I am very pleased this morning to present another Jean Rollin Top-Ten list from a reader here at Fascination. This one comes from French writer
Jérôme Peyrel. Thanks very much to Jérôme for putting this together and for offering an English translation for my readers here.
1) the perseverance.
I love that Jean Rollin followed through his career, his films, his books ; the figures he created, the mixture he worked on, the way he told, over and over, the same story.
2) that poetic shot, in Lèvres de Sang, in which Frédéric can't catch the woman he dreams of since his childhood, in the cemetary... The light tears them apart, even if they are so close...
3) the Encore collection. Remarquable edition for these movies.
4) the Castel twins, that haunt my dreams, as they haunt La Vampire Nue.
5) His poetry of pause : the cinema of Jean Rollin is made of still pictures, beautiful, intriguing, they carries the essence of his conception of horror, surrealistic and free.
6) the 30 minutes of Le Viol du Vampire, and the camera that goes round and round the characters ad mauseam. I deeply love the duel.
7) The Philippe Druillet posters, in particular the one for La Vampire Nue.
8) The book Les Demoiselles de l'Etrange, that made me discover Erik Satie... (there's a lot of artists I discovered through Jean Rollin, notably Clovis Trouille).
9) La Rose de Fer, the Limoges screening in the late 90s. The film didn't arrived, so they decided to run the VHS ! Anyway, everybody was happy, and that day, we briefly talked about the movie with Jean Rollin. I looked forward to read the short story La Nuit du Cimetière (that can be found in the revue L'impossible number 11), during years since that day.
10) His critic works for french anarchists magazines in the 60's. One of his hidden sides.
