Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (A Slight Introduction to The Castel Twins)

I am going to be writing quite a lot here in the future on the remarkable and unforgettable Castel Twins, surely two of the most resonate forces in all of Jean Rollin's cinema. As a slight introduction, here are a couple of choice quotes by Rollin on the mighty duo and their debut in La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire).

“They are the only twins to be found in French cinema…they were originally hairdressers. One of my assistants came to me one day and told me that he’d found a pair of twins who might interest me, so I met with them. They wanted to be actresses, a dream they had for quite some time. They had a certain naïve quality that I felt would be ideal for my type of cinema.”
-Jean Rollin to Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 and Virgins and Vampires-

“(Great) above all (were) the two Castel twins, serious as popes, two little hairdresser thrilled to be realizing their Hollywood dream, coming of age just before the shoot.”

“I wanted them (Castel Twins) by my side everyday, until the production director Jean Lavie let me know that I was ‘vampiring’ them, sapping them of their energy and wasting them away.”

“One of the twins knocked herself out while falling down a flight of stairs…she was very proud of it and is still talking about it to this day.”
-Jean Rollin introducing Le Vampire Nue in Virgins and Vampires-


I will be delivering long individual posts on both Catherine and Marie-Pierre here in the near future.