Brides of the Impalers

When I got back from Europe earlier this year the first thing I did was pick out Edward Lee's novel Brides of the Impaler, which y wife had given to me as a birthday present some time ago. I've always been a fan of the frenzied writing of Lee's and his uber-sexualized Lovecraftian fantasy-horror. But this time, I was in for something slightly different. Opening to the Acknowledgments page, I was a little surprised to see these names mentioned as the main inspirational source for this novel: Jess Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Paul Naschy, and Jean Rollin, “...whose macabre and brilliant films have enthralled me for years and whose manipulation of imagery and atmosphere have proven a polarizing influence.” Not only were these filmmakers thanked, they were the first ones to be thanked in the long list of appreciative credit. The book itself in a contemporary, unique and highly energized twist on the Dracula legends that sees The Nun appear in modern-day New York City, recruiting ex-drug addicts/street girls into a supernatural order. Filled with sacrificial implements, and general blood-splattering (and again, heavily sexualized) mayhem this plot half plays out as a police thriller (probably another nod to the Italian Poliziotteschi flicks of the seventies) on top of the religious splatter-horror. It's an awesome ride from author Lee, as usual, who penned one of my all-time favorite novels (if you can find an old copy grab it!) titled “The Coven”, from the early nineties, I believe.

While Lee may have been inspired by this handful of creative genre-warping film directors, his novel nevertheless is pure Lee, not really reminiscent of Franco or his cinematic cohorts. No, for that I had to go back and revisit the likes of Return of the Blind Dead (Ossorio) and Vampiros Lesbos. Not that summer's back with us in full force I find my thoughts swimming back to Soledad Miranda, Ewa Stromberg, Vampiros Lesbos, and She Killed in Ecstasy. Although this cinematic style is not exactly present in Lee's book, I can easily see how one is inspired by all of this. There is something beautiful about the cheap film stock and bright location shots of these stories, not to mention the talent and charm in front of and behind the cameras, which inevitably tends to bleed through.

And on yet another sad note, I'm writing this on the day (one of my only mornings off all week) that Sage Stallone was discovered to have passed away suddenly, a man who unfortunately might me more known to people as the son of Sylvester Stallone, but who actually co-founded the film company Grindhouse Releasing and was responsible for bringing cinephiles films like Fulci's The Beyond, Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust and Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox to the North American DVD market. At 36, he's too soon gone on to join most of the above-mentioned filmmakers and talented actors, RIP. --V

Jean Rollin III

I have not been, I'm sorry to say, in much of a Jess Franco state of mind lately. I've moved back from the UK and I was certainly glad to have access back top my stacks of retro Shriek Show and Blue Underground DVDs. Loads of Franco in there, that's for sure. Unfortunately, my limited leisure time on the DVD spinner has been filled more with the likes of John Carpenter, Brain DePalma and Umberto Lenzi (although the mannequins in Spasmo always reminded me of Franco's sixties masterpiece Succubus)

Apparently, the folks in charge of cult blu-ray distribution haven't had much of a mind on Franco, either, instead focusing on releasing the early stages of Jean Rollin's catalogue in glorious hi-def. It was sure nice to see these bad boys up in my Amazon recommendations...

If these discs do well in the face of the inevitable complete disappearance of the tangible media, more Rollin titles have been promised on blu-ray. Personally, as a collector, I'm both a little saddened and excited to think that this might be our last chance to own actual print copies of these, and many of our other favorite films.

-V.

The Escapees: or, a women-in-a-mental-asylum triple-feature

It all started a few months ago when I had the opportunity to watch John Carpenter's new flick The Ward and it has come around to a little-known (to me, anyway) Jean Rollin flick called The Escapees, when I came across the Salvation UK DVD quite unintentionally in a little place off of Charing Cross Road in London. Not only was I not looking for this particular DVD, I actually had no idea the film even existed. I was intrigued, but not quite enough to delve into a blind purchase. Well, not immediately, anyway.

It was early this November when I saw Carpenter's The Ward, and it was a decent enough experience. After the disappointing Ghosts of Mars (his last actual feature film) and the completely unrecognizable-as-Carpenter Pro-Life, I went into The Ward with an understandable amount of trepidation. What was interesting, right off the bat, is that this is the first John Carpenter flick I can remember seeing that wasn't shot in Cinemascope. Nope, this sucker was 1.85:1. That seemed alright to me because the last thing of Carpenter's I'd seen and enjoyed was his Masters of Horror television episode Cigarette Burns, and what the opening scenes of The Ward felt like to me was that he was capturing the more intimate, smaller-aspect feeling of Masters of Horror. However, it did not end there... The story of The Ward is basically about a young woman (Amber Heard) who is committed to an insane asylum where some pretty strange goings-ons are transpiring amidst an alarmingly lengthening list of missing female patients. Set-up as a horror mystery, this turns out to be one of Carpenter's best films of recent times – certainly since the killer In the Mouth of Madness (which is, oddly enough, another flick about people going insane). There are some truly inspired scenes in The Ward, even evoking such Carpenter classics as The Thing and Halloween. However, before I get too carried away, The Ward won't be for everyone. Even as it evokes classic Carpenter is isn't classic Carpenter, it's an amiable enough effort that some people (myself excluded) might find predictable and somewhat by-the-numbers. I thought it was a good take on a classic Ten Little Indians scenario. Of course, the sub-plot of the film is leading lady Amber Heard trying to get the fuck out of there. Much like the opening premise of Jean Rollin's The Escapees...

And this is basically the only plot-thrust in Zack Snyder's otherwise completely plotless Sucker Punch, which I had the pleasure of viewing just this December. After reading some horrendous reviews of his first self-penned directorial effort, I steered clear of this sucker for ages. So what changed my mind? Well, that was thanks to discovering the existence of The Escapees, of course. I couldn't get it out of my head that this overblown Hollywood mega-budgeted film had essentially lifted the plot from a little old Jean Rollin flick from the early eighties. I'd say Snyder's flick is even more exploitive than Rollin's, at least Rollins has a gorgeous dreamlike narrative that swings it into the usual realm of arthouse fantasy. Snyder's film, for all its cold awesomeness, is pure exploitation fantasy as a handful of forgettably-written young female characters spend the entire film swinging from one reality to the next in order to ultimately escape the mental asylum they've all been committed to. It's a non-linear symphony of war machines, burlesque performances and fetishistic Bedlam narratives, intertwined with no real purpose other than eye candy. The film exists as a video-game puzzle, and while it is mostly cool to sit through, it's a puzzle that exists only because it is a puzzle (with eye candy), with no satisfying characters, plot or conclusion. In fact, the conclusion not only does not make sense, but it fails to justify the entire film. Still, I might give this one a second chance in the future. In the meantime, there area better things to experience...

Like Rollin's film, where two girls committed to an asylum decide to escape. This actually happens pretty much immediately, so this isn't quite the girls-trapped-in-a-mental-asylum adventure I had been expecting. However, much like Rollin's earlier (and highly awesome) Requiem for a Vampire, this is a two-girls-on-the-run odyssey. After fleeing the asylum, they hook up with a band of traveling musicians/strippers who put on stripping road-shows behind railroad tracks. They eventually befriend some of the biker audience members, and the two girls, whose personalities clash and are extremely at odds when the road adventure begins, become friends. That's really it, there's not much more to say about this subtle, mature and surprisingly sweet story. The Escapees is not bizarre like Requiem for a Vampire, it's actually a straight-ahead road story about the two girls' growing friendship. In fact, there's barely even any nudity in this Rollin picture, and the brief scenes of sex are mild and non-exploitative, serving to contribute to the characters and the story. And in fact, this might be Rollin's best work. It's an engaging film and wonderfully shot. At nearly an hour and fifty minutes, one of Rollin's longer flicks (ignore the printed running time on the back of the Redemption DVD box 'cause it's wrong), the time really just flew by as I wallowed in the lushness of the movie. At the end, in true Rollin genre style, it does get wacky as a botched lesbian rape attempt (featuring Rollin regular babe Brigitte Lahaie) turns into an all out machine-gun shoot-out with an army of cops, and somehow, winds up with the two girls walking into the sunset. I'd have to say that this is probably the best acting I've ever seen in one of Rollin's films as well. I'd like to call The Escapees a minor gem, but to me, it's much more than minor. A hidden gem, or a criminally neglected gem, seemingly forgotten about in Rollin's usual catalogue of the fantastique. But a real gem. I urge Rollin fans to check it out.

-V.

Jean Rollin II

I feel inspired to continue on with this “Immoral Tales” series through this blog, and fully in the spirit of doing just that, I had my first look at Jean Rollin’s “Iron Rose” last night, a little tale circa 1973. I was pleasantly surprised by this film, it’s not quite like the artistic and erotic aesthetics of Lips of Blood or Fascination, but is has a solid attraction and beauty all of it its own.

