Page 175 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

horror director. The supernatural themes that he adopts may be associated with the horror genre, but
they do not conform with its narrative or stylistic conventions.
Similarly, his works contain erotic elements and plentiful nudity, but cannot be classified as
pornographic. His influences too are less cinematic and more painterly or poetic. If he does reflect a
cinematic tradition, it looks far earlier than most of his contemporaries. His debut fantasy Le viol du
vampire (1968), released in the heady days of the Paris riots in May 1968, may have caused a scandal,
but only because the revolting students and critics did not understand it or its use of cinematic
language.
The vampires portrayed in the film were unconventional and far removed from the accepted
representation - the Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee or Max Schreck models, resolutely evil and anti-
Christian. Instead, an Amazonian-style vampire queen dominated the screen, four vampire girls were
treated mainly as victims in the narrative (rather than aggressors) and one explanation for vampirism
(there are many) pointed to drug-enhanced hypnosis as opposed to any form of devilry. In many
debut films, art often derives from accident and Le viol du vampire's cast and crew not only had a
minimal budget, but were also very inexperienced. Many scenes were improvised. It was originally
made as a short but at the suggestion of his producer, Rollin filmed additional footage to release the
film as a feature, and boldly resurrected the cast members he had killed off at the end of Part One
(another aspect that infuriated contemporary audiences). In other hands this would be a cheat, but
Rollin imbues it with the logic of the penny-dreadful, of Sax Rohmer and of the Saturday morning
serial.
In this respect the black-and-white cinematography helps bridge the connection to Saturday
serials, although in subsequent films Rollin finds his feet as a master of lurid colour compositions. At
times he also resorts to fashionable film language (jump cuts, deliberate violation of the 180-degree
rule, irregular spatial continuity, and so on). In later films he would retain some instances of these
elements but reject others. There is, for example, a well-constructed car chase sequence that looks back
to Godard's A Bout de Souffle (1959) but Rollins techniques would later show little reliance on other
filmmakers and more on painters or perhaps cine-poets, such as Sergei Paradjanov or Jean Cocteau.
Le violdu vampire provides a template for much of his subsequent work.

PULP FOUNDATIONS

Mystery is there because the poetic image has a reality of its own'
- Rene Magritte

The pulp nature of Rollins debut would feed not only into his narratives but also into many of the
visual aspects of his work. The opening shot from Requiem pour un vampire (1972) features two girls
and a gun blazing from the back of a stolen car. It perfectly illustrates the basic thrusts in Rollins work
- two girls, pulp plot, exquisite composition and dynamism. That the first half of the film is almost
entirely without dialogue also provides a link to the silent serial director Louis Feulliade. The second
half deals with quite lengthy and contrived plot explanations and this shows the leanings towards
the popular narratives of the 1920s and 1930s, especially the work of Sax Rohmer. Indeed Rohmer's

161