The Iron Rose Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Iron Rose Blu-ray Movie Review

Jean Rollin's take on the Orpheus tale.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 22, 2012

If you've just joined us on this Jean Rollin kick, here's the deal: On January 24th, Kino Video and the U.K.'s Redemption Films are teaming up to release five of the late director's early quasi-erotic horror movies on Blu-ray--The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood, and Fascination--with several more to come later in the year. We've already got reviews up for the first two-- which you can find here and here--but the gist is that Rollin, a director who for years has only been known to the most well-versed horror hounds, is finally getting a shot at a slightly wider audience. Kino is best known for putting out silent classics, early talkies, and contemporary foreign films, so the goal is to introduce an unjustly uncelebrated genre filmmaker to more mainstream cinephiles.

The Iron Rose, Rollin's fourth feature, is one of his most atypical movies, as it's rather short on gratuitous nudity--a directorial staple--and doesn't feature vampires at all. That said, while it probably isn't the best entry point into the director's low-budget oeuvre, it is one of his better films, a quietly unsettling journey through an above-ground underworld of sorts, where the line between life and death is easily crossed.

Picnic in the Montmatre Cemetery...

A true gothic romanticist, Rollin was fascinated by the antiquarian and aged--anything falling apart or sliding into demise--and The Iron Rose is a perfectly rusty and chipped vehicle for his fetishization of the dilapidated, decayed, and ruined. Appropriately, the story opens in a near-deserted town where the only sign of life is a wedding reception being held at a dingy chateaux. As a toast, a rakish-looking young man (Hugues Quester) in the corner stands up and regales the attendants with a whispered love poem, and in the process he catches the attention of the girl (Francois Pascal) he'd been eyeing. Outside, he asks the girl--a ballet dancer--on a bicycle-riding date, and the next day the two meet up in an abandoned train yard, where the chugging sounds of the now long-dead locomotives can still be heard eerily in the background.

Hoping to find a quiet place to woo his way into her pants, the guy takes the girl to an enormous and magnificently overgrown cemetery--she's extremely wary about this--and they picnic among the headstones, talking about the absurdity of spending money on expensive mausoleums when there's nothing but non-existence after physical death. The man coaxes the girl into an underground vault, and they make love, but when they reemerge, night has fallen and the cemetery exit isn't where it used to be. Is the light playing tricks with them, or have they entered some sort of supernatural dimension? The film is ambiguous, but one thing is clear: The young couple is lost...physically and metaphysically.

Rollin's movies are generally classified as dreamy and languid, but The Iron Rose might take the figurative cake for being his most ethereal and molasses-y film. There's no supernatural threat here whatsoever--no vampires, no zombies, no ghosts--just two characters wandering aimlessly together while their individual psyches go off in drastically different directions. The man, so excited at first to get the girl alone, grows angry and terrified at his inability to find his way out of the maze-like cemetery, while the girl--who was initially afraid of the place--becomes gradually death- obsessed and keen on staying. Yes, for good. And that's really all that happens in The Iron Rose, though I won't give away the exact turn of events that change the film from a merely spooky fable to a waking nightmare of Edger Allen Poe-esque proportions.

As with most of Rollin's films, the plot--such that is it--is secondary to the feelings the director evokes, and this is why the term poetic is frequently used to describe his work. The Iron Rose is indeed a mood piece, and it was inspired by the writing of an actual poet, Tristan Corbiere, a rheumatic, tuberculosis-ridden 19th century Romantic who died tragically young. As the lovers bicker and reconcile and make out atop a pile of bones in a mass grave, a sense of sickly morbidity--the inevitability of death--hangs over them like a shroud.

If you're not in the right frame of mind--quiet contemplation--The Iron Cross can seem to drag on for far longer than it needs to. A different director might have told this same story in under an hour. But that's not how Rollin rolls. He likes long, wide shots of his characters moving through their crumbling, overgrown surroundings. He lets drawn-out silent pauses punctuate their conversations and lets them simply be in the moment. While Hugues Quester (Three Colors: Blue) goes over-the-top too often and seems somewhat ill-suited for his role--he was reportedly unhappy with the entire production--his costar Francoise Pascal gives a performance that's almost hypnotic, going mad in subtle but cumulative ways, dancing between tombstones and spacing out in an enraptured, death-drunk trance.

Early on, Rollin throws out a few red herrings that seem to suggest the film might follow a more typical horror movie path. A vampirish-looking man in a cape enters a crypt. A terrifying clown walks through the cemetery with a bouquet of flowers. A psychotic man in a shaggy coat stares down our female protagonist. But Rollin is just toying with our expectations. The Iron Rose defies not only the conventions of the genre as a whole, but also what we anticipate from a director best known for naked, girl-on-girl bloodsucking action. He does acquiesce and give us one brief nude scene, but it's a surreal dream sequence that's surprisingly integral to the story and overall vibe. It was his most atypical and least commercially successful film, but The Iron Rose is a haunting experience that feels like the real Jean Rollin.

The Iron Rose 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, but The Iron Rose has some visual charms that are all its own. Cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon does some of his best work for Rollin here, creating a moody atmosphere of dank green vegetation and crumbling, grey, moss-covered statuettes, with the two protagonists' primary-colored shirts as the only bright, lively hues. The palette has been reproduced wonderfully and the image is dense, with deep blacks 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. Although The Iron Rose is never exceptionally sharp, 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.

The Iron Rose Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Just like the other titles, Kino has given audiences two audio options for The Iron Rose, the original French mix and an English dub, both 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 hiss, audible pops and crackles--but nothing you wouldn't expect and nothing outright distracting. Piere Raph's forlorn score isn't quite as memorable as the prog-rock soundtrack from Shiver of the Vampires or the eerie clamoring and screeching violins of The Nude Vampire, but it sounds reasonably clear and present. Most importantly, dialogue, while never perfectly clean--there's some slight muffling at times--is at least always understandable and balanced in the mix. The English dub isn't half bad, but if you're a purist you'll certainly want to stick with the original French. The disc includes only the option of English subtitles.

The Iron Rose Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Jean Rollin (1080p, 1:16): Rollin, reclining somewhat awkwardly on a couch, next to a motionless guy wearing a creepy white Eyes Wide Shut mask, says a few words about one of his most personal films.
• Francoise Pascal (1080p, 22:01): Pascal gave up a role in Kirk Douglas' Scalawag--a Treasure Island/Western hybrid--to appear in The Iron Rose, and she doesn't seem to ever doubt her decision. In this fairly recent interview, she comes across as genuinely likable as she reminisces about shooting the film and working with Jean Rollin.
• Natalie Perrey Interview (1080p, 8:40): Rollin's script girl and all-around collaborator discusses what she remembers about working on The Iron Rose.
• 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).
• English Opening Title Sequence (1080p, 2:20)
• 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.

The Iron Rose 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. The Iron Rose is one of Rollin's most atypical films--it's not about vampires and it features very little nudity--but it's also one of his best, a waking nightmare about the thin veil between life and death. This one comes especially recommended, but as I've said before, any self-respecting gothic horror fan is going to want to own all of these films. On Monday and Tuesday we'll have reviews up for Lips of Blood and Fascination, so check back in, but there's no need to hesitate on pre-ordering the movies on Amazon if you're just waiting for a presentation analysis--they all look fantastic on Blu-ray. Recommended!