#07 Le Frisson des Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1971)

“I remember at this hour, at nine, they used to go out. They sent their dog to me, and he took me along. The dog’s name was Anubis. They went hunting, hunting all night, as wolves do. How happy they were. Sometimes I could escape, and went hunting with them. You couldn’t understand. They went after some monstrous prey, with pikes. They wore holy relics, talismans and crucifixes. They resembled the knights of the crusades. When they returned, they were covered with blood, drunk with carnage! But one day, they came back with wounds on their throats, wounds that looked like bites. Out of which their blood was flowing… flowing…”


Variously translated as “Thrill of the Vampire”, “Shiver of the Vampires”, “Sex and the Vampire” (I like that one – it’s got a nice academic ring to it), or retitled with undeniable accuracy as “Strange Things Happen at Night”, “Le Frisson..” by any name is my favourite Jean Rollin movie.

More than that though, it is a huge landmark in my own personal film-watching mythology, a central text in the investigation of precisely what it is I love about ‘60s/’70s European horror movies. It is one of those rare movies that I could happily watch all the time. If my well-worn Redemption tape of the film got terminally stuck in the VCR, well…I guess it would be a shame I wouldn’t be able to check out some of those videos I haven’t watched yet, but basically I would be completely fine with the situation.

More than any other film I can think of, “Le Frisson..” is a litmus test for my own particular branch of cult/euro-horror fandom. If someone were to ask me, “so Ben, all these fucking sleazy-looking old vampire movies you keep watching all the time - what’s the deal?”, a viewing of “Le Frisson..” would be my answer. If they ‘get it’, well, great, they’re in the club. If not, well not to worry, I’m sure I’ve got some ‘normal people’ movies round here somewhere…

It should be noted at this point that “Le Frisson..” is at least a lot more easy-going and conventionally enjoyable than much of the rest of Rollin’s filmography. It’s funny, it’s goofy, it’s fast-moving and it’s full of lively characters. It is also one of the only Rollin films to include a ‘regular joe’ protagonist in the form of Jean-Marie Durand’s Antione, whose bafflement and rage at finding himself stuck in the middle of Jean Rollin-land proves a great source of hilarity throughout. It even has some semblance of a linear storyline.

Well, kinda. I mean, it’s that old story: Antione and his fiancée Isa are speeding across Europe in their swanky motor-car en-route to their wedding when they decide to take a detour to visit Isa’s mysterious ‘cousins’, her only surviving relatives, who live in a dilapidated hilltop chateau. Arriving, the couple are greeted by a pair of nubile servants in diaphanous gowns, who inform them that said cousins have both recently died, but insist they stay anyway to, I dunno, rest after their long journey or something – it’s a bit vague. Anyway, at midnight, a lady called Isolde emerges from the grandfather clock in Isa’s room and initiates her into the ways of vampirism. The next day, Isa’s cousins return in the form of two outrageously camp intellectual dandies and proclaim themselves to be very much alive. Antione swiftly tires of these salty characters and their brain-aching tirade of hippie-occultist babble, and his mood is scarcely improved after he is attacked by a sentient library. That night, our cast march in procession to the eerie, red-lit cemetery where strange and sexy vampiric rites are performed. French psyche/prog band Acanthus rock the fuck out on the soundtrack, as they continue to do to varying degrees through the film’s entire duration. At some point, another lady called Isabelle turns up and, in one of the most beautifully lyrical passages of crazy dialogue ever written by Rollin for one of his films, regales us with evocative tales of her life as companion to the two cousins, whom she claims were daring vampire hunters prior to their untimely demise. Isolde kills Isobelle by means too extraordinary to discuss here, and the cousins subsequently attempt to wrest control of the vampire cult from Isolade, after she accuses them of being “mere peasant vampires”. More rituals in the cemetery follow, and Isa finds herself becoming frightened of daylight and chomps on the neck of a dead pigeon. The nubile servants lounge around naked in the castle’s ivy-covered ruins. Antione gets even more ratty and starts running around with a gun. Then everybody goes to the beach.

I don’t know who won the ‘best screenplay’ Oscar in 1971, but in a fairer world they would’ve done the decent thing and sent it airmail to M. Rollin’s Paris address pronto, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Fun and games aside though, what I love above all about “Le Frisson..” is the absolutely exquisite ritualistic atmosphere, the opiated haze of gothic/psychedelic/surrealist zero budget splendour laid on so thick, you could cut off chunks and eat it on toast.

I know that when I first started getting into ‘60s horror movies, it was this indefinable ‘ritualistic’ quality that drew me to them above all else. I could (and still can) sit through hours of tedious, set-bound time-wasting, just to rejoice in the fleeting sight of some subterranean occult gathering, or an establishing shot of a decrepit, fogbound castle, or some fuzzy footage of mysterious, red-robed figures marching through some distant woodland. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have an answer, but I just love that shit.

As such, discovering the films of Jean Rollin, and this one in particular, was an absolute revelation – finally, a guy who seemed to be on the same wavelength as me, and who recognised the strange poetry of this mysterioso imagery, cramming as much of it into his films as he possibly could, caring not a damn for the conventional mechanics of plotting and logic and other such jive-ass baloney.

With its extreme red and blue lighting, its candlelit, nocturnal processions, its hypnotic graveyard blood rituals, theatrical vampirism and beautiful, diaphanous gowned maidens, its primitive stop motion special effects and wonky grandfather clock materialisations, all set to the churning pulse of wild psychedelic rock, flapping bat wings and weird, inhuman shrieks… watching “Le Frisson des Vampires” makes me so happy I can barely express it.