Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

Jean Rollin’s Demoniacs begins with the horrific rape of a pair of sisters by a group of pirates. Well, not quite. It actually begins with an introductory sequence where we see cackling portraits of the four pirates, along with narration telling us for their cruelty. These pirates are known as “wreckers”, the kind of pirates that don’t sail the high seas but instead live on the coast and lure ships towards them so that they can plunder the wrecks. Then we get to the horrific rape, followed by the pirates hanging out at a bar, seemingly falling apart from the guilt of their crimes. When one of the barmaids sings about wreckers, the head pirate angrily shouts that wreckers no longer exist, which is a great way to tell everyone you’re a wrecker. Their victims come into the orbit of a clown and a priest, who introduce them to the power of the devil so that they can seek revenge. I won’t reveal how this proceeds, but let’s say that A) things don’t go according to plan and that B) the devil here is not the force of evil he is in most works, but rather like the benevolent devil in Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Son-In-Law, where the devil offered the hero played by Rudy Ray Moore magic revenge powers to get back at the rival standup comedians who had all of Moore’s friends and family killed for the meager price of marrying his monstrously ugly daughter, which Moore then tried to weasel out of. Again, I won’t spoil too much, but let’s say the complications here are not the result of the devil pulling a fast one.

I admit I struggled with this one. Some of the Letterboxd reviews suggest that this movie is an attempt by Rollin to grapple with the exploitative nature of his movies. This is an interesting point, and I think between this and the parody roughie elements in Schoolgirl Hitchhikers, I have detected a certain discomfort on his part in dealing with a certain meaner strain of horror. But I don’t think this works narratively, as the movie never commits to a specific perspective. With the pirates, we only meet them right as they’re committing the rape, and only have descriptions of cartoonish villainy for background, so whatever guilt they feel after the fact, we never really feel complicit in their actions. The most lively of the pirates is a pervert played by Joelle Coeur, who flaunts her body and gets off vicariously on the others’ cruelty, yet whatever sexual pleasure she derives from their evil acts is observed with relative detachment, instead of something the movie invites us to share. In contrast, I think of the way something like I Spit On Your Grave has us spend time with its rapists before they commit the act. I don’t think that movie is aiming for as complex a set of feelings, but I think it helps the movie greatly on a dramatic level that we understand the kind of toxic mindset and group dynamic that defines these characters.

And with the victims, we’re obviously supposed to sympathize with them as the aggrieved party, but the movie never gives us much sense of them as actual characters. In part, it’s because Rollin defines them as mute and deprives them of dialogue. (I think this is a case where defining a character by their disability in a horror movie is a clear negative.) In part, it’s that the performances aren’t strong enough to breathe life into these characters. I think of Brigitte Lahaie and Cathy Stewart in The Night of the Hunted and Francoise Blanchard and Marina Pierro in The Living Dead Girl, and I don’t feel the same humanity coming through in the portrayals here. But I also think Rollin wants us to see them as symbols of victims instead of actual people, which I think also undermines the dramatic thrust of the movie. So their quest for revenge feels like a spectator sport, something we watch and root for, but we never feel we have skin in the game.

I chased this with Lost in New York, and I think of how much more surely that movie grounds the proceedings in a specific perspective, so that the sense of wonder that colours the movie is something we feel in our bones rather than observe passively. It really is a lovely little movie, and provided a nice ethereal contrast to the dourness of this one. Still, because this is a Rollin movie, we do get plenty of that classic Rollin style, particularly in the way the characters are framed against the wreckage and the ruins, dwarfed by the sense of desolation, giving their own despair a sense of inevitability. The most stylish stretch of the movie comes right at the end, where the brutality of the proceedings is juxtaposed with the anger of nature, as the tide rises and thunder booms on the soundtrack, while Coeur writhes maniacally in the sand as she watches. It’s undeniably a striking and forceful sequences, but it’s also one I found hard to get swept up in, as the movie never embraces the perspective of either the heroines or the villains.

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Of the Rollin I watched this month, I think Demoniacs was the only one that felt completely like a dud.
Dracula's Fiancee at least had moments (none of which happened before 50 minutes in, but hey).


Also, the clown didn't work for me here where the costumes in Requiem did, or the random cameo in The Iron Rose didn't feel too jarring. Which is a problem if you put a clown in a movie, which clashes with its surroundings and it doesn't work.


But yeah, I think it was ultimately, I couldn't find any angle that I found particularly captivating.

