Tag: Jean Rollin

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Zombie Lake (1981): The Worst Naked-Women-Skinny-Dipping-with-Zombies Eurotrash Movie!

Say you are hosting a party that’s gone on waaay too long, and you want people to leave, but you do not want to appear rude. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Just pop a copy of Zombie Lake (1981) into your trusty DVD player (you still have a DVD player, right?). In five minutes, everyone will have fled and you’ll be all alone! Of course, you might stay alone the rest of your life because nobody will ever talk to you again, but that’s another problem.

Is Zombie Lake that bad? Yes. Yes, it is. Director Jean Rollin disavowed this movie. Mr. Rollin, one of the guiding lights of 1970’s Eurotrash cinema, has also directed porn and even filmed a scene featuring a man french-kissing a woman’s severed head. 

Zombie Lake begins with a young lady who skinny-dips in a lake, ignoring the omnipresent signs that say DON’T SWIM HERE. She leaps right into the water, which is full of frogs, leeches, snapping turtles, and Nazi zombies. Sure enough, a Nazi zombie rises from the scummy depths and pulls her down.

Once awakened, the zombies decide they deserve some fun and shamble from the muddy waters of the lake to wreak havoc at a nearby French village. Why? Cue the flashback! Ten years ago, an occupying German soldier rescued a female villager during World War II. 

They have a beautiful moment together in a barn where the camera focuses on her love-contorted face – and stays there, not moving. After fathering a daughter, the soldier is slaughtered by the French Resistance and dumped into the lake with his murdered comrades. The mother dies also, because she read the script.

The zombies mostly attack nubile young women. The highlight – or lowlight – of this movie is when the women’s volleyball team all decide to go skinny-dipping in the lake, because that’s totally normal. The sole survivor rushes screaming into the village, where she bursts into the local tavern in a naked frenzy. 

Meanwhile, Daddy zombie visits his ten-year old daughter to give her the locket gifted to him by the girl’s mother while sappy music plays in the background. Later in the movie, he fights another Nazi zombie who wants to hurt her!

Watching them roll around in the damp grass in slow motion, I began to reassess my life. I burst into tears and had an emotional breakdown. After that, I went for a long walk and then drove three hundred miles to Central Park to watch the grass grow. When I came back, the zombies were still rolling around in the grass. 

After 80+ minutes of agony, the girl lures the zombies into the mill, where they are torched by a flamethrower and the movie lurches to a merciful end. As I took the DVD from the player with numb fingers, the same thought kept running through my head…I will never get that $12.95 back.

Zombie Lake is an exploitation film that combines several subgenres, Nazisploitation and sexploitation. Unfortunately, its main subgenre is boringsploitation. Yes, there are many naked swimmers in this movie, but it is a horribly unsexy film. The nudity feels clinical rather than exciting. If you want to see a wonderful scene of a beautiful woman swimming underwater, watch The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a flawed movie with great cinematography.

I do not recommend Zombie Lake to anyone. The story is deathly dull, the plot isn’t scary, the violence is goofy, and the zombie makeup is so bad you can see where it flakes off on their necks. I say this as a huge fan of Jean Rollin, who has directed some of the greatest Eurotrash movies ever. Just skip this one.

This month, I am reviewing Eurotrash zombie movies. You can read reviews of Burial Ground, Zombie, and Hell of the Living Dead here, here, and here. If you like these reviews and want some bonus content, consider subscribing to my Substack, Abandoned Places!

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The Living Dead Girl

Living Dead Girl

Living Dead Girl is a return to form for director Jean Rollin. After viewing the disappointing Iron Rose months ago, I worried that the master was losing his touch. I needn’t have fretted; Living Dead Girl is vintage Eurotrash, chockful of sex, violence, gore and nudity.

Three movers haul barrels of toxic waste into a chateau’s crypt. They are in the process of robbing the dead people in said crypt when an earthquake smashes the barrels, releasing toxic fumes into the air. Catherine, who has been dead for two years but still looks great, revives and manages to kill the movers in the bloodiest way possible (poking out eyes, fingers through the throat) without staining her white dress.

Cut to a pair of American tourists. We know they’re Americans because they’re loud assholes who speak English. What else could they be? They’re in a field arguing when the wife snaps a picture of Catherine, who is staggering around in a daze. At this point I was wondering what the hell the plot was going to be, but I needn’t have worried. Many of Mr. Rollin’s movies begin with the characters running/staggering about.

Catherine ends up back in her chateau. She’s wearing white and the walls are deep red, so the symbolism isn’t exactly subtle. The next victims are the chateau’s realtor and her boyfriend, who decide to spend a dirty weekend at the chateau. They get naked in record time, but their lovely moment is interrupted by a ravenous Catherine, who kills and eats them.

A side note: I’m not sure if Catherine is a vampire, a zombie or the Toxic Avenger’s little sister. I’d say a zombie except we see a bat during one of her kill sequences, which makes me think vampire. Anyway, Catherine snaps out of her funk when she hears the voice of Helene – her friend/lover – on the phone. Mr. Rollin is uncharacteristically coy about the particulars of their relationship, but it must have been intense, because Helene is the engine that drives the plot.

Helene rushes to the chateau. Instead of taking Catherine to a hospital or calling the police, she lovingly washes the blood off her friend’s naked body and then hides the bodies of her victims in the crypt. When Catherine gets hungry Helene goes in search of food. Unfortunately, Catherine eats people.

Living Dead Girl is one of the better Jean Rollin movies I’ve seen this year; it ranks up there with Fascination and The Grapes of Death. The sets and scenery are lovely, interspersed with short bursts of over-the-top gore that would make a giallo director proud. Yes, Living Dead Girl is skimpy on plot, but that’s okay. If you like Eurotrash, it doesn’t get much better than this.

 

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The Iron Rose

The Iron Rose is the rare Jean Rollin movie that misses its mark, and I say this as a fan of his work. There are elements of an interesting movie here, but it’s way too slow. I don’t mind films with a leisurely build-up, but you can skip the first twenty minutes of this and not miss anything.

The Iron Rose follows the trials of a pair of adult lovers, labeled The Boy and The Girl. The Boy returns for a wedding, where he reads a bad poem to a room full of drunk people. For whatever reason, The Girl is impressed by the Boy’s literary efforts. They make a date to go bike riding and end up frolicking in the railroad station amongst the trains, he play-chasing her. Foreshadowing!

Afterwards, our lovers go on a bike ride and stop at the local cemetery, which is huge. One of this movie’s neat touches is that the tombs are better cared for than the city’s buildings, which are falling apart. After walking the grounds, they clamber into an underground tomb to rut. Cut to a clown entering the graveyard and leaving flowers. The Iron Rose’s symbolism isn’t exactly subtle, hitting you over the head like a sledgehammer. By the time The Boy and The Girl are done with sexy-time night has fallen and they can’t find their way out of the cemetery. And that’s your plot.

As someone who got lost once as a kid, I can tell you it’s no fun. Still, these are adults we are talking about and it’s only a graveyard. That’s the point. There is nothing there, just the lovers and a bunch of headstones and tombs. The dead don’t rise, but tempers sure do. Soon The Boy and The Girl are acting like frightened children.

The Iron Rose has an interesting premise, but it takes too long for anything to happen. That’s because Mr. Rollin has made an 85-minute movie out of 40-minutes of material. The acting is so-so and there are way too many close-ups of the characters’ faces. We also have a scene at the beach that will be familiar to watchers of Mr. Rollin’s movies, as that same stretch of beach shows up in many of his films. It’s his version of Roger Corman’s burning chicken coop.

The best thing about The Iron Rose is the setting, an enormous unkempt cemetery that feels like a city of the dead. Lest fans of Mr. Rollin worry that he’s turning into a highbrow indy director, this movie contains lots of sex and tasteless nudity. Unfortunately Mr. Rollin might not be the right person to handle this kind of material. He is a wonderful director, but he’s not subtle, and psychological nuance isn’t his thing. An interesting failure, The Iron Rose is for Jean Rollin fans only.

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The Nude Vampire

Nude Vampire.jpg

You think you’d know what you are getting when watching a movie called The Nude Vampire, but Jean Rollin is a man who subverts expectations. The Nude Vampire isn’t about vampires and the vampire isn’t nude. It is, however, one of the better movies Mr. Rollin has directed.

The opening sequence of The Nude Vampire is visually striking, with no dialogue for the first ten minutes. A man in a hood draws blood from a topless woman, also hooded, in a lab brimming with test tubes full of brightly colored dyes. Cut to a woman fleeing three men wearing bizarre animal masks. She runs into a man – our hero Pierre – who tries to protect her. The masked men shoot the woman and take her body to a tenement. Pierre follows the murderers back, eventually gaining entrance to a private party where the guests kill themselves so that the selfsame woman can drink their blood. Which means *gasp* she’s a vampire. Or is she?

Pierre’s dad Georges is an evil industrialist. Think Obadiah Stane of Iron Man or Mr. Lodge of Archie comics. He has a female sidekick, Solange, who does his dirty work and he keeps a pair of female twins as pets/sex slaves. At one point the twins dress Pierre – who’s supposed to be our hero – but whatever.

Pierre soon uncovers his father’s plot. The woman his dad’s keeping locked up is immortal, and he’s trying to uncover the secret of her immortality. The purpose of the suicide club is to provide the woman with blood, because they think she’s a vampire. After Pierre crashes the party Georges and his flunkies move to a chateau in the country. This turns out to be a big mistake.

The second half of The Nude Vampire isn’t as good as the first, mostly because the answers aren’t as interesting as the questions. The plot is quite complex, and this movie does stand up as a decent 1970’s science fiction movie, even if the special effects aren’t great in places.

I believe I stated in an earlier review that Jean Rollin movies don’t have plots. Many of them do. The first Jean Rollin movie I saw was Requiem for the Vampire, which starts with a big chase scene and ends in a vampire den with not much plot in between, but that movie is the exception rather than the rule. If you like Eurotrash and/or Jean Rollin movies, The Nude Vampire is a must-see.

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Grapes of Death

Jean Rollin is at it again! Instead of yet another cinematic masterpiece featuring female vampires, he serves up a zombie movie. I’m not sure if Grapes of Death is the definitive French zombie movie of the 70’s because I know nothing about French cinema, but it should be in the running. Although no lady bloodsuckers appear in Grapes of Death, Rollin’s obsession with uncovering the Platonic pair of female breasts remains.

The plot: if you watch the above trailer you will see most of the highlights. If you do, there’s not much reason to watch the movie, which would be a shame. Elizabeth is traveling by train to Roubles to meet her fiancée, who works at a vineyard. A man with pustulant sores on his neck enters the train and attacks her. She escapes and spends the next 80+ minutes wandering the French countryside, leading to many nice shots of the landscape.

Elizabeth’s first stop: a farmhouse inhabited by a farmer and his adult daughter. The farmer has sores on his hands. Mom’s indisposed, her throat slashed ear to ear. Dad kills his daughter, ripping open her blouse to reveal the sore on her chest and then finishing her off with a pitchfork. Elizabeth flees in the farmer’s car but then stops for reasons I’m not smart enough to understand.

She meets a blind woman named Lucy who is lost. They return to the blind woman’s village, where everyone seems to be dead, but Elizabeth insists on telling her everything’s fine. Lucy isn’t stupid, and flees Elizabeth as soon as she can. Big mistake. Come night, the infected – or zombies – or drunken French people – rise up, lurching through the village. This leads to Lucy’s reunion with her infected lover, which is the highlight of Grapes of Death. Elizabeth soon makes another friend, the scythe-wielding woman from Fascination, and they have a decent catfight before a pair of gun-wielding peasants show up and spoil the fun. They flee to the Roubles vineyard and a genuinely ambiguous ending. Phew, that’s a lot of plot.

I am going to assume George Romero’s Dead duology and The Crazies influenced Grapes of Death – sort of. American zombies movies in the 70’s weren’t interested in things like sex, unless you count Dave Cronenberg up in Canada. They were mostly about showing the hair on the wall. Jean Rollin has a different aesthetic – The Grapes of Death has plenty of gore, but doesn’t skimp on the torn blouses, bare breasts and nudity. I will be kind and say that the makeup in this movie is mediocre. The sores are okay, but most of the effects are quite cheesy, which makes sense since cheese and wine go so well together!

A must-see for Jean Rollin fans!

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Fascination

Directed by my favorite Euro Trash director Jean Rollin, Fascination is an interesting twist on the story of Countess Bathory. Filmed on a zero budget, Mr. Rollin’s movies feature awful acting, minimal plots and lots of semi-nudity and soft-core sex. His films are almost always visually striking and Fascination, filmed at a chateau, is no exception.

Fascination opens with a montage of bizarre images. A female hand opens a book, almost fondling the pages. A pair of women dance on a bridge to the tune of a gramophone. Two overdressed ladies stand in the midst of a very bloody slaughterhouse, where we learn that in 1905 ox blood was a popular cure for anemia amongst the rich. They drink a toast in champagne glasses while one of the young women rubs the blood all over her lips, the first of a series of not-so subtle hints that everyone in this movie is crazy.

Our hero is Marc, who is a thief. Dressed in a bowler hat and red-and-black striped jacket, Marc is the picture of sartorial splendor. Alas, the ne’er-do-wells he’s working with try to pull a double-cross and he takes the lone woman of the gang hostage. She pulls off her shirt, offering herself to him, and our hero responds by bursting out laughing. Insulted, she knees him in the balls and runs off.

Marc hides in a chateau populated by a pair of crazy women. At first they act normal, but as the movie progresses it becomes obvious they’re toying with him. Part of this is Marc’s own fault. Although a sharp dresser, he isn’t a killer. The return of Marc’s murderous ex-partners puts a crimp in his plans of escape. One of the crazy ladies brings the loot out to the thugs, which leads to the best sequence of the movie.

Thinking that the gang’s left with the money (they haven’t), Marc’s free to leave the chateau, but after hearing the crazy ladies talk about a midnight gathering he decides to stay because…I’m not sure why. My best guess is that he’s curious, thus echoing the movie’s title. If you want to know what happens next Fascination is streaming on Shudder.

I wouldn’t call Fascination a good movie, but I liked it. It’s not scary and there’s not much blood, but there is lots of sex and some stylized violence. This film looks good and even sort of has a plot. Please note that this is a French movie with English subtitles. Fascination isn’t for everyone, but I had fun watching it.

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Helloween Day One: Lips of Blood

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Lips of Blood is a 1975 movie directed by Jean Rollin. The first time I heard of Jean Rollin was on Neil Gaiman’s blog. Gaiman used the phrase ‘Euro Trash,’ which made my ears prick up. I didn’t know what Euro Trash meant, but there’s no denying I liked the sound of it. After watching a few of Rollin’s movies I decided Euro Trash meant sleaze, violence, gore and gratuitous sex & nudity. You know, the good stuff.

Lips of Blood is set in Paris, although the Eiffel Tower is nowhere to be seen. It’s in French with English subtitles. I saw it for free on YouTube, and the picture quality wasn’t great. Anyone familiar with Jean Rollin’s work will be unsurprised to learn that this movie features lots of female vampires.

The plot: 32 year-old Frederic sees a photo of a castle at a wine & cheese party, a photo that triggers a repressed memory of a twelve year old Frederic meeting a beautiful young girl at that selfsame castle. Frederic decides that he must return to the mysterious castle because he’s still in love with the girl, but dark forces – led by his Mom! – are hell-bent on stopping him.

At one point the ghost/projection/vision of the beautiful young girl leads Frederic to a tomb, where he accidentally frees four female vampires. These fetching creatures of the night wear fake-looking fangs and not much else. At one point they drink the blood of the night watchman while the camera focuses on their bloody lips. Thus, the title!

Is Lips of Blood scary? No. There are lots of naked women, though, which means this flick would probably earn an X rating if it were shown today. The creepiest scene occurs when Frederic enters a tomb to find a life-sized mannequin of a praying Virgin Mary, which I kept expecting to reanimate and leap into the air.

Lips of Blood is like all the other Jean Rollin movies I’ve seen. No budget, but eye-catching imagery and an interesting premise kept me watching until the end. Rollin directed over fifty movies, and my favorites – made in the late 60’s, early 70’s – all have the word ‘vampire’ in the title. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him on a best-of horror list, which is a shame because I like his movies. They’re cheaply made, badly acted with awful effects, but I can never shake the feeling that he’s better than the material he’s working with.

Or maybe it’s all those female vampires with fake fangs.