Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

The Shiver of the Vampires Blu-ray Movie Review

Hippies and dandies and lesbian vampires, oh my!

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 19, 2012

Like George A. Romero with zombie movies, the late French filmmaker Jean Rollin was a godfather of the low-budget vampire erotica genre. But where Romero took horror in a more realistic, violent and socially-pointed direction in the 1970s, his across-the-Atlantic contemporary specialized in le fantastique, making sensual, surrealism-influenced nightmares filled with indelibly weird imagery and--for the time--envelope-pushing nudity. And Rollin is even more of a cult figure than Romero. Until fairly recently, his films were hard to track down in the U.S., and even now he's practically unknown outside a rabid circle of gothic horror-obsessed cinephiles.

I have a feeling he's about to get a slightly bigger audience. Kino Video and the U.K.'s Redemption Films are teaming up to release five of Rollin's early movies in high definition on January 24th--The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood, and Fascination--with more coming later in the year. Yesterday, we took a look at Rollin's first color film, The Nude Vampire--a movie with ambitions its low budget couldn't quite achieve--and today we turn our attentions to Shiver of the Vampires, a semi-comic nudie-cutie chiller that Rollin regarded as his "most accomplished" work. Oh yeah, and it's about hippie vamps, one of whom is a lesbian.

Now, Shiver of the Vampires wasn't the first or last horror film to include hippie bloodsuckers--there's also The Deathmaster, off the top of my head--but I'm sure there aren't too many of them. Right off the bat, this gives Shiver an unusual vibe, and I can promise you, you've never seen a vampire film quite like this one. It's spooky and baroque, strange and sexy, but it's also weirdly funny, with two of the most over- the-top, flamboyantly dandyish vampires in horror history, played by Michel Delahaye and Jacques Robiolles, who both had previously appeared in The Nude Vampire.

As the story opens, we follow our honeymooning protagonists, Isla (Sandra Julian) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand) as they drive across the French countryside, with plans to stop for the evening at a dilapidated castle owned by two of Isla's male cousins, whom she hasn't seen since childhood. (Yes, these cousins are the foppish aforementioned vampires, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) Informed in the village below that the cousins are recently deceased, the newly married couple head up to the estate to pay their respects, where they're greeted icily by two mysterious servant girls (Marie-Pierre Castel and Kuelan Huerca) and the mourning Isabelle (Nicole Nancel), who was to be married to one--or perhaps both--of the now-dead brothers. The funereal mood puts an instant damper on Isla and Anthoine's wedding night, and the bride is too upset to consummate their marriage, sending her husband off to another room and, presumably, a cold shower. Just as Isla is undressing--this being a Rollin film, she'll be frequently undressed--the lesbian vampire Isolde (Dominique) bursts out of a grandfather clock and seduces her, leading her out into the adjacent cemetery for a midnight sanguinary snack.

This is the first of several surprise entrances for Isolde, who pops out of a well, slides down a chimney, and dramatically jumps out of some drapery at various points in the film. I won't give too much away, but we come to learn that Isolde is the "maker" of Isle's cousins, who became prolific vampire hunters after researching the region's ancient religious origins, and were subsequently "turned" during a hunt gone bad. There's some enmity between Isolde and her proteges--she thinks they're lazy and bourgeoisie--but together they conspire to fulfill Isle's destiny by making her one of their own.

It's not much of a story, but then, Rollin was never exactly one for intricate plots. His films tend to be more free-form and drifting, with mysteries that gradually unfold and images that are moody and impressionistic. Poetic is probably the term most frequently bandied about to describe his style, but that would imply he has something of profound substance to say, and I'm not so sure that he does. There are some subtexts in Shiver with potential--including a discussion of early Christianity versus paganism, and and explanation for why vampires are revolted by crucifixes--but I think they're frankly overshadowed by Rollin's desire to simply show bosomy nude girls on screen. Which I'm totally cool with, for the record, but let's not over-intellectualize it.

Jean Rollin certainly had a thing for half-naked, girl-on-girl bloodletting, but he wasn't the first to fetishize it. The oft-used trope of the lesbian vampire preying on distraught female victims actually goes way back to 1872's Carmilla--a gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu that predated Bram Stoker's Dracula by 25 years--and the theme was popularized in cinema by Roger Vadim's 1960 adaptation, Blood and Roses. Even while Rollin was working on Shiver in France, England's Hammer Studios was producing its "Karnstein Trilogy" of similarly nudity-laced lesbian vampire movies--The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, and Twins of Evil--all of which easily best Shiver in acting, storytelling, and production values.

That said, as a filmmaker, Rollin was a loveably scrappy underdog, and what he lacked in originality and budget he made up with imagination and sheer oddity. Shiver of the Vampires is easily one of his most visually interesting efforts. The set design alone is brilliantly kooky--see the wacko, wax-covered fishbowl with a skull in it--and Rollin goes wild with his cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon, casting many scenes in bold washes of color. It's surreal and psychedelic, doubly so when you factor in the film's minor-key prog rock score, which gives Shiver a lead over the Hammer films, at least in terms of pure hipness. How many other vampires movies can actually be called groovy?

The Shiver of the Vampires 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 you can definitely tell when Rollin was working with a slightly larger budget. Compared to the relatively amateurish The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires has a noticeably more polished look, with better sets, better lighting, and better cinematography all around. Kino's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer is true-to-source too, with no noise reduction, edge enhancement, or other unnecessary digital manipulations. (Conversely, the print is also presented as-is, which means you'll notice occasional--but unobtrusive--white specks and small scratches.) It is clear, however, that carefully attention has been paid to the color correction process, preserving Rollin's washes of bold primary and secondary colors and giving the image a satisfying density, with deep blacks and strong contrast. Clarity depends largely on the quality of the original footage--you can't do much if the shot was slightly out of focus to begin with--but Shiver of the Vampires is slightly sharper overall than its predecessor, and there are moments of truly fine high definition detail. Finally, there are no real compression issues to worry about. 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 Shiver of the Vampires Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino has given audiences two audio options for Shiver of the Vampires, 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 Shiver sounds leagues above the comparatively muffled and poorly recorded Nude Vampire. Dialogue is brighter and cleaner, and the effects and music sound a bit more full. And oh the music. Shiver features an absolutely killer soundtrack of dark, vaguely Pink Floyd-ish, 1970s prog rock from the French band Acanthus, with guitars that jangle and squall and head-nodding drum fills. I should also mention that the English dub isn't all that bad--surprisingly--and the two actors who voice the cousins in English are actually quite funny. You'll probably still want to stick with the original French audio, but it's good to have options.

The Shiver of the Vampires Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Jean Rollin (1080p, 2:35): Rollin briefly discusses how this film stands out from his others by being more intentionally comic.
• Jean Rollin Interview (SD, 41:02): An extensive and unedited career-spanning interview conducted by Dr. Patricia MacCormack in 2004, interspersed with film clips. MacCormack occasionally tosses out a real over-obvious clunker of a question, and sometimes tries to read too much into Rollin's films, but if you're a fan of the director you'll definitely want to watch this nearly 45-minute conversation.
• 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 Trailer (1080p, 4:10)
• 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 Shiver of the Vampires Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unheralded horror filmmaker Jean Rollin is finally getting his high definition due, with five of his early films being released in wonderful Blu-ray editions by Kino-Lorber and Redemption Films. The Shiver of the Vampires is one of the best of the batch--it's fun and surprisingly funny and sexy in a laughable kind of way--but gothic horror fan are definitely going to want to own all of these films. Over the next few days we'll have reviews up for the rest of the series, so continue to 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!