Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie Review

Jean Rollin's return to sexy vampires.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 24, 2012

The late Jean Rollin, an unjustly unheralded French filmmaker largely unknown outside a cult circle of hardcore gothic horror fans, is set to be celebrated this week with the release of five of his early films. On January 24th, Kino Video and the U.K.'s Redemption Films are teaming up to bring The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood, and Fascination to Blu-ray for the first time, with the goal of introducing Rollin to a wider horror audience and critical re-revision. He deserves it. Even Rollin's fans sometimes refer to him as a second-rate Jess Franco--the Spanish director who moved to France to make violent, increasingly pornographic films--but the comparison doesn't do Rollin justice at all. Yes, there are some similarities in their work--gothic settings, frequent nudity, and extremely low budgets, most notably- -but Rollin, who was strongly influenced by surrealists like Magritte and Luis Buñuel, is more thoughtful and much classier, with a unique flair for the arcane and bizarre.

If you're just now joining us on this Rollin renaissance, we reviewed the first three films last week in chronological order--you can find the write-ups here, here, and here--and today and tomorrow we'll be looking at Lips of Blood and Fascination, both excellent examples of the director's brand of dark, nightmarish erotica. Lips of Blood isn't Rollin's best film--though he regularly referred to it as his best script--but it is enigmatic, a supernatural mystery that slowly unravels into a dream of death and beyond.

Rollin's films tend to be more free-form than tightly structured, but Lips of Blood differs in that it's unusually plot-heavy. (It's also filled with plot holes, but we'll get to that in a bit.) The story opens on the proverbial dark and stormy night as a couple of henchmen-looking guys unload two sheet-wrapped bodies from a van and carry them inside an abandoned crypt in Paris, where they're placed in side-by-side coffins. A crucifix, ominously enough, is sat at the entrance to the room, clearly to keep someone--or something--from getting out, not in. From this deathly intro we jump to a comparatively lively scene, a swanky society party celebrating the release of a new perfume, where we meet the leonine mama's boy Frederic (Jean- Loup Philippe)--he has a mane-like coif of blond hair--and his overbearing mère (Nathalie Perrey), who has him make sure her wine glass is never empty.

The poster for the new perfume features a photograph of an overgrown chateaux, and the image triggers in Frederic a long-forgotten memory of his 12-year-old self--played by Jean Rollin's son--wandering lost to this same castle and being welcomed inside by a pale-faced teenaged girl dressed in white (Annie Belle, of Forever Emanuelle, looking a bit like Joan of Arc). He becomes obsessed with visiting the place, so he tracks down the female photographer who took the shot and finds her finishing up a session with a nude model who's casually touching herself while Rollin's camera lingers much longer than it needs to. (It's not gratuitous if the character is photographing nudes, right?) And it's here that the plot thickens. The photog wants to tell Frederic the location of the castle, but she's been specifically paid off to keep it a secret. She takes a shine to him, though, and agrees to meet him at the city aquarium at midnight to discuss the whereabouts of the ruins.

If your initial thoughts here are "well, obviously, something bad is going to happen to the photographer before she can spill the beans," and "why wouldn't she just tell him where the castle is right away?," you're right on the first count and being completely reasonable about the second. But that's the thing about Rollin's films--they don't always make rational sense and their plots are filled with more holes than the neck of a vampire's human blood-buddy. There are two opposing ways of looking at this. Either, a.) Rollin just wasn't a very good writer, or b.) he intentionally used the illogical and inexplicable to further his favored, surrealism-influenced tone. But then there's also the synthesized third option, c.) he knew he wasn't the greatest writer, so he settled into this style of murky dream-logic as a kind of narrative crutch. I'm inclined to think this last choice is the case, but regardless, the non-sensical storytelling does work, providing you're willing and able to suspend a significant amount of disbelief. If you'll permit me one piece of advice on watching Rollin's films, don't think too much.

Just go with the flow, like Rollin's supernaturally-beset characters are forced to do. Over the course of the film, Frederic is pulled deeper into the mystery, chasing the specter of the girl in white, who appears and disappears at will, leading him to the abandoned castle and its literally locked-up secrets. At one point, she shows up in a movie theater and beckons Frederic to follow her as he's--no joke--watching a double feature of The Nude Vampire and Shiver of the Vampires, two of Rollin's earlier films. This scene would be terribly self-indulgent of the director if it didn't also seem to make the point that cinema is ultimately the gate through which we're drawn into another world.

