RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE (1967)
(a.k.a. LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE)
Article #403 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-22-2002
Posting date: 9-15-2002

Let’s see, there are these four vampire women, one of whom is blind, and some strangers show up and try to cure them and then villagers show up and kill them and everyone dies. Then, in part two, the queen shows up and everyone comes back to life, and…

This is the first feature length film by cult film director Jean Rollin, a name that meant nothing to me when I started this project; it means something now, but I can’t say what. He specialized in arty, erotic, and gory films about vampires. This particular arty, erotic, and gory film about vampires was originally an arty, erotic, and gory short about vampires to which he added fifty more arty, erotic, and gory minutes. The result is a (and I’ll let you fill in the adjectives from here on out) mess, as you might expect. I can’t exactly say I was bored, but I can’t exactly say I was entertained, or much of anything else either; ninety minutes passed and it was all over. That’s the trouble with films like this for me; I emerge from them without them having any noticeable affect on me other than having taken up time. I’m tempted to talk about its plotlessness, but that isn’t strictly true; it has a story (two stories, in fact; one for each half, and I don’t think they necessarily have much to do with each other), and I get a hint of some interesting ideas here, particularly in the second half, but the artiness has a way of forcing me to hold my distance and keeps me just bored enough to not want to bother to sort things out. I guess if I want to see an arty vampire flick, I’ll opt for VAMPYR.