User reviews

This film was rated higher by others than I would have thought. Vampires usually do a lot of biting and blood sucking. There was more erotic virgin handling and molestation than biting and the like in this one. The use of silence in the film gave it a surreal quality. The whole movie was dream-like. The lure of the victims was not captured. The chase and seduction is the best thing about vampires but those subtleties were lost here. But, I must admit, the film did remind me of Vampyros Lesbos and, to a lesser extent, Suspiria. I must state that vampire films do not have to be bloody etc. But a little blood at the bite would have been welcomed. Not a bad watch if you seek those who walk at night.

Marie and Michelle are two girls dressed as clowns and on the run from someone with a grudge, this is at least where the film begins with a shoot 'em up car chase through the french countryside. There male companion gets killed in the crossfire and the girls decide to hide out in a seemingly deserted Château where they indulge themselves in some Lesbian sex before they discover they are not alone .The last surviving Vampire and his followers want to enrol the two girls in to the realms of the living dead, but not before they get the girls to lure some fresh blood to the château with the promise of sex.

Rollin's imagery is superb,two wonderfully colourful clowns wandering through barley is quite an exquisite scene,in this often ponderously slow film, the vampires look cool except for some dodgy fangs, there isn't too much of a plot really and I can readily see why some would hate Rollin's work. Rollin seems to my eyes to have his own unique language of film which he sticks to till the bitter end. My main problem with the film is that it was cut to bits, The DVD sleeve said 88mins where in actuality it was a paltry 76mins,IMDB says 95mins so I'm not too sure what I've missed and how badly the continuity was hampered by this, a lot I would guess.Not my last Rollin film,I'll certainly watch some more

This is not Jean Rollin's best film, but it might be his most essential one for fans because it combines the moody visuals of films like "Fascination" and "Two Orphan Vampires" with the perverse softcore sex of films like "Bacchanales Sexuales". Two teenage virgins run away from a school party (which in the strange Rollin universe somehow involves dressing as clowns, having a shoot-out with police, and disposing of the body of their dead male accomplice in a burning car). After a bizarre accident while walking through a graveyard that almost results in one girl being buried alive, they arrive at a deserted castle and do what any two virgins would do in a 70's Eurohorror/sex movie--strip off all their clothes for some hot lesbian action. Soon though they meet the occupants of the castle who are, of course, vampires. Freely rewriting the vampire rulebook, Rollin's vampires in this movie can not pass their curse on to anyone except virgins. Any non-virgins are chained to the wall while the monstrous man-servants have their way with them in gratuitous sex scenes before the female vampire suck their blood from their breasts and the male vampire changes into a bat to commit an act of bestiality that no pervert in the world would find erotic (you have admire the sheer audacity of Rollin if nothing else).

The conflict happens when one girl decides to lose her virginity while the other decides to preserve hers and join the ranks of the living dead. But the bonds of love and friendship are not easily broken. This movie addresses some real themes of coming-of-age and friendship (albeit in a fantastical and at times ridiculous milieu), but no one will confuse it with "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". If you're looking for sex,on the other hand, you certainly won't be disappointed, but unlike all the erotic vampire movies they churn out these days, this is a vampire film with a lot of sex, not a sex film with vampiric trappings. And there is something very personal and obsessive about Rollin's films that the modern-day hacks can never hope imitate. This movie contains all manner of memorable images--preserved human arms holding candles, posed skeletons dressed in clerical robes, a girl in a mini-skirt lying on a coffin being buried alive by oblivious gravediggers, a girl clamoring around the ruins of a Gothic castle dressed in nothing but knee socks. Good or bad, Rollin is definitely a one-of-a-kind filmmaker.

After escaping an auto shootout, two sexy female clowns (yeah) stumble upon a mysterious old castle full of classy vampires and some giant viking-type men. There, they bear witness to the vampyric rituals and are forced to remain as vampires, but they must lose their virginity first to become a real vampire.

