Fascination: The Celluloid Dreams Of Jean Rollin

The presbytery has lost none of its charm, nor the garden its colours.

Fiancée of Dracula

 

“Disguise those corpses, destroy their clothes, and make sure that they remain dead forever. Don't forget, they are vampires.”

The Rape of the Vampire

 

May 1968. Parisian streets are awash with violence and public unrest. In a small cinema, a surreal vampire film causes a riot: The audience smashes up the auditorium, tear out the seats, and chase the film’s director onto the street with violent intent. This is the premiere screening of Jean Rollin’s feature debut, The Rape of the Vampire.

An outsider of French cinema, Rollin’s films are unique and dreamlike. They offer tales of mystery and nostalgia -- of lost love, childhood, obsolescence and seductive female vampires with a thirst for blood and sex. Rollin made strange, evocative and deeply personal horror films. But he was also at the heart of the French pornographic revolution after the abolishment of censorship, and discovered porn queen Brigitte Lahaie, later to star in many of his films.

Funding his own projects, Rollin defiantly made the films he wanted make and in so doing created a fantastique genre unlike any other. Films like The Nude Vampire, The Living Dead Girl, Fascination and The Grapes of Death are now celebrated as the work of an auteur, one who confounds preconceived notions of what constitutes ‘Eurotrash’ cinema.

This book is the first of its kind in the English language. It is devoted to the director and all his films, across all genres. Written with full co-operation from Jean Rollin, shortly before his death in 2010, it contains exclusive interviews and archive material.