THE LAKE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1981)

  Better known as ZOMBIE LAKE(or ZOMBIES LAKE on some prints) this is a movie so crappy that allegedly director Jess Franco turned it down(who then quickly went on to make the equally crappy OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES). It's been credited to Jean Rollin, at least partially, Spanish director Julian de Laserna is blamed for about half of the film, though this is his only credit. The main problem with this movie is that the pacing is so dreadfully slow it's almost as if it's daring the viewer to remain interested in anything that's going on. On the plus side there's plenty of nudity(at least in the unclothed version; all the nudie scenes were also shot with clothing, so watch out for that edition!) and maybe a few laughs at how badly done everything is(including how every time we see the lake from underwater it magically transforms into a swimming pool!). You get very minimal gore as these creatures only bite the necks of their victims like vampires. This is one of the only zombie films I've seen where 2 zombies fight each other. Sadly this scene, like pretty much everything else here, is shot in super slow-motion. I have watched this more times than I can recall though outside of the boobs and bare ladies crotches on display I'm not sure why. 

 This did play one year on Halloween on a local UHF channel and if you think watching this movie uncut is bad imagine it without any nudity and commercials thrown in to slow it down even more!

 

TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES (1997)

 I coulda sworn I'd seen this movie before. I even mentioned it when writing about director Jean Rollin's vaguely similar CAGED VIRGINS way back in 2012 where I stated that this was a better version of one of his vampire flicks. Well I was clearly thinking about something else because after watching this last night I have no recollection of an earlier viewing and sadly this turned out to actually be a way worse example of his bloodsucking-chick opuses. I will give the film some points for having a few unique points for making our titular vamps blind during the day and it does get deeply philosophical about life from time to time in a pretentious art-flick-kind of way. Unfortunately it never ascends to anything other than a clunky journey of two sad murderous gals which is something I may have appreciated more in my goth youth. The dubbing also does not help in conveying anything serious. There are some pretty unintentionally silly dialogue bits by a werewolf-lady character, a corpse-eating lady ghoul, an older winged vampire lady and pretty much everyone that shows up including 70s porn star and Rollins regular Brigette Lahaie in a brief appearance. I can't help but think that if Jess Franco had made this it would have been wall-to-wall sex scenes with a large helping of lesbianism thrown in which are all things that this film sorely lacks. In fact the nudity here is solely confined to one brief flash and a little blood-being licked off our orphans naked bodies and the rest is all maudlin navel-gazing.
 I do own a few more later-period Rollins movies on DVD to get through which I am dreading a bit since clearly his high-points lay in his 70s and 80s output.

THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE (1968)

 This is Jean Rollin's first movie and while I'm generally a fan of his films this is also probably my least favorite of his works. To be fair, technically this is two short films stuck together to make a feature so that helps explain the disjointed feel that it has. It's also probably the most artsy of Rollin's movies that I've seen and acts as a sort-of unfinished blueprint for the themes he would explore in his future endeavors. There are two positive things that stand out about this. One, of course, is the ample female nudity on display. It seems that vampire women in this world cannot figure out how to close their tops over their nipples. The second is this awesome paper mache? and bedsheets giant makeshift bat that shows up near the end of the movie which might be one of the goofiest things ever. Besides these two assets this is a slow movie to plow through. For Eurotrash/Rollin-completists only. AKA QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES and VAMPIRE WOMEN



Still better than CGI!:

LIPS OF BLOOD (1975)

 Jean Rollin churned out a whole bunch of these sexy French female vampire flicks. This one I would say is about average for him. It has the dream-like pacing where Rollin is seemingly in no hurry to tell his story. It has ample nudity from all the vamp-chicks, it has ridiculous neck-biting scenes and equally absurd stakes through the heart scenes. It would be easy to dismiss this except that it's all done so fucking poetically and artistically that it burns it's memory into my brain. Of course that memory is also jumbled up with all the other Rollin nudie-vampire movies but it's still there.
 The plot, which doesn't really seem to be all that important(it's all about the atmosphere), has to do with a guy who's trying to find this gal who was nice to him when he was young. He ends up running around Paris and unleashing some blood-sucking naked ladies. There's one part where he stops off to watch a theatrical-showing of Rollin's earlier THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES, even though the poster outside advertises his THE NUDE VAMPIRE. I haven't seen either of these yet but they both look delightful.
 There's apparently an X-rated version of this titled SUCK ME, VAMPIRE which seems pretty nutty.

