Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

Very Cool!!!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

At times it's not that easy to give a film the appropriate rating, and so this was the case with Requiem pour un vampire. I don't even know whether it is an erotica film with some horror elements or a horror flick with some erotic scenes. Anyway, why should I care about it, since the watching of it was a really enchanting experience.The plot is an absolute feast of bizarreness and I guess that it is one of the film's charms. In the opening scene we can see a car chase, in which two very young girls and their male friend are getting away and trying to shoot someone. Soon, the guy gets hurt and his "clowny" friends do nothing but kill him to death and then burn the car with gasoline! At this point I was almost sure that these girls were the vampires from the title, but to my absolute surprise they were not! The vampire line started a little bit later. And again, the cohesion of it didn't make any sense, but its picturesque images and overall hypnotic atmosphere lived down everything. I even enjoyed that cheesy moment with a bat doing the cunni. :D So I give it 3,5/5, my highest rating for vampire-themed films, as for now.

Requiem for a Vampire (1973) *** (out of 4) Erotic-horror from French master Jean Rollin about two fugitive girls (Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent) who are on the run from the law and end up in a creepy castle where many young women are chained in the basement. The girl's learn that vampires run the castle and they want the two ladies to join the undead since they are virgins. With countless horror and porn titles under his belt, to me this is the best that Rollin has to offer as his art-house style perfectly blends in with the erotic nature of the subject matter and best of all is that the film never once feels too long nor does the pacing have any issues. One might say THE LIVING DEAD GIRL is the best the director has to offer due to how violent and gory it is but I think on the whole this here is the best. I think what works so well is once again that beautiful atmosphere that the director is able to bring. The movie really does feel as if you're watching a nightmare as there's this quiet, still atmosphere that really makes you feel as if you're in the land of the dead. I thought the opening fifteen or twenty-minutes is where the director really works his magic because we see the girls on the run, going through the county side and eventually arriving at this castle. I thought Rollin did a very good job at building up this atmosphere and things just turn downright crazy once the vampire enter the picture. The highlight of the film is a rather long sequence where several of the male vampires go into the basement and attack the women that are chained up. Full nudity galore as this sequence clocks in at nearly ten-minutes and it's nothing more than the men groping the woman and I'm certain this was done so that the male viewers could get more than just a eye-full. This sequence is tinted in this strange pink/rose color and it really adds to the film and the downright surreal nature is just untouched by anything else in the film. The rest of the movie deals with the women trying to decide if they should give in or not and of course there's more violence and nudity. I thought both Castel and Dargent were very good in their roles and the supporting cast isn't too bad either. They're all certainly a lot better than you'd normally see in a film like this. Those unfamiliar with the work of Rollin will probably find this one of the easiest of his films to get into and those just wanting to see some nudity and erotic stuff will find plenty here.

Jean Rollin's films collect praise the way that a splat of dog excrement on the sidewalk collects flies. One *sees* the flies, but one is never quite sure *how* the flies know the crap is there, or exactly what they're so excited about.Rollin's defenders love to blather on about his "style", his "imagination", his "eye", and his deep understanding of Heidigger's "uncertainty principle". (Well, maybe not the last thing.) But frankly, Rollin is merely a remixer of other, far superior directors. Just one example: someone here mentioned how clever it was that he used "preserved human arms as candle-holders!" News to them: Jean Cocteau came up with that idea, and used it in his "La Belle et la Bête", 25 years earlier. I could cite the original sources of every other bit of "inspiration" in this flick, but why bother?Neither of the two main chicks are very attractive. I see better looking women every day, and you probably do too. And both are seriously stupid (which probably makes them more attractive to some guys, but I digress). They get in a low-speed car chase with someone (the police?), who for some inexplicable reason are driving a Renault 16, which has never been used as a cop car, not even in an alternate reality. When their motorcycle runs out of gas, they just leave it by the side of the road. When they're hungry, they con a roach-coach guy out of some lettuce (but it never occurs to them to steal his vehicle or his money). They choose to hide in a cemetery, never thinking that it might be spooky in there. I found that I was soon rooting for whoever might be the first to do them in. Alas, I waited and waited and waited...The director is at least as stupid as his chicks are. How stupid? He terrorizes the chicks with...flying foxes. Yes, the shots of the two being frightened by a pair of bats hanging from a tree, was filmed with flying foxes -- those utterly harmless fruit-eating bats that some people keep as pets. As soon as Rollin has made his point with these poor critters, he then sticks fake vampire bats to the chicks' necks. As in...with adhesive. Not even stock shots of vampire bats lapping blood, not even semi-animated bats flapping menacingly around the girls. Lee Press-On Bats.Revolvers mysteriously appear and disappear in the chicks' hands as they haplessly try to defend themselves. Each dispenses about 20 bullets, not one of them having even the slightest effect on their pursuers. Note to future film victims: if your pursuer hasn't been affected by the first 5 bullets you pump into them, odds are good that the 6th isn't going to make much difference. You might want to save it for later. Just a thought.The evil vampires are neither attractive nor menacing; they look more bored than anything else. I know: they're the most dangerous when they're bored. Their fangs look like Lee Press-On Fangs. You know, I'm beginning to wonder if this entire film wasn't an infomercial for the fine family of Lee Press-On products... There's a truly repellent and utterly gratuitous rape scene that's neither logical nor titillating; it just made me want to wash my eyes out and ask for the 5 minutes it took of my life, back.Look: I like a trashy film as much as the next guy. I enjoy Jess Franco's "Los Vampyros Lesbos" and some of his other work. I occasionally find Dario Argento's work effective. But "Requiem for a Vampire" is just sad. It lacks any redeeming features (I gave it 2 stars just for the cinematography which is at least colorful), and it does nothing as well as other films in its genre do. I've come to the conclusion that liking C-grade sexploitation films of this era is sort of like a 16 year-old boy going on about how "hot" some porn "actress" with silicone-enhanced 44-D breasts is. He thinks it will make him seem more cool and worldly, but really it just betrays his lack of experience and taste. But hey! --I'm sure that even a tired old whore is glad to have a fan.

This film was rated higher by others than I would have thought. Vampires usually do a lot of biting and blood sucking. There was more erotic virgin handling and molestation than biting and the like in this one. The use of silence in the film gave it a surreal quality. The whole movie was dream-like. The lure of the victims was not captured. The chase and seduction is the best thing about vampires but those subtleties were lost here. But, I must admit, the film did remind me of Vampyros Lesbos and, to a lesser extent, Suspiria. I must state that vampire films do not have to be bloody etc. But a little blood at the bite would have been welcomed. Not a bad watch if you seek those who walk at night.