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Many years ago, Channel 83 set out to collect the films of great French director Jean Rollin on DVD, all of which were out of print at the time. There were a few titles that were unavailable for the US market at the time, The Nude Vampire being one of them. I had been hearing about this movie since I was 7 years old, with such a title wasn’t hard to remember, and finally got to see it on Amazon Prime, which also has nearly all of Jean Rollin’s other movies. This movie is definitely one of Rollin’s most psychedelic, with fantastic costumes and lighting and plain old weirdie dressing. May be even more LSD drenched than Shiver of the Vampires, another Rolling made soon after. Definitely some subterranean fun to be had tonight on Amazon Prime!
“Rape”, “Nude”, “Shiver” and “Requiem” have just appeared on the Arrow video streaming channel. Soundtracks for “Queen of the Vampires (part 2 of “Rape”) and “Shiver of the Vampires” were released on the Cacaphonic and Finders Keepers record labels respectively.
The Nude Vampire was only French auteur Jean Rollin’s second feature, and his first in colour, but already the themes and other staple features of his work are well formed and used to great effect. Here we have vampires (albeit with a sci-fi twist and not quite as the description suggests), atmospheric locations (here those evocative Rollin staples a castle, a graveyard and a beach and ocean), eroticism, a poetic, surreal and dreamlike quality, and some of the fabulous actors who Rollin frequently worked with such as the Castel twins, Marie-Pierre and Catherine. All elements that feature throughout Rollin’s impressive catalogue of films.