Like many Jean Rollin films, Requiem pour un Vampire is a very erotic, dreamlike film that utilizes limited dialogue and unlimited sexy French women. . . even though more than a few of them actually do have hairy armpits (I'm not just stereotyping!). Rollin includes more than a few fantastically cool ideas. . . especially the vampire bats that performed oral sex on the captive women. It's very well shot, Rollin's direction is superb in this picture. And, while it does lack a bit in the story, it still maintains a very enjoyable and likable fairytale-like quality. As any fan of this type of erotic horror will tell you, as long as you've got plenty of hot people getting acquainted, some blood, and a pretty setting. . . you're all set. There's really not too much to say about this film other than. . . enjoy it.

Final verdict: 7.5/10.

Vive La France!

-AP3-

Jean Rollin's films collect praise the way that a splat of dog excrement on the sidewalk collects flies. One *sees* the flies, but one is never quite sure *how* the flies know the crap is there, or exactly what they're so excited about.

Rollin's defenders love to blather on about his "style", his "imagination", his "eye", and his deep understanding of Heidigger's "uncertainty principle". (Well, maybe not the last thing.) But frankly, Rollin is merely a remixer of other, far superior directors. Just one example: someone here mentioned how clever it was that he used "preserved human arms as candle-holders!" News to them: Jean Cocteau came up with that idea, and used it in his "La Belle et la Bête", 25 years earlier. I could cite the original sources of every other bit of "inspiration" in this flick, but why bother?

Neither of the two main chicks are very attractive. I see better looking women every day, and you probably do too. And both are seriously stupid (which probably makes them more attractive to some guys, but I digress). They get in a low-speed car chase with someone (the police?), who for some inexplicable reason are driving a Renault 16, which has never been used as a cop car, not even in an alternate reality. When their motorcycle runs out of gas, they just leave it by the side of the road. When they're hungry, they con a roach-coach guy out of some lettuce (but it never occurs to them to steal his vehicle or his money). They choose to hide in a cemetery, never thinking that it might be spooky in there. I found that I was soon rooting for whoever might be the first to do them in. Alas, I waited and waited and waited...

The director is at least as stupid as his chicks are. How stupid? He terrorizes the chicks with...flying foxes. Yes, the shots of the two being frightened by a pair of bats hanging from a tree, was filmed with flying foxes -- those utterly harmless fruit-eating bats that some people keep as pets. As soon as Rollin has made his point with these poor critters, he then sticks fake vampire bats to the chicks' necks. As in...with adhesive. Not even stock shots of vampire bats lapping blood, not even semi-animated bats flapping menacingly around the girls. Lee Press-On Bats.

Revolvers mysteriously appear and disappear in the chicks' hands as they haplessly try to defend themselves. Each dispenses about 20 bullets, not one of them having even the slightest effect on their pursuers. Note to future film victims: if your pursuer hasn't been affected by the first 5 bullets you pump into them, odds are good that the 6th isn't going to make much difference. You might want to save it for later. Just a thought.

The evil vampires are neither attractive nor menacing; they look more bored than anything else. I know: they're the most dangerous when they're bored. Their fangs look like Lee Press-On Fangs. You know, I'm beginning to wonder if this entire film wasn't an infomercial for the fine family of Lee Press-On products...

There's a truly repellent and utterly gratuitous rape scene that's neither logical nor titillating; it just made me want to wash my eyes out and ask for the 5 minutes it took of my life, back.

Look: I like a trashy film as much as the next guy. I enjoy Jess Franco's "Los Vampyros Lesbos" and some of his other work. I occasionally find Dario Argento's work effective. But "Requiem for a Vampire" is just sad. It lacks any redeeming features (I gave it 2 stars just for the cinematography which is at least colorful), and it does nothing as well as other films in its genre do. I've come to the conclusion that liking C-grade sexploitation films of this era is sort of like a 16 year-old boy going on about how "hot" some porn "actress" with silicone-enhanced 44-D breasts is. He thinks it will make him seem more cool and worldly, but really it just betrays his lack of experience and taste. But hey! --I'm sure that even a tired old whore is glad to have a fan.

