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Requiem For A Vampire
[Redemption]
1971; color
Directed by Jean Rollin
Starring: Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe Gasté, Dominique & Louise Dhour
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Requiem For A Vampire was the first Jean Rollin film I saw, under it's American title, Caged Virgins. (I believe that Something Weird Video version is the same as this Redemption version we rented for the purposes of this review) It wasn't really until we started watching some of his other films that I began to understand this one. Which is not to say I fully understand it now, I don't. But I have come to realize, like many other infamous filmmakers, (Doris Wishman and Jess Franco are the first two that came to mind), Jean Rollin has a number of interesting, endearing, occasionally annoying little quirks and nuances and idiosyncracies that can only be picked up from watching a bunch of his films in succession - frequent use of silence, his obsession with clown make-up and costumes, the bat thing, etc. He's also a pervert who loves to film / watch lesbian sex. But, you know, he's French so that part is kind of a given. To get back to the film though, whether you call it Requiem For A Vampire, Caged Virgins on one of it's many other names, this euphemistic rose smells like it has one of the strangest opening sequences in the history of film, featuring a car chase and shoot out involving two teenaged girls who, for absolutely no reason at all, are dressed in clown costume. (One more of the harlequin variety, while the other has kind of a carny vibe to her ensemble.) Their un-costumed male accomplice - whose association to the girls is never really explained, for reasons that will become apparent in a minute - doesn't fare as well as our heroines and gets shot in short order by the unseen assailants. Then, in a slightly less confusing but still not really logical series of events the ladies pour gasoline on him (gotta love the fact that, despite his fatal gunshot wound, he is clearly still breathing) and the getaway car and collectively set them on fire. With kerosene. After that it's off to a nearby barn where they change clothes and either steal, or recover a previously hidden, getaway motorcycle. To further prove their devil-may-care bad assitude, down the road, one girl cock teases a sleazy local merchant while the other steals food from his cart. Shortly the two find themselves in a seemingly abandoned ruin of a chateau where they get naked and roll around on a fuzzy lavender bedspread. (Why anyone would leave their fuzzy lavender bedspread behind when evacuating a chateau is beyond me but let's not get too far off track.) Soon the girls are to learn this seemingly abandoned ruin of a chateau is not as abandoned as it would seem. And, at this point, we start to get to the meat, if you will, of the story. Before you know it, fangs are bared and lives are taken and all sorts of other things happen, all in the name of eternal life... or extending a family's bloodline... or horniness... or who knows what. Either way, eventually, it ends. Despite it's lack of cohesion, this movie will always have a special place in my heart, and not just for the reasons I mentioned in the earlier part of the review. (To make a long story slightly less long, when they stayed at our apartment on tour Cretin 66's Screamin' Mikey C, not understanding Mr. c14's then delicate VCR set-up, mistakenly thought he broke our machine when he found himself just about to fall asleep in the official and traditional Goldman family sleeping chair and realized he couldn't eject or stop Caged Virgins from playing. Little did he know even Mrs. c14 - aka me - could not properly work the VCR without guidance, and had the same experience with a different SWV release less than a week prior. And thank god he did! Because at that point we were finally able to convince the Kommandant to rewire the thing so you didn't need detailed written instructions to figure out how to use the play button to make a tape play and the stop button to make it stop.) This is maybe not the best place to start your decent into the realm of Rollin but it's worth visiting at least once.
—Bunny
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