Jean Rollin 7 [Le viol du vampire]

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dépêche de David Hudson (mubi 16/12) :

«Fangoria has learned of the passing of beloved French erotic-horror filmmaker Jean Rollin. The director died last night, after a long illness. He was 72. Fans of European genre films, especially those coming out of the free-thinking 1970s, are no doubt aware of the work of Rollin — a talented, gentle poet of sensual horror, a man who made personal, lush and haunting works that were often ghettoized alongside the efforts of some of his more crass contemporaries and yet almost always offered something more, something richer and more melancholy.»

«Rollin's movies frequently tell conventional horror stories, wrote James Newman for Images in 2000. The Shiver of the Vampires, for example, gives us one of the most familiar of all horror plots: a newlywed couple spends an evening at a castle and discovers it is crawling with vampires. But Rollin tells his stories in the most unconventional of ways. In Shiver, the vampires become intellectual hippies who spout bizarre theories about the history of religion in Europe. His movies contain elements of horror cinema, but Rollin insists he does not make horror films. Not surprisingly, because his movies tend to defy the expectations of audiences, reactions to his movies can be volatile. His first full-length film, The Rape of the Vampire, was greeted with violent protests in Paris.»

«His pictures are an odd, uncommercial blend of pornography and Gothic horror, entrancing and addictive to the select few», wrote David Kalat, introducing a special issue of Kinoeye devoted to Rollin.

See also the official site, the Wikipedia entry and the first part of a French documentary on Rollin.

[ source - David Hudson ]