Two lovely ladies are on the run (why? I'm not sure} and find shelter in a rather Gothic, sprawling castle in the French countryside. They soon run into the lord of the manor, an aged vampire looking to use their luscious, virgin (yeah, right!) bodies as vessels for his progeny. A lot of flesh, a bit of bondage and a touch of lesbianism punctuate another erotic horror masterpiece from French filmmaker Jean Rollin.

It's somewhat hard to recommend a Rollin film to the uninitiated. Often surreal but almost always beautiful, thanks in part to the lovely ladies frequently in the buff and the photography pf the locations. Rollin clearly has an eye for beauty. However the plots and story lines are often very slight. Heck there is hardly any dialogue in the first thirty to forty minutes of 'Requiem'. But man does he have an eye.

I would imagine that few Americans can identify Jean Rollin. But Portland's video/DVD store Movie Madness has a whole shelf of his movies. From what I saw in "Vierges et vampires" (aka "Requiem for a Vampire"), I would derive that his movies involve gore and full-scale erotica. Specifically, this one has two hot teenage girls running away from school and ending up in a castle inhabited by sex-obsessed vampires. By sex-obsessed, I mean that there's a scene where the vampires torture some prisoners, and much of the whole sequence consists of shots of women's naked bodies.

So, since I haven't seen any of Rollin's other movies, I'll have to assume that his movies consist of this...and I LIKE IT! As far as I'm concerned, this is what horror movies were meant to be! If there's any guiltier pleasure, I'm not sure that I want to know about it. Specifically, this is the sort of movie that I'd like to experience.

So, I recommend this movie. If, having not seen this movie, you thought that you knew to what extent the French are into love and sexuality, then you ain't seen nothing yet! Because I must repeat: those girls were REALLY hot!

I must say I'm a bit of Jean Rollin fanboy. Some of his films are a bit boring but I can still appreciate. This movie, on the other hand, I think is one of his best.

At first there is not much dialogue. The story moves in dreamlike images. I just love the style and atmosphere, even though it's also a bit cheesy at times...but in essence it's attempting to be very serious and poetic, so if you are looking for something funny, you might not find it here. I can understand people who like bad "turkey" movies might find Rollin films a bit boring because the style is so deadpan serious in all its gothic romanticism. But if you are such a vampire yourself you will love it.

Ps. Some older (especially UK) dvd's have some material cut off (torture scene is much shorter) but the movie is still very watchable because it is not about graphic violence in the first place. But if you insist an uncut version, it is probably available on some newer blu-ray releases.

This movie starts with a bang, literally. It's the story of the two worst vampires in cinema... they dress like clowns (again literally), aren't affected by sunlight, don't have super strength, are afraid of bats, corpses and other vampires, but they do have the ability to spontaneously change attire and spawn pistols. Oh and they drink blood but seem to prefer french fries... and making out... with each other... while naked. The film starts with a nice little shootout and car chase but that must have blown a good chunk of budget because they spend a long time just walking around after that. Soon enough the girls are captured by a vampire. We know he's a vampire because he has ridiculous looking canines sticking out of his mouth and bats. Hijinks ensue... in his Gothic BDSM dungeon. Oh, and I was wrong, the girls aren't vampires, they are virgins! And you can't be a vampire if you're a virgin, says the king vampire, go find men, says the king; and they do. But one girl meets a handsome young man and decides that lesbo stuff is for squares and now she doesn't want to be a vampire. It's an age old story. By the way, it's French so prepare for armpit hair! Luckily for the actors they just had to look good because there probably aren't a dozen lines in the whole film. By all standards this is a terrible film yet I was entertained.

