Watch The Rape of the Vampire For Free

Must See Movie...

Brilliant and touching

Better Late Then Never

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Jean Rollin's premier feature is, unsurprisingly, highly abstract. It started out as a thirty-minute short before the director added an additional forty minutes. It starts out as straight-forward as he ever is. Four sisters live in an abandoned mansion and believe themselves to be vampires. One is blind, convinced a villager gouged her eyes with a pitchfork. The house is surrounded by crucifixes and the sisters sometimes take orders from a goofy-faced scarecrow who is also an old man? Someone bowls on a beach. A trio of college students appear and try to convince the sisters they are not, in fact, vampires. This goes badly for everyone. There's roving rioters and a guy with a hunch and a messed-up face.Part two: All the characters that aren't dead yet are on a beach. Some of them will be dead soon. The vampire queen appears. She has a trio of minions, a bearded guy, a guy in a white suit, and a girl in go-go boots. All three are annoying. The girlfriend of one of the students is now a vampire and she's very conflicted about this. The queen is secretly running a mental hospital. The guy who runs the hospital is looking for a cure for vampirism. The queen and her followers gather on a theatre stage to initiate the girl into the vampire lifestyle. There's a giant paper bat. Chaos breaks out. The vampires revolt against their queen. She drinks the cure and dies. Two people wall themselves up in a basement forever. A guy walks down the street, holding a dead girl in his arms, bemoaning the lack of innocence in the world. The end? Okay, it doesn't make much sense. The main reason to stick around is the images. The Gothic château is atmospheric. I like the idea of the blind girl who, after realizing she isn't actually blind, looses her eyes anyway. There's a wonderful sequence of the student trying to psychoanalyze the girl while the camera whirls around them. A scene of one of the vampires standing on top of the mansion, pleading with her invisible lord, sticks out.The film looses a lot of momentum in the second half. A shot of two straight-jacket bound characters writhing, two giant gum-ball-machine-like receptacles full of blood standing next to them, is goofy. The vampire queen is odd. The film can't decide if she's meant to be the villain or not. Why she wants to cure vampirism is never explained."Rape of the Vampire" is claptrap, though occasionally interesting. Rollin's images don't burn as much in black-and-white as they do in color. His complete abandonment of narrative isn't as freeing as it should be. Either way, he's an amazingly consistent filmmaker when it comes to the content of his films. There's lots of nudity, even a little sadomasochism. Vampires, beaches, old buildings, casual lesbianism, it's all here. I wish I had enjoyed it more.

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.

The Rape of the Vampire marks the directorial debut of French erotic vampire enthusiast Jean Rollin. The film was originally intended to be a thirty minute short; but someone had the bright idea of making it a feature film, so Jean Rollin went ahead, filmed another hour of dubious vampire nonsense and released the combined parts as a feature film. It sounds like a recipe for disaster; and since a disaster resulted from it, I guess that's exactly what it was. I really don't know how someone could have shot this movie and put it together like this without realising that it doesn't make an ounce of sense! This is almost to be expected from the second story, which is basically just an hour of filler - but even the first tale doesn't adhere to any kind of logic (except maybe Jean Rollin's!). There is a plot here somewhere, though, and to start off with it follows four vampire sisters. We then move into the second part, which follows the vampire queen; played by a skinhead who looks a bit like Grace Jones. Exactly what's going on is anyone's guess - but those are the basic story backbones.In terms of plotting and substance, this film is a joke. However; in terms of style, it's a little more credible. The black and white cinematography looks almost like Jean Rollin was going for a French nouvelle vogue style, and it is nice to look at. It's not nice enough for you to forget that you're watching a really boring film, but at least the film has plus points. Rape of the Vampire does look low budget - but good plots don't cost anything if you're writing them yourself, and so this film's main problems can't be blamed on the budget. Rollin has got together a wealth of hot young French girls to star in the film, and while it doesn't compensate for the plot; at least the casting might stop you from falling asleep. Considering it was made in 1967, the film is fairly graphic; we've got a scene that sees a girl have her eyes poked out (although we don't actually see it) and there's plenty of nudity, of course. I'm not really sure what kind of person this film will appeal to. Pretentious film fans may find something to like about it; but if you're not a Jean Rollin completist, I really can't think of a reason to bother with this.

I truly thought it was made in the 30s.The bad acting, the jagged B&W cuts, the seeming lack of a plot! (and GOD don't get me started on that unconvincing model the old bloke hides behind that our "vampire queen" reports to!) I don't care if it's supposed to be ironic - it's cheap & amateurish.The ABYSMAL sword fight - leave it out!!I'm really sorry, but I watche dthis film and deflated as it went on - it's everything Brecht would have hated, Schechner would have found it a joke, and Sarah Kane probably saw 30 minutes less in than I did.But hey! I adore Star Trek: Hidden Frontier.Judge for yourself.(It AIN'T "Fire walk with me" - that had gravitas!!) D