A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1973)

 After watching 2 different versions of this Jess Franco Euro-trash epic over the last 2 days I'm still not sure if I would say I actually like this film or not but it is at least an interesting viewing experience. It's the story of a family of weirdies who have a young gal, Cristine von Blanc, our titular virgin, come live with them. This family includes Franco himself as a mumbly-mouthed maniac, a couple of chicks who might be vampires of some sort that use scissors instead of fangs to extract blood, and Howard Vernon as the creepy head of the family. It's basically the chronicles of the mistreatment of a naïve blonde gal. The better version, with the VIRGIN AMONG... title, has a couple of dream sequences with zombies that were filmed by Jean Rollin, and who better to film dream segments than the guy who's every movie plays like one long dream? There are numerous claims on the internet that these bits are taken from Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE but I don't think that's true. Either way these aren't your typical flesh-eating killer zombies, they basically just menacingly stalk and mess up your hair which is a little disappointing to say the least. There's also a rape scene and an erect penis that pops up in this version. This wasn't the original cut though but actually a 1981 re-release version made to capitalize on the zombie craze at the time. The original, which was titled CHRISTINA, PRINCESS OF EROTICISM, is shorter, has no zombies and just focuses more on the soft-core sex stuff and has a bit with a giant black dildo that rules the universe or something. While this is essential viewing for Franco-fanatics, normal, well-adjusted humans will most likely be repelled by the leisurely pace and illogical weirdness of it all.
 This was eventually released on VHS in a severely cut version with no nudity as ZOMBIE 4: A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD to make it part of that series and there's probably a few more cuts of this out there but since life comes to an end at some point I don't think I can watch all of them.

DEMONIACS (1974)

 Not to be confused with Jess Franco's DEMONIAC this is a Jean Rollin-directed tale of a couple of young gals who get raped and killed by a gang of ship-wrecking pirates. After being beaten to death our victims go on to come back as ghostly apparitions of some sort who then go on to gain some supernatural powers thanks to a lady-clown and some hippie guy on an island who introduce them to a helpful and handsome demon who imbues his powers by getting bare-assed naked and humping away. These powers include some CARRIE-like telekinesis.
 Basically what you get here is a sort-of  ghostly/surrealistic rape/revenge flick. Rollin fills it with some weird imagery, strange clunky acting choices and a very artsy ending. As usual in his Eurotrash epics there's plenty of nakedness and dream-like pacing. For hardcore Eurosleaze-lovers only. AKA CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD(not to be confused with the re-titled version of Mario Bava's KILL, BABY, KILL)


                                                 

                                                   VHS goodness!:

SCHOOLGIRL HITCHHIKERS (1973)

 Well there's no hitchhiking or school in this but at least there are girls. These two gals come upon an abandoned house so naturally they decide to get down to some lesbian antics and have a sleepover. Then they run into some mobsters who they have sex with. From here you get the feeling that this might turn into a roughie of some sort but it never really does, there is some fairly mild torture(ie; whipping and nipple pinching) but it just sorta gets bogged down in a silly story about missing jewels. There is a gunfight at one point but since this was directed by Eurotrash cult fav Jean Rollin, who doesn't shoot action scenes very well, it comes off very oddly staged and not very action-packed. Maybe this woulda been better if there were a couple of vampires or zombies thrown in like some of Rollin's better films but as it is it's pretty dumb. Also every character does stupid brainless things so it's hard to relate to any of them luckily it's a short film and there's lots of naked French gals. AKA HIGH SCHOOL HITCH HIKERS

FASCINATION (1979)

 Another Jean Rollin-directed Eurotrashy vampirish nightmare film.  This one is really almost a vampire movie since our "villains" don't have any magical powers and are actually just rich lady blood fetishists.  Starring Brigitte Lahaie, who also did awesomely titled porn films like HITCHHIKERS IN HEAT and looks very cute here in some iconic sickle wielding murder scenes, this is worth checking out for fans of Rollins' dream-like horror tales or just some slightly artsy lesbian antics with some blood thrown in.  The one thing that sorta brings it down a little is the fx which consist mostly of just little smears of blood to signify gaping wounds which would probably piss off gore fans but for people who can appreciate more than that this it's worth a look.