The story opens up on a beach where along the tide, a young girl is mesmerized by a black iron rose that has washed up on the edge of the rocky shore. Rollin shoots a lot on the beach, and the beginning of this film looks like it could’ve picked up mere moments after the finale of The Nude Vampire. As we follow this young woman, we begin to get into a surprisingly mundane (for a Rollin film, anyway) aspect of her life, in a school classroom, where she is being wooed by a not particularly handsome fella. I suppose he has his own charms, and hey, he is European and it's the seventies. He finally talks her into going on a bike ride with him, and they wind up at a gorgeous country cemetery, one of the kind you’d really only be able to fully appreciate in Europe, and Rollin does a mesmerizing job of bringing the beauty of the cemetery to the screen. As you might have been able to tell from the description thus far, this film is very deliberately paced, Rollin is far more concerned with cinematic aesthetics than with creating any kind of intricate plotting. The plot itself, from this point, is simple – boy wants to fuck around, talks the girl into it, they get stuck/lost in the cemetery after dark, they get in a fight, and ultimately she goes mad – yet the plot possesses the power to hypnotize, and the deliberation of the plot (or really, it's the deliberation of the characters' actions – as in walking around aimlessly, hopping over gravestones, etc. – while the plot is pretty much put on hold altogether) is nearly completely overshadowed by the simple fluidity of the film itself. None of the physical meanderings ever seem like they're in place to stretch time, rather the meandering of the characters through the film's timeline seems to be exactly what the film is about. It is a gorgeous sight to behold, in a slightly bizarre sort of way.

The visuals, especially towards the last third of the short 75-minute movie, evoked for me thoughts of the French new wave films from the mid-to-late sixties, the beautiful handheld camerawork and the juxtaposing cutting, and the whole sure-handed execution of the entire thing really started to give The Iron Rose the feeling of a sort of new wave horror film.

The more I sit with this simple film, the more I think it might be creeping up there with my tip-top Euroshock favorites.

-V

Actually, Jean Rollin.

I thought long and hard before writing this post, after years (it’s been since 2006!) of posting exclusively on Jess Franco and his amazing –from various points of view- films, I never, ever waned to post something of another filmmaker on this site in a way that takes a diversion from Jess Franco. I believe this does not fall into the category of diversion, rather, after having just seen The Nude Vampire, I think that Jean Rollin shares a special place along side of Jess Franco, and I’m not just talking about the time they co-directed that horrifically abysmal “Zombie Lake”!

To further this train of thought, I also own a comprehensive and nearly encyclopedic essay on the films of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, José Ramón Larraz and three other European directors who were extremely prolific in the Euroshock and erotic sub-genres. The book in question, before I forget to mention it, is “Immoral Tales”, and I’m sad to say it’s been out of print for a while, as far as I know. I was lucky enough to find a copy at a mere 25% of (not off) the cover price at a local bookseller who was (also sadly) going out of business a few years ago. This is actually the book that got me into both Jess Franco and Jean Rollin in the first place. (When it came to Jose, I’d have to credit Anchor Bay for releasing his kick-ass 1974 flick “Vampyres” as the means to my introduction to this director.) At any rate, as these fine European directors share space (whole chapters, in fact) in Immoral Tales, I have thus found it fitting, not contradictory, to include some words about them once in a while on this platform. I hope, as much as I’m sure, Jess Franco wouldn’t mind.

And after finally seeing Rollin’s The Nude Vampire last night, which showcases the talents of a young French actress who bares a shocking resemblance to Miley Cyrus (did I even spell that right?), I could see the erotic influences here that were also evident in Franco’s Blue Rita and She Killed in Ecstasy, as well as… hold on, here… Francis Ford Coppola’s envisioning of Dracula. Yes, as soon as I watched The Nude Vampire, I knew exactly where I’d seen those sheer pastel dresses wrapped around our vampiresses' naked bodies while they ran around the exterior sets. And although the wardrobe choices in The Nude Vampire (as with many others of Rollin’s films) were much more transparent than the ones worn by Winona Ryder or Sadie Frost in Dracula, at least Coppola had the good sense to soak the actresses in rain as they ran around their nineteenth century hedge maze.

Granted, The Nude Vampire seems burdened with being one of Rollin’s earlier works, as he seems to have not quite ironed out the fluidity, eroticism and groovy arthouse presentation his later (even in the more immediate sense) films achieved. The Nude Vampire is pretty swell, sure, but for myself, even being a little familiar with Rollin’s work, it just made me think back in the first time I saw Fascination, Night of the Hunted and Requiem for a Vampire. Even his themes of Vampirism in The Nude Vampire are needlessly heavy-handed and create too many expository scenes, especially at the end, giving this movie more the feeling of American b-movie than French arthouse eroticism. Do I still think it’s worth a look? Surely I do. It is fun to watch. Then again, would we expect anything less than that from a movie titled The Nude Vampire?

-V.