THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES – Jean Rollin was near the start of his career in highly ornamented goth vamp surrealism when he made ‘Shiver Of The Vampires’. The fact that he’d just exited the sixties is obvious; it’s not only the eye-popping colouration that smacks of pop psychedelia, but the whole aesthetic package, right down to a score that sounds like the result of a face-off between early Floyd and the Velvets. As ever, Rollin takes what I think of as a painterly approach to his subject, often content to linger on still images of skulls, candles, paintings and naked vamps. “I’ve got a camera, and here’s something that I’m into” - that’s one thing I really like about him, just the sense that very often his films almost seem like excuses for him to play with various combinations of his stock repertoire of obsessions, and here, in addition to the aforementioned goth accoutrements, we have the deserted chateau, the bleak beach, the vampire twins, all familiar from loads of his other movies. What’s different is the tone. My default idea about Rollin is something like “dreamy, enigmatic, long silences, nude vamp posing next to a grandfather clock etc etc.” This is more humorous though, there’s a playfulness to it that is misted over in his other stuff, and it sometimes even feels a bit zany, with sudden lol moments such as when premier vamp Isolde reveals her spiky bra, or when a couple of the others deliver long, declamatory speeches that sound absurdly pompous. With Rollin, what frustrates is the same as what attracts – it’s as cool as f@ck watching sylphlike ingenues carry oversized candelabras around in nicely lit passageways to a twangy psyche garage punk soundtrack, but can you make an entire film that is basically just that? But actually, Jean Rollin proves how ace he is just by trying.
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