DUNGEON OF VIRGINS (1973)

 This French Jean Rollin horror flick starts off with two lady clowns and some dude escaping from what I'm guessing is the law.  The whole thing starts right out in the middle of the action without giving you any back-story and from there it unexpectedly becomes a vampire movie when the two young women(their friend was shot and killed) end up at an old dungeon in the middle of nowhere.  There's whipping, bondage, blood drinking(of course), lesbian antics and plenty of female nudity to ogle and the main vampire fellow sorta reminds me of Udo Kier from BLOOD FOR DRACULA because they both seem kind of pathetic and feeble.  It's wrapped up in a non-ending of an ending.
 As with most of these Rollin-directed films the creepy atmosphere is the main draw even above the story.  He's made better vamp movies including TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES but this one is similar enough and recommended for hardcore Eurotrash aficionados.
 The VHS tape I have of this calls it CAGED VIRGINS on the box but the film has the DUNGEON  screen-card.  There are a whole slew of other aliases including VIRGINS AND VAMPIRES and DUNGEON OF TERROR but I think the most common one is REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE.

THE LIVING DEAD GIRL (1982)

 Most people of a certain age probably know this as a Rob Zombie song but before it was that it was a French Jean Rollin zombie flick.  Rollin, who was sort of the French version of Jess Franco, took his stab at the living dead genre here and came up with something pretty unique and like most all of his films it incorporates that dreamlike quality that gives it that supernatural feel.
 It seems that some folks decide to dump chemical waste barrels right next to a corpse-filled catacombs and  during an earthquake our title character springs back to life.  She's a pretty strange example of a zombie since she mainly just pokes people in the neck with her long fingernails and drinks their blood (one dude even gets the ol' Moe Howard eye-gouge special!)  There is also some flesh-munching if you enjoy that sort of thing.  None of these people return to form an army of the undead as usually happens in these types of films and instead our zombie gal gets an old friend to help her get victims to snack on.  While some people might find the pace a little weird in Rollins films this one moves along pretty well and there's plenty of gore and ample euro-nudity on display throughout which helps.
 There was an extra gory French semi-sequel in '87 called REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD GIRLS but I don't recall it being very good besides the gore-content.

This is more of a collection of death scenes than any sort of an actual trailer:

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (1980)

 Jean Rollin is up there with Jess Franco as one of my favorite European cult directors.  I find that his movies work best when viewed at 3AM while in a half-awake state probably due to the dream-like qualities that exist in them.  Most of his films deal with vampires or zombies or something supernatural.  This one really doesn't have any of that stuff going on but it does still have that other-worldly sensibility that his best films do.
 The story concerns a woman(Brigette Lahaie) who escapes from a hospital and gets picked up by a lucky fellow who takes her home and bangs her all night.  It seems that Brigette can't remember much of anything that's happened to her and also repeatedly forgets everything after a little while over and over again, sort of like that movie MEMENTO but without all the bullshit Hollywood trappings of that one.  She eventually gets taken back to the hospital and we find out what it's all about.  Some of the patients here do act like zombies(without any of the flesh-eating antics) so I guess that's why it's usually shoe-horned into that category.
  Most of the reviews I've seen of this compare it to an early Cronenberg film and that's pretty accurate.  Former French porn-star Lahaie looks amazingly hot as usual and we gets lots of nakedness from her.  You also get a bloody bit where a bald rapist guy gets a hammer to the skull and someone commits suicide by jamming scissors into their eyeballs which seems like a terrible way to off yourself.
 This one's worth checking out if you want to see a more down to earth realistic example of a Rollin flick with  a mystery/drama plot mixed-in with the horror elements.

THE GRAPES OF DEATH (1978)

Jean Rollin has made some of the most boring movies ever (ZOMBIE LAKE anyone?), so it's not very surprising that what you get here is another one of the most boring, slowest moving zombie movies ever made. I expect zombies to be slow but why does even the heroine wanders around so friggin' slowly?  I use the term "zombies' very loosely as well, since they're more like the crazy nutsos from George Romero's THE CRAZIES in all actuality. There are 3 good gore scenes on display here but besides that there's nothing but very slow-paced boredom to entice the viewer. You get a decapitation, a crucifixion and a pitchforking which I guess is better than nothing but only slightly.

Don't drink the wine!: