The movie is concerned with indelible images. There's no dialogue for the first ten minutes. In the second scene, a young girl, clothed in a see-through orange shawl, is stalked by people (creatures?) wearing bizarre animal mask, the most striking of which is a deer mask with antlers made of tree branches. It's creepy, dream-like, and sets the tone. That spooky deer mask shows up again, looking down from a building's ledge. In extreme close-up, the camera roams a woman's bodies, while she squeezes her nipples with long, golden fingernails. A cult, all wearing red hoods, shoot themselves with invisible bullets. Torches appear out of the darkness, a crowd suddenly walking in the night. We peer down a desolate beach, broken pier legs sticking out of the sand like rows of huge teeth, a bright red casket between the ranks.
While the movie is full of legitimately striking visuals, there are a few times when Rollin's trashy, Euro-schlocky side pokes its head out. The villain of the film has twin maids. The pair is usually clothed in a bizarre get-up: A segmented leather skirt and glass do-dads dangling in front of their breasts. The house is decorated with baby dolls with colored-on pubes. Two people are sent into violent spasms after being gently knocked in the head with a candelabrum. People in odd red outfits teleport around a hillside. There's an extended sequence of a mostly naked young woman dancing for a group of men, wearing an odd outfit that features little plastic spikes covering her nipples. At the end of her dance, she drops dead. If you couldn't figure out from the title, there's a plethora of female nudity, including a number of busty topless extras.
The movie is described as incomprehensible. A character even says, "Does this make any sense to you?" The story is secondary but not difficult to follow. There's a vampire girl, a rich man trying to exploit her abilities, a cult who worship her, and the millionaire's son who falls in love with her. Also, a group of hyper-dimensional mutants. (The portal to the other dimension is a pair of red curtains.) When the movie stops to explain is actually when it falters. The last ten minutes feature a character explaining that final twist in excruciating voice-over. Frankly, I think the film would have fared better if it dispensed completely with a story and focused on the surreal imagery. It also would have been shorter and better for it. The copy I have is a brief 81-minutes, shorter then the 90-minute French cut, and all ready feels like it could have lost ten minutes.
There's little blood and the film, overall, has a gentle, dreamy tone. "The Nude Vampire" isn't for everybody. It's probably not for the majority of people. But when it's at its swimmy best, I can dig it. And I'm certainly more interested in Rollin as a filmmaker now.
While the movie is full of legitimately striking visuals, there are a few times when Rollin's trashy, Euro-schlocky side pokes its head out. The villain of the film has twin maids. The pair is usually clothed in a bizarre get-up: A segmented leather skirt and glass do-dads dangling in front of their breasts. The house is decorated with baby dolls with colored-on pubes. Two people are sent into violent spasms after being gently knocked in the head with a candelabrum. People in odd red outfits teleport around a hillside. There's an extended sequence of a mostly naked young woman dancing for a group of men, wearing an odd outfit that features little plastic spikes covering her nipples. At the end of her dance, she drops dead. If you couldn't figure out from the title, there's a plethora of female nudity, including a number of busty topless extras.
The movie is described as incomprehensible. A character even says, "Does this make any sense to you?" The story is secondary but not difficult to follow. There's a vampire girl, a rich man trying to exploit her abilities, a cult who worship her, and the millionaire's son who falls in love with her. Also, a group of hyper-dimensional mutants. (The portal to the other dimension is a pair of red curtains.) When the movie stops to explain is actually when it falters. The last ten minutes feature a character explaining that final twist in excruciating voice-over. Frankly, I think the film would have fared better if it dispensed completely with a story and focused on the surreal imagery. It also would have been shorter and better for it. The copy I have is a brief 81-minutes, shorter then the 90-minute French cut, and all ready feels like it could have lost ten minutes.
There's little blood and the film, overall, has a gentle, dreamy tone. "The Nude Vampire" isn't for everybody. It's probably not for the majority of people. But when it's at its swimmy best, I can dig it. And I'm certainly more interested in Rollin as a filmmaker now.