La vampire nue
Tags: pornographic, psychedelic, murder, gothic

Plot synopsis:
In a strange laboratory men in weird masks take the blood of a naked young woman. Another woman in an orange nightgown is wandering the streets and is followed by a group of people also wearing weird masks. The woman comes across a man named Pierre who tries to help her but the masked men corner them and shoot the woman; Pierre escapes unharmed. The masked men take the woman into a building and the man follows. Guests then arrive for some sort of party, but Pierre can't get into the building. His father is behind it.
He gatecrashes the next party and a woman commits suicide in front of the other guests when a man shows her picture up on a projector. The woman in the orange nightgown appears and drinks the woman's blood. Pierre's face then appears on the projector. The other guests turn on Pierre. He escapes and is stopped by a man in a white cape who tells him to go to his father's office, where more mysteries await him.
Pierre goes to his father's office and confronts him, who explains that the girl he saw is his protégée and an orphan. Pierre's father was a friend of her family. The girl has an unknown blood condition and her wounds heal right away; she is also believed to be a goddess by certain fanatics. What the father is saying is that she is a vampire. People are working to find someone with the same condition so that they can find a cure. The hoods and masks are to hide human faces from her, so that she does not know she is different. They are hiding her from a group of vampires.
The vampire in the white cape takes the woman and tells Pierre to protect her. A fight then occurs between the vampires and the humans, which later leads to a beach where the woman sees the sunlight for the first time. They explain that they are not vampires and that one day the human race will all have the power of immortality.

Review: Strange and fascinating genre-buster from Jean Rollin..
From the title and the opening sequence of 'La Vampire Nue' it looks like you're in for a dreamlike erotic nudie vampire flick ala Jess Franco (which is not a bad thing mind you!).
The mysterious and sensual title character played by Caroline Cartier actually has very little to do on screen, but is the key to the mysterious events involving scientists studying immortality, and a surreal suicide cult.
A young man discovers his father is somehow involved in a secret society who favour animal masks and (apparent) murder.
Bizarre vampire/sex fantasy about rich brat Martin, who stumbles upon secret bourgeois-like society, which conducts secret perverse ceremonies in a mansion rented by his father.Let me say, this is a prime example of style over substance.
While I am sure there is substance here (most of which does not make any sense), that is overshadowed by colorful costumes, strange alien vampires and just an array of unpredictable moments -- many connected in some way to nude women.Best part of the movie?
Following a strange encounter with a young woman, Pierre (Olivier Martin) begins snooping around the location where he last saw her and quickly uncovers a mystery leading all the way to his own father.
See, Pierre's dad has kidnapped this vampire girl and is using his company in order to try to find out the secret to her immortality.
This is director Jean Rollin's second vampire film but the first one that I've witnessed.
Rollin also has an equally good eye at catching some great images and the final half hour set in a picturesque château in the country features some really striking bits.
THE NUDE VAMPIRE (Jean Rollin, 1970) **.
The eighth Jean Rollin film I have watched is also possibly the weirdest; the intriguing plot (such as it is) seems initially to be too flimsy to sustain even its trim 84 minutes but it somehow contrives to get inordinately muddled as it goes along!
A would-be female vampire (scantily-clad, as promised by the title) is held in captivity inside a remote château and emerges only to 'feast' on the blood of willing victims (who are apparently members of a suicide club) As if unsure where all of this would lead him, the writer-director ultimately has the human villain – actually the blank-faced hero's kinky father – ludicrously revealed as a mutant(?!) from the future!
The languorous pace and dream-like atmosphere (the cultists wear hoods and animal masks to hide their features from the sheltered girl) are, of course, typical of both the film-maker (ditto the seashore setting at the {anti}climax) and the "Euro-Cult" style, as are the bevy of nubile beauties on display.
Personally, the most enjoyable thing about the whole visually attractive but intellectually vacuous affair was watching familiar character actor Bernard Musson (who appeared in six latter-day Luis Bunuel films) crop up bemusedly through it from time to time!.
Nude Vampire, The (1970) ** (out of 4) Strange film from French director Rollin has a young man coming across a nude woman who he witnesses shot dead minutes later.
The man decides to investigate, which leads him to a strange scientist doing experiments with blood and a suicide cult.
I've seen quite a few Rollin films over the years and this one here just doesn't work.
This is one of those low rent films that tries to be a lot smarter than it actually is but for the most part all of this stuff just leads to boredom.
The biggest problem with the film is its slow pace, which is the norm for a Rollin picture.
The cinematography is quite good as is the music score but that's about the only thing this film has going for it..
With no dialogue for about the first 8 1/2 minutes, The Nude Vampire begins with a woman being pursued by a bunch of masked cult members.
The man helping her flees up a train bridge (in fear for his life), but makes an attempt to follow the men carrying her away.The young man turns out to be the son of some elite member of the cult.
Now he can find out, first hand, what this odd sect of individuals are up to...As soon as he gets in, a young woman seems to be randomly chosen...and willingly commits suicide.
Another young woman comes down and drinks blood from the suicide victim.Little does he suspect that he is next to be chosen...
It's certainly not your typical "vampire" story; and the whole cult angle makes it particularly intriguing.
Messy Jean Rollin vampire flick.
French director Jean Rollin isn't exactly known for great films, and this confusing mess is one of the reasons why.
For a director who is well known for directing erotic films about lesbian vampires; you would expect a film with the word 'nude' in the title to be a particularly bare-breasted one; but in fact, there's not a lot of nudity here at all.
Instead of erotic lesbian vampires with no clothes on; we've got a cumbersome plot about a man who wants to unlock the secret to immortality, a young woman whose affliction might hold the key and a suicide cult, who don't get to do much.
The film starts off promisingly with a sequence that sees a young girl carried off by a mysterious bunch of people in masks under the watchful eye of a young French man, who also happens to be the son of a man of importance.
Through his investigation, he soon discovers that this woman is not just a normal lady, and as he delves deeper into the cult; he discovers that cannot be killed by bullets, drinks blood and can't go out in daylight...sounds like a clear cut case of vampirism to me.Jean Rollin keeps the fantasy atmosphere going throughout the film, but it fails to be interesting because the plot is so badly executed.
It is possible to keep up with what's going on, but only because there's so many other films that follow similar plots to this one.
The director seems to know that he's messed up the plotting too, as the climax is basically an excuse to explain the film to the audience.
I guess this was Jean Rollin's attempt to be a little original, but it comes off as a ham-fisted attempt at such, rather than a logical continuation of the story.
The girls on board complete what is a pretty picture, and what Rollin's film lacks in logic and consistency, it somewhat makes up for in style.
In the film's defence, it was made in 1969; which somewhat explains the lack of shocks but I can't recommend this movie as it doesn't have much about it that is worth taking note of..
His women are unappealingly scrawny and bland, but his teasing of the cinematic imagination works for me enough to want to step in his ether - his films feel much less constructed than what passes as sensual these days, the night air and architectural walls of the thing always feel real, the texture real.
The film opens with a distraught 'virgin' being followed in dark streets by mysterious masked figures, everything in the film that is of that same somnambulist quality carries resonance and I would not dissuade you from watching.
He is not illogical in the sense that we cannot fathom more than bits of a deeply inscrutable world, quite simply he jots down a coherent story from a few absurd/fantastical elements then gives it to us in conveniently random ways.In this case, the movie about vampires is a horror show being put on, the vampires are only vampires because we believe they are.
This is repeatedly stressed out