One of Rollin's best, although lacking the stylish gaudiness of his earlier masterpieces. However, considered as the work of an impressively productive director with about as many misses as hits, this film holds a high ranking in his oeuvre. He starts smash dab in the middle of obviously complicated unexplained criminal events, with the two female protagonists done up in ludicrous clown costumes. After the death of their fellow fugitive, they set fire to their car and wander off into the woods. Dark, young beauty Mireille Dargent stumbles into an open grave and ends up covered in opened dirt as nearby Marie-Pierre Castle watches, too scared to speak. Once unearthed, she and her friend find a seemingly abandoned castle with a decomposing body in the basement. Some uninspired vampires bring the girls to their dungeon of depravity. Dying vamp Philippe Gasté, the last of his kind in great need to make more with the help of vamp pal Anne-Dominique Toussaint, gives them a wee bite. They're somewhat uncertain about this idea of slowing turning into the blood-sucking undead, but things head in unexpected directions from here in typical Rollin style, if typical can be described as such. Although many of Rollin's women find themselves thrust unexpectedly into a world of evil, a close inspection of their characters from the beginning suggest a previous loss of innocence. Rollin's women do not succumb to these influences - indeed, they generally escape from their perilous situations - but it's important to remember that this sort of behavior may well not be old hat to them. Requiem uses extremely effective pacing, which many mistake as boring. Some extremely long takes contain little distinguishable action, denying the audience a passive film experience. This style of filmmaking instead demands total audience involvement, with only occasional instances of the glossy seduction suggested by the film's pretext. Rollin's decision to spend so much screen time on seemingly aimless wandering evokes a misguided spiritual quest, with obvious sexual connotations in the form of vampires. The experimental score by Pierre Raph, who worked with Rollin on the notorious Démoniaques, compliments this uncertain, possibly confused journey. In stark contrast to these rather profound elements stands the unnecessarily graphic sexual torture that goes on the castle's dungeon. This goes to an unnecessary extreme - I can't, for example, imagine anyone enjoying the image of a bat nestling in a woman's vagina. However, movies do need a target audience and Rollin could easily have chosen a worse genre into which to work his ideas. After this film, Toussaint began her career as a producer.. Dargent and Castle, prototypical Rollin girls, appeared in several other of his films.

Know here as Dungeon Terror, with a much flattering video cover. I found little value, and terror, if a little disturbed somewhat as to the themes of the film, where the two little teen hotties, the blonde one, yummmmm.... seemed particular young for this sort of caper, baring much skin. They become drawn to this castle, a sort of refuge for em' where it's their great fate, to become the latest victims of vampire lust. The blonde actress, is the best thing about this Z grade schlock. This movie wants to work as a horror/terror/sex flick, purposely, but there's more sex and arousal scenes then the torture/horror, some of it quite disturbing, than it offers. This is a slow, plodding, boring, and trying film on the viewer. I mean boring with a capital B. Honestly, the best part of this trash is it's first ten minutes, when the blonde gets felt up and loves it. This is one of those movie misfires from the 70's, where there's a couple of good bits, but, in between, are long stretches of yawns, with a not much happening flat story. The cover has you thinking it's somewhat of an 80's film, where there will be real sick goings on, etc. Forgive me, but that's the movie, I'd rather see, than this, but also with Marie Pierre Castel and friend on board as well.

Marie (Marie-Pierre Castel), a blonde, and Michelle (Mireille Dargent), a brunette, are two sexy young girls fleeing the cops (in an atypically action-packed opening for filmmaker Jean Rollin). They end up in the scenic but desolate French countryside where they come across an isolated chateau, occupied by an ancient vampire (Michel Delesalle) and his many devoted servants. Fundamental differences develop between our protagonists as the vampire and his flock seek to induct the girls into their fold.

Rollin wrote this himself, in apparently just one night, and it's clear that what he wanted to do was create some pure cinema. The story is thin and only deepens as the film progresses; also, Rollin refrains from use of dialogue for quite a while, until it's necessary for characters to give us some exposition.

"Requiem for a Vampire" exists in an offbeat universe where the girls are dressed in clown costumes at the outset. It provides an alluring combination of sex, depravity, and atmosphere, done in that inimitable stylish and arty Rollin manner. Some viewers are certain to take at least some pleasure from the prevalent nudity and eroticism.

Granted, as striking as many of the visuals may be, they're not always supplemented that well. Sometimes, the music score composed by Pierre Raph is too loud and jarring and just doesn't work. Rollin, as usual, doesn't concern himself with trying to make the horror particularly "scary"; note how phoney the vampire fangs look.