The top three Jean Rolling movies I watched this month (according to me)
Requiem for the Vampire
Shivers of the Vampire
The Iron Rose


The bottom two might be flipped. I don't know.

I’ve got a copy of Dracula’s Fiancee so might squeeze it in this month. I mean, it’s got Brigitte Lahaie as a “she-wolf”, can’t be all bad.

Honestly, I think a reliable quantity in Rollin’s movies has been the presences of his female leads, and the fact that they’re downplayed here and viewed from a distance means that it was an uphill battle. I honestly enjoyed it less than the porno I watched by him earlier this month. That one at least treated its heroine like an actual character.

As for my favourite Rollins, I’d go with these but have no idea how to order them:

Fascination
The Living Dead Girl
Lost in New York

HM: The Night of the Hunted

A lot of Rollins blends together for me. But the ones which have stuck in my head the most are:


1) Fascination
2) The Night of the Hunted
3) Grapes of Death

I was considering squeezing in rewatches of those three this month, but alas, time is running out fast.

She shows up about 50 minutes in. The title feels more applicable to the presence she brings than any make-up she adorns. Be warned, of the ones I saw, this is probably the second lowest.


I guess I should pick up Night of the Hunted at some point. Two Orphan Vampires was a good late Rollin and I have a feeling Night of the Hunted is going for simar vibes (based on the description I read way back).

I am willing to wait fifty minutes for Brigitte Lahaie.

I am willing to wait a hundred minutes for Brigitte Lahaie.

I am willing to wait a thousand minutes… okay, maybe not that much.

What I’m saying is that I’ve definitely watched a “Brigitte Lahaie movie” that it turned out she only had a small role in.

What genre isn’t important.

I like all three of those but the one that sticks out in my memory the most is The Iron Rose.

That makes sense. It is it's own eerie beast.
Requiem is a fever dream.
Shivers... I remember liking, but because I watched it between The Nude Vampire and Requiem and just in a general Rollin binge-fest, I have to reconstruct in my mind what happens in it.

Franco's The Other Side of the Mirror is surprisingly, and effectively melancholy.


I am a lot of Franco's in the past day or so, so that might be skewing my baseline for evaluation, but like the Diabolical Dr. Z, I think it kind of sticks out from the usual Jess Franco stuff and is "legit good."
Emma Cohen's face captures a sad mood.

I think Iron Rose is a favourite of JJ’s. I remember wishing it had vampires, but liked it enough otherwise.

Emma Cohen is in The Cannibal Man, which I quite liked, and Cut Throats Nine, which I did not. I imagine her having a natural frown and the shape of her eyes help with that mood. I suppose I should see the Franco, although something that’s legit good might be less fun to defend than his more questionable work.

I liked Nude also, that was my second Rollin. I don't remember the story at all but I remember I liked the vibe.

I have not seen Cannibal Man. I did not look up her filmography, so I did not realize she was in Cut Throats Nine.
That's an odd western. It moves at a somewhat glacial pace, but I remember the editing kind of stuck with me in parts. But it's been 10 years, so my memory of it isn't the greatest at this point.

I watched Cut Throats Nine on a less than stellar copy so I probably owe it another shot. My takeaway is that it probably deserves its reputation for being one of the goriest westerns of the era, but that the violence rarely accumulated into actual atmosphere.

Cannibal Man is very good. More a sympathetic character study that’s less munchy than the title suggests. I watched an English dub years ago, would like to give it another shot now that it’s gotten a better release.

On a different note, Wolfen kinda owns?

It's my favorite by far, but some important ones weren't available to me at the time that I was doing my deep dive. This was pre-streaming. But it's a good example of the "nothing happens", "all-atmosphere" thing that I like so much.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Kinda.
I mainly remembered growing up thinking it was better than The Howling.
I rewatched it for the first time in decades about two years ago, and it's still mostly solid, but there were narrative weaknesses I didn't remember as a child (e.g. just smashing the model of the upcoming building structures I'm a symbolic gesture isn't going to stop them from being built), bit I've also now forgotten most of those details off the top of my head other than there were some there (I think there was some abrupt plot progression starting about 2/3rds of the way in).

Yeah, I really like Wolfen. Albert Finney is great. I really liked the Native American mythos part. I am some small amount NA, not enough to make a thing about it, but when I found out, I really started to take note of how NAs were portrayed in film and this was one I got really attached to. I really liked the wolves' infra-vision too.