Even if you're a fan of Jean Rollin's idiosyncratic body of work, you will be caught off guard by this exceptional foray into science fiction territory. For once, there's not a single diaphanously gowned vampire girl in sight ! True to tradition, the budget proved way too tight to realize the director's vision entirely. Yet this is largely compensated by his obvious love of genre cinema, dedication to his craft and sheer ingenuity. Jean-Claude Couty's atmospheric cinematography makes the most of the foreboding locations and Philippe Bréjean (a/k/a "Gary Sandeur") contributes a startling soundtrack that fortunately doesn't resemble any of the sappy stuff he composed for hardcore.

Shot in and around a Paris office block before and after working hours, the film was largely cast with porn regulars Rollin was already quite familiar with from his "Michel Gentil" cash-gathering XXX efforts, most notably French f*ck film royalty Brigitte Lahaie in the demanding lead. Playing Elisabeth (rather well, I might add), she's picked up wandering a nearby highway one night by Robert (Vincent Gardère), driving home at the end of a long work day. Barely able to piece together the string of events that got her there, Elisabeth seems to lose her memories mere moments after events occur, even forgetting Robert's name and heroic savior role before their night flight comes to an end at his apartment. Prior to making love, she rightfully describes herself as a virgin (further credit to Brigitte's thespian skills that she can handle the line so convincingly, being after all one of the more active adult actresses of the '70s) because she cannot recall a single touch preceding his. Because of this nifty bit of context, the relatively long sex scene that follows totally eschews the gratuity of other "commercial" interludes Rollin has had to include in other works to assure funding.

When Robert leaves for work, he's inevitably erased from Elisabeth's feeble mind. A mysterious doctor (comedian Bernard Papineau effectively cast against type) and his menacing assistant Solange (striking porn starlet Rachel Mhas) move in on her during her protector's absence and take her back to the place she turns out to have escaped from. Here we get one of the movie's strongest scenes as she's re-introduced to her roommate Catherine (the late Cathérine Greiner a/k/a hardcore performer "Cathy Stewart" in a quietly devastating turn), both girls desperately supplying fictitious shared "memories" for one another in a bid to outrun their inevitable fate. That deterioration is not solely limited to the mind becomes painfully clear when they are served lunch and Catherine's unable to control her movements in trying to eat a spoonful of soup. It's also Catherine who gets to voice the filmmaker's compromise with the demands of commerce as she urges Elisabeth to get naked and hold her because sex is all they have left now that both mind and physical faculties have deserted them.

Several rather explicit - if not quite hardcore - sex scenes make up the movie's mid-section and French porn aficionados should recognize the likes of Alain Plumey (a/k/a "Cyril Val"), Jacques Gateau and Elodie Delage, along with a blink and miss bit from future porno princess Marilyn Jess whose rape at the hands, mouth and member of Plumey was only present in the film's rarely screened XXX version FILLES TRAQUEES. The pivotal part of Véronique, a girl Elisabeth almost seems to remember and whom she seeks to escape anew with, is beautifully handled by the exquisite Dominique Journet - in her unforgettable debut - who would go on to play a sizable supporting role in Franco Zeffirelli's LA TRAVIATA. The six feet under ending reveals the deteriorating condition to be the result of a nuclear spill, the quarantined "patients" ultimately leaving a barely breathing empty shell, unceremoniously disposed off in a fiery furnace. The final shot offers a particularly heartbreaking variation on that of Chaplin's MODERN TIMES as Elisabeth, approaching complete meltdown by now, and a wounded Robert stumble along the railroad bridge, clumsily clasping each other's outstretched hands.

Sentiment: positive