The performances are generally effective. Stunning leads Castel and Dargent have appeal, and engage in some lesbian coupling guaranteed to make audience members happy. Philippe Gaste is amiable as Frederic, a young man whom Castel encounters in the countryside. Delesalle delivers the best performance of the piece as a rather mild-mannered, distinguished vampire who's determined to meet his destiny with some dignity.

Due to its balance of art and exploitation, "Requiem for a Vampire" will likely remain a pivotal film for Euro-horror lovers who admire Rollins' works.

Seven out of 10.

I must say I did not expect what I saw when I rented it on Itunes. This is trash, purely made for trash digging hounds. There is no point to this film, nothing important happens, it's just strange vampire erotica.

Now since I skipped through this film don't expect me to tell you if there is a deeper meaning, I doubt there is. The only way I could describe this film is to give you a description about what happens, although talking about it in detail might be frowned upon here, so I'm going to try and keep it minimal. All that happens is vampires raping women, who seem to be enjoying it, this goes on for ten minutes straight, they don't hide anything. We get lesbian erotica twice, then prolonged nudity for the rest of the movie. This is exploitation that focuses on sex, so it is pretty much an adult film. I didn't know they were allowed to sell those on Itunes, don't be fooled into buying this, it doesn't even qualify as a film. It was a good thing I rented it, I thought it was violent trash, but boy did I get swindled. I thought this was a horror movie, but no, don't make the same mistake as I did viewing this. This is the bad kind of trash, stay away.

Some fans of exploitation should enjoy it, everyone else will hate it. If you want an adult vampire movie for whatever your reason is, go for it, just don't give them 15 dollars. I do not recommend it.

So its another pretentious art / exploitation film from Jean Rollin.

I still found lots to enjoy. From the wonderful locations to the beautiful women. Its story does not make that much sense, but thats part of the charm of these films. Given the right budget and script I always thought Rollin could make a brilliant film. As it is this is full of brilliant imagery.

The script is not up to much but fan of Euro horror will love. It should not be ignored and is probably better than anything coming out of Hollywood at the moment...

So why not give something different a go.

Jean Rollin could be so obsessed with the dreamlike erotic gothic atmosphere of his movies that the narrative often came second. Requiem For A Vampire sees him at his laziest, the French film-maker putting very little effort into a script that was purportedly written in one day and feels like it: the plot is extremely thin and there's virtually no dialogue, the two main characters not speaking until almost an hour into the film. This makes for a very strange experience, one that I found it hard to remain fully focused on until the end.

Things start out interestingly enough, with a car chase and shootout, as two attractive young women (Marie and Michelle, played by Marie-Pierre Castel and Mireille Dargent) and a male friend are pursued by the police through the French countryside (we later learn that the girls killed a man at a New Year's Eve party, which explains why they're dressed as clowns). The trio escape the authorities, although the man is shot and dies soon after. Setting out on foot, the two women wander the countryside, steal food and a motorcycle, and take refuge in a graveyard (where one is almost buried alive by oblivious gravediggers). Without a single word uttered, all of this is suitably gloomy and atmospheric and will no doubt satisfy most Rollin fans, but things go downhill after the pair chance upon a château, home to a nest of vampires who need the young virgins to perpetuate their race.

At this point, the film descends into routine Euro-sleaze, with a naked lesbian clinch between the girls, some nookie between blonde Marie and obliging stranger Frederic (Marie's thereby scuttling her chance of becoming a vampire), an orgiastic rape scene in which the bloodsuckers abuse naked women chained up in the château's dungeon, and a spot of torture as Michelle is forced to flog her friend. Somehow, Rollin manages to make all of the sex and violence extremely tedious and the final twenty minutes or so are a real test of one's patience.

Visually, the film looks great, with some striking imagery, although Rollin does overdo the coloured gel lighting at times, and the local animal hire place was clearly out of vampire bats so the director makes do with fruit bats, which don't really have the same effect.