Page 13 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

For me, a cinema which permits these meanderings is the only real cinema. It is the European
cinema I want to make and write about. It is also the type of cinema that Alternative Europe discusses.
In this cinema, nothing is more normal than a woman coming out of a clock at the last stroke of
midnight; nothing more normal than a coffin on a bed; walking in a garden and hearing the cry of
the female vampire; two clown-girls trying to escape across a field. What else? This is the kind of
cinema which permits a half-smile at the sight of a naked woman; a blind man drowning in the sea;
the naked corps of Dracula's fiancee covered by roses; the clock becoming Dracula's grave. Indeed,
'the Presbyterian house has lost nothing of its appeal; the garden nothing of its clarity and shadows'
(Gaston Leroux in The Mystery of the Yellow Chamber). I tried to use this phrase, these premises, in
all of my films.
I will leave it for you to decide if I have succeeded.

Jean Rollin
April 2004