Of course, the particular world that Frederic enters is one Rollin frequently explored in his films, where sexed-up vampires are a hushed-up threat to marriages, communities, and outright sanity. Frederic discovers this the hard way when he unwittingly unleashes a quartet of nubile young vampirettes--two of whom are played by the "Castel Twins," Rollin regulars--who wander about in see-through chiffon robes, feasting on the blood of those unlucky enough to get in their way. Like all of Rollin's movies, this a low-budget production through and through--the "fight" scenes are laughably bad, the special effects are primitive, and the acting is almost quaintly over-serious--but Rollin's particular talent was in using the inherent deficiencies of working with little money to his advantage, creating his own creaky, hand-made horror universe.

Lips of Blood's resolution isn't quite as satisfyingly conspiracy-laden as the premise would initially suggest--and I won't spoil anything--but the story does end with a shocking denouement that includes a coffin set adrift at sea, a severed head, and some surprising full-frontal male nudity, a rarity in Rollin's more "respectable" films. I use "respectable" here because Rollin also directed several explicitly pornographic films under a pseudonym. In fact, due to Lips of Blood's extremely poor box office performance, Rollin's producers forced him to craft a second, sex-centric cut of the film- -with injected hardcore--that debuted under the rather fetching title of Suce-moi, vampire, or, yes, Suck Me, Vampire. I'm sure some of you will be disappointed to know that this X-rated edition is not included as a bonus feature here. I judge not.

Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For a long time, Jean Rollin's films were only available in the U.S. by way of duped VHS tapes and then decent, but far from spectacular DVDs, so to see them in high definition is something of a revelation. The Blu-ray presentation is fairly consistent across all five films being released in this first batch of titles, so I'm basically reiterating what I've written in the previous reviews. Lips of Blood was actually the first feature for cinematographer Jean- François Robin--who would go on to shoot Betty Blue--and he carries on in Rollin's tradition of having a moody, muted palette punctuated by occasionally bright primary hues. The color has been reproduced wonderfully and the image is dense, with deep blacks--sometimes maybe a bit too deep--and good contrast. As with the other titles, Kino's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer is true-to-source, with no noise reduction, edge enhancement, or other unnecessary digital manipulations. That said, the print is also presented as-is, which means you'll sometimes notice white and black specks, occasional staining and flicker, and some small scratches. Lips of Blood is never exceptionally sharp, but the fine, high-definition detail apparent in the transfer makes this an instant improvement over the prior DVDs. Finally, there are no real compression issues to worry about. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you've been following Kino's Blu-ray track record, you know exactly what to expect from the Cinema of Jean Rollins series--the best possible prints, presented with minimal digital intervention.

Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires, and The Iron Rose each included both the original French audio and an English dub, but for Lips of Blood Kino has only supplied the French language mix, presented in uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0. As with the picture quality, the audio sometimes exhibits evidence of the film's low-budget origins--dynamic tinniness, light hisses, audible pops, and crackles--but nothing you wouldn't expect and nothing outright distracting. What's important is that the dialogue, while never perfectly clean--there's some slight muffling or peaking at times--is at least always understandable and balanced in the mix. The creepy mood music sounds decent too. The disc includes optional English subtitles.

Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Jean Rollin (1080p, 2:40): Rollin calls Lips his "best script" and briefly discusses the beginnings of X-rated films in France.
• Natalie Perrey Interview (1080p, 9:45): Rollin's frequent assistant Natalie Perrey talks about her role in the film, the "utter hell" of shooting with a crew that just wanted to "fool around with the girls," and how Jean Rollin's son--who played the young Frederic--would recite his lines in his sleep. I don't know if that's cute or creepy.
• Original French Trailers (1080p): Includes the trailers for The Shiver of the Vampires (4:09), The Nude Vampire (3:41), The Iron Rose (3:42), Lips of Blood (2:20), and Fascination (2:33).
• Booklet: All of the five films being released on the 24th include the same 20-page booklet, which features a great essay on Rollin and his films by Tim Lucas, the founder of Video Watchdog.

Lips of Blood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unheralded horror filmmaker Jean Rollins is finally getting his high definition due, with five of his early films being released on the 24th in wonderful Blu- ray editions by Kino-Lorber and Redemption Films. Lips of Blood is one of Rollin's most heavily plotted movies--it's a gradually unfolding mystery about repressed childhood memories--while also keeping much of the director's characteristically dreamy tone. It's not my favorite of the five--that would be Fascination, which we'll have a review up for Tuesday--but as I've said before, any self-respecting gothic horror fan is going to want to own all of these films. Recommended!