New York, and it is why Michelle is so heartbroken. But this time the moon goddess has other plans for her – and after revealing her true shape she does a little dance – presents Michelle with a second relic, and transports her to a desolate beach where she finally is completed once again as she meets the elderly Marie there too. As the movie comes to it’s climax Marie and Michelle are changed back into the children they once where and leave the beach together through a hole in the mountain face. They will now be together as children for all eternity.

Now this is the kind of movie that show’s the great talent that Rollin possesses. The stressed New York footage – which definitely captures the anxiety of the two young women - was shoot by Rollin as he was in the Big Apple to shoot supplementary footage for a completely different production. Faced with the fact that he was going to spend some time in New York he brought a few actresses with him and made the most of it, and ended up with the made for TV short feature Lost in New York. And he captures that great city in all it’s magnitude, the looming height of the buildings that always knocks you on your ass when you see them, the size of everything, the melting pot of cultures and people, the frenetic lights of Times Square, it’s all there – and some critics complain that the footage feels like a reel of Rollin’s holiday footage, but why not, why would that be a bad thing, as the sights he shows are the ones viewers – and anyone who’s been to New York will recognize. Without those shot’s he could just has well have shot the entire flick in France. But Rollin made the most of it and it’s an excellent use of footage in my opinion.

Lost in New York is without a doubt Jean Rollin’s neat summary and thanks’ for everything film. Again, themes and imagery from almost every Rollin movie is found in the film. The elderly woman in mourning – often seen in the cemetery, the seductive vampire woman – also often seen in the cemetery or on the beach of Dieppe, the two girls - they are always together and in some cases twins, the lost souls and items found in the waters on the beach of Dieppe and so on.

Lost in New York is a very poetic and sensitive film that I interpret to be all about loss, loneliness and reclaiming that which once was of importance.

Much like Jess Franco, Rollin stays true to his common characters, traits and themes, and reuses these throughout his body of work as he refines them to perfection. Lost in New York is a wonderful example of how this works, as almost all of his archetypes, themes and emotions return in one shape or other. Emotions you say, I thought this was all about exploitation flicks, where do emotions fit into exploitation. Well yeah, if you lay aside the pigeon holing that I quite dislike, then the emotions can’t be missed if you have seen more than a hand full of Rollin movies. The majority of them deal with loss and the quest for a remedy against those powerful emotions. Be it loss of life, loss of innocence, loss of a loved one, or loss of direction. The recurrent theme that ties Rollin’s movies together is loss. Then if you want to call the nudity of Rollins movies exploitative, then feel free, I chose to see it more as part of the narrative and the artful concept that is Jean Rollin. Vampires and nudity go hand in hand, it’s in our pop cultural references and the neo vampire shows that air on the telly these days contain more sex and nudity than any Rollin movie does. There’s a reason why he didn’t shoot the graphic inserts for his adult movies and stuck to that Michel Gentil pseudonyms for those films. It’s even said that he didn’t even stay in the room as they shot these scenes, instead he would set up the camera and leave the room to smoke his pipe. It says a fair bit about the complexity of the great Rollin.

A further reason for interpreting the movie as a summary, or index of Rollin’s work is also found through the dialogue of the film. As Michelle in voice over guides us through the two young girls first adventure where they wander through classic passages and scenes of literature and films, Rollin makes sure to put his own works in the same context. As the two girls drift the “Screen of Dreams” they finally end up being part of La morte vivante (The Living Dead Girl) 1982, La nuit des tranquées (Night of the Hunted) 1980, Le frisson des vampires (The Shiver of the Vampire) 1971, La vampire nue (The Nude Vampire) 1970, Les trottoirs de Bangkok (Sidewalks of Bangkok) 1984 and Fascination 1979.

Through the dialogue Michelle provides answers to scenes in previous Rollin movies, weaving a thread from this “last” movie all the way back to the very first ones. And it’s a fascinating scene as it conjures up the images of the Marie-Pierre and Catherine Castel – the twins featured in The Nude Vampire and The Shiver of the Vampires (and many others too), and also previous movies that Nathalie Perrey also starred in for Rollin; Night of the Hunted where she plays a mother as an example, or The Iron Rose where she mourns at a grave in the cemetery. That scene in Lost in New York is of extreme importance for the movie and it’s the key to realising that the movie is indeed a summary of Rollin’s career.

This is also apparent with the idea that all his movies are about loss, as Michelle has lost her true love Marie, and though that loss she has also directly lost her preadolescent innocence. It’s through the eyes of the child that the fantastic journey is made possible – the power of imagination -, and now that she has lost that gaze, instead filled with the logic mind of an adult, there is no way that she can travel in time and space to find Marie. Metaphorically it also symbolises Rollin’s own preadolescent innocence, as it was as a young child Jean Rollin stood upon the iconic beach of Dieppe and decided that this was the spot he wanted to make a movie at. Coming to a culmination, the movie sees Michelle and Marie reunited at that important location (where also many other Rollin movies both start and end or are at least featured as a main character almost). The elderly woman is reunited with her “lost” love, or passion if you like, and through that she is then changed back into an preadolescent child, a child free from the condemnation of adult logic and values, a child that holds a clean slate to go wherever she chooses. It’s a heavy line of thought, but one that I feel is very relevant to the movie, as I still claim that this is the one that was Rollin’s signing off movie. With this movie he could mentally return to Dieppe and release all the emotional luggage that he and his movies where associated with and cleanse his personal slate.

Lost in New York is accompanied by a wonderful, gentle and delicate soundtrack by Phillippe d’Aram who scored several of Rollin's later movies. At some times the soundtrack reminds me of early Eric Serra, which is a positive value, but at the same time it sets the movie in a distinct time frame. But to the advantage of Rollin, who need the movie to feel as it captures a determined time frame it works like a charm. I don’t think that the score to Luc Besson’s Subway 1985 or Le grand bleu 1988 has aged as well as d’Aram’s score for Rollin’s movies have.

Image:

Anamorphic Widescreen 1.66:1

Audio:

Dolby Digital Stereo, French dialogue – Swedish, Danish, Norwegian or Finnish subtitles are optional.

Extras:

The disc comes with a trailer show for Rollin’s The Grapes of Death, The Nude Vampire, The Rape of the Vampire, Demoniacs, and Requiem for a Vampire. There’s an image gallery and then there’s the short film Les Pays Loins, a 16min short directed by Rollin in 1965, which - just like I propose many other Rollin movies – is about being lost.