Rollin and the Female Vampire

Dark is the night, passing is the fog, the breeze picking up, some animals voicing loudly at a distance, Isolde leading her bride into the cemetery to be initiated into her fold, her two female slaves with chalices in hand with drink offered as a ritualistic indoctrination. The disrobing of the bride (she replaced—or Isolde had her replace—the bridal gown for a robe of silk), her naked flesh exposed, and her throat available to the female vampire.

Now vampire purists may balk that the vampire bite was weak and rather lacking in its proper ferocity, but I think it was more about Rollin’s staging than the importance of the blood drink being too gruesome (check out his Two Orphan Vampires for an interestingly lengthy blood drink for comparison). I think he wanted the vampire kissing her new bride, the naked woman and her lovely body, the gradual closing in to the neck, and the posing of the bite. The naked body collapsing on a grave, posed in death (but not unpleasant, but sexually provocative), as Isolde joins her girl slaves to look at their handiwork; Rollin sets it all up, I believe, as it emerged shot-to-shot in his mind and fantasy. I think few truly had such an opportunity to direct exactly what perhaps existed in mind and fantasy. To get a certain collective to join him in his vision and adhere to it, Rollin was able to bring to life the kind of film he imagined. No money or time schedule (from what I have read) available, to accomplish anything close to a desired vision is impressive. He’s an acquired taste. His work is polarizing because he has his own way of contributing to the vampire genre, and what you normally consider typical and usual Rollin wants to warp and shape in his own image. He would go on to choose other topics (mental asylum, for instance), but the female vampire seems to be inexorably linked to Rollin’s work. To some, because of his handling of the vampire, he’s persona non grata with certain fans who think he does nothing but set up shots he himself is proud of while others just wish action moved. But the genre has a lot to offer, and Rollin’s work will find (and has found) its audience.