La reina de las vampiras

Rape of the Vampire, The (1968)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

When one thinks of Jean Rollin there's no doubt that nudity, vampires and lesbian vampires come to mind. This film here was the first of a long running series featuring undead ladies usually doing their evil deeds while naked. The film starts off with a psychologist trying to convince four sisters that there really aren't vampires who have been walking the Earth for two hundred years. After the four of them are killed by the local villagers an evil Queen brings them back to life. The first thirty-minutes of this film, leading up to the sisters being killed, was originally a short film but when Rollin got the extra money he decided to add another hour and turn it into the feature that would become known as THE RAPE OF A VAMPIRE. Anyone familiar with the work of Rollin will agree that there's certainly more style than substance but this early picture contains very little of either one. I will admit that by the time the movie was over I really didn't understand what I had just watched. The first portion of the film is somewhat easy to follow but once we get everything dealing with the Queen then things just get so twisted that you feel as if you've fallen asleep for an hour only to then wake up and not know what you're seeing. I'm going to guess that this thing was shot extremely quickly and perhaps that's why everything feels so rushed. Or, perhaps director Rollin was just scrambling trying to get anything on film to turn this into a feature. Whatever the reasonings, the end result is that there's very little to enjoy in this thing. I thought the second half of the film looked extremely rushed and not a bit of it contained any real style. The earlier section isn't all that much better but I thought some of the cinematography was very good and this helped add a little atmosphere. While there's some nudity in the film it's certainly not as graphic as later films. The performances are all mixed but then again who comes to a Rollin film for performances? THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE will probably have Rollin fans wanting to view it just so they can see where it all started but those new to the director would be best served by checking out on of his later pictures.