Plus a survey of sapphic vampire films indebted to Rollin's aesthetic with titles including The Hunger, Lust for a Vampire, Daughters of Darkness and more!
Très Outré: The Sinister Visions of Jean Rollin
October 18 – 23
French film history has more than its share of mavericks, but it has a special place for those few who worked in the realm of le cinéma fantastique. While Jean Cocteau and Georges Franju defined and dominated this realm, their poetics never fully succumbed to the horror genre’s call of the wild—and it fell to Jean Rollin, their rightful but underrecognized heir, to take the next step with his dark, oneiric oeuvre. Women were at the center of Rollin’s cinematic universe, anchoring deliriously gothic scenarios of lust and bloodlust couched in a lush and disturbing visual style. At a time when French censorship was easing, the director had free rein to work through his sex-and-death obsessions with unprecedented explicitness, imbuing his images with a gorgeous eroticism that can lull—at least until teeth are bared, whether metaphorically or literally. His dreamlike, seductive visuals and haunting tableaux have surely influenced subsequent filmmakers who favor horror that’s as serious as it is sensual. Just in time for Halloween, the Quad showcases a dozen of Rollin’s unique excursions into the surreal and uncanny; we will also be screening, in an accompanying series this month, movies that share and acknowledge his aesthetic.
The Demoniacs
Jean Rollin, 1974, France/Belgium, 77m, DCP
Fascination
Jean Rollin, 1979, France, 80m, DCP
The Grapes of Death
Jean Rollin, 1978, France, 85m, DCP
The Iron Rose
Jean Rollin, 1973, France, 86m, DCP
Lips of Blood
Jean Rollin, 1975, France, 88m, DCP
The Living Dead Girl
Jean Rollin, 1982, France, 86m, DCP
The Night of the Hunted
Jean Rollin, 1980, France, 87m, DCP
The Nude Vampire
Jean Rollin, 1970, France, 90m, DCP
The Rape of the Vampire
Jean Rollin, 1968, France, 95m, DCP
Requiem for a Vampire
Jean Rollin, 1971, France, 95m, DCP
The Shiver of the Vampires
Jean Rollin, 1971, France, 95m, DCP
A Woman’s Bite: Cinema’s Sapphic Vampires
October 26 – November 1
The Quad’s Jean Rollin Halloween parade is complemented with a bonus bevy of badass female vampires. Although the titillating concept of lady bloodsuckers had long captured the imagination of authors, it took the movies a couple of decades to catch on to what should have been an early-and-often component of the horror genre; in the U.S., female vampires were generally relegated to subsidiary appearances (if at all) in support of male overlords. It fell to European helmers to finally recognize the storytelling potential—and scour the historical and literary archives—for women driving their own narratives as princesses of darkness. And since male vampires had preyed on their share of male victims onscreen it stood to reason that same-sex distaff encounters would be exponentially more compelling. Quickly making up for lost time, throughout the 1970s and beyond genre moviemakers exploited both prurient and suspenseful dramatic interest in just how these lesbian couplings would play out. The resultant films showcased actresses on both sides of the vamp/prey divide, fascinating audiences of all genders and sexual orientations—and in the process became landmark depictions of sapphic desire and sexuality onscreen.
Blood and Roses
Roger Vadim, 1960, France/Italy, 87m, 35mm
The Blood-Spattered Bride
Vicente Aranda, 1972, Spain, 100m, 35mm
Daughters of Darkness
Harry Kümel, 1971, Belgium/France/West Germany, 87m, 35mm
Dracula’s Daughter
Lambert Hillyer, 1936, U.S., 71m, DCP
The Hunger
Tony Scott, 1983, UK/U.S., 97m, DCP
Lust for a Vampire
Jimmy Sangster, 1971, UK, 95m, 35mm (original UK version)
Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary
Juan López Moctezuma, 1975, Mexico, 101m, 35mm
Nadja
Michael Almereyda, 1994, U.S., 93m, 35mm
Vampire Ecstasy
Joseph W. Sarno, 1973, Sweden/Switzerland/West Germany, 103m, DCP
The Vampire Lovers
Roy Ward Baker, 1970, UK/U.S., 91m, 35mm
Vampyres
Joseph Larraz, 1974, UK/Spain, 87m, 35mm
Vampyros Lesbos
Franco Manera (Jess Franco), 1971, West Germany/Spain, 89m, 4K DCP
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