Bloody Lips

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Jean Rollin’s vision of vampires was a strange blend of tradition and art film.  Having seen his Shiver of the Vampires, I was curious to see what other vampire films he’d done.  Lips of Blood is the one I happened upon. (I didn’t see the poster until after watching; hopefully it won’t offend.)  In French, it is a Euro-horror from the seventies and it has female vampires who tend to seduce rather than frighten.  The unwilling victims, however, do show fear when they realize what is happening.  So, a perfumer (I said it was French) is taken by an advertising poster for a new scent at a launch party.  He thinks he recognizes the castle in the photograph, but many of his childhood memories have vanished.  His mother intends to keep it that way.  The powerful impression of the photograph, however, leads him to find the place.  He recalls meeting a young woman there who comforted him when he was lost as a boy.

Despite his mother’s efforts, and with some support from the mysterious lady herself, he persists.  He finds the name of the chateau on a postcard and immediately heads for it.  The woman is still there, but in a coffin.  His mother shows up and warns him that she suppressed the memory because the young lady was a vampire.  She had killed the boy’s father.  His mother and her hirelings failed to kill them and she now asks her son to help.  In love with this mystery women, despite her vampire problem, he secretly spares her.  The two decide to aim for a deserted island in their coffin, where they can prey on the seamen who will inevitably come ashore in their island paradise.  Plenty of lingering shots and images that must be symbolic also appear.  When the man visits a cinema, Shiver of the Vampires is playing on the screen.

I’ve been pondering how differently vampires are portrayed in media.  I told my wife long ago that vampires and pirates tend to make the best movies.  That was a throwaway comment from an otherwise forgotten conversation, but I do think that vampires were made for cinema.  If you haven’t explored you might be surprised just how many vampire films there are.  They stretch from art house films such as this, where they are beautiful women, to loathsome, pasty creatures that you can barely stand to watch.  The middle ground, the aristocratic vampire modeled on Lord Byron, seems to have retained the largest market share.  That didn’t stop the renegade director Jean Rollin from suggesting that vampires—fearing dawn, and crosses—might be women forever young, and which, for a French perfumer, might be preferable to the living.

Shivering Vampires

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When casting about on free movie streaming services, you occasionally stumble across something odd.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I’ve been favoriting vampire movies the last few months.  I’d not really heard about The Shiver of the Vampires, perhaps because it was a French movie, or perhaps because there are just so many vampire films out there.  Well, it had the desired monster in the title, and it was free (costing only a few commercials).  As might be expected for a European movie, there’s a bit of nudity involved.  A fair amount of that is appropriate for vampire films, it seems.  This one involves a newly married couple going to visit her cousins who live in a castle in the country.  These cousins are groovy vampire hunters, but unbeknownst to her, have become vampires themselves.

The young couple arrives to be told that the cousins have died, but they are welcome to stay.  Soon, the vampire that turned them shows up and begins visiting the bride.  The groom is slow to catch on that there are vampires involved, although he fairly quickly finds out that something’s the matter with his wife.  Then the cousins show up alive.  Well, technically, undead.  They don’t reveal themselves as vampires, but their cousin, the bride, is being turned as well.  The poor groom sees odd rituals being enacted, and a couple of familiars decide to help him destroy the vampires in the hopes of rescuing his wife.  Stakes, crucifixes, and sunlight are all effective against these vampires, but they don’t seem especially evil.  In fact, there’s a kind of self-loathing among them.  The ending isn’t exactly cheering.  

A little shy on depth of story, the film does feature an impressive castle and some strong seventies vibes.  Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on the movie refers to the familiars as “renfields.”  This term, derived from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was one I’d never come across before.  Renfield’s Syndrome now seems to be preferred to Clinical Vampirism, although neither has much scientific standing.  “Familiar” is, of course, a term adapted from the witch craze of Early Modern Europe.  Vampires need a living helper since they are vulnerable in the daytime.  The director of Shiver, Jean Rollin, was known mostly for his vampire movies.  They’re not easily found, at least at this point, on streaming services.  Shiver has an arthouse film feel to it and it makes me curious about how vampires cross cultures, even if the results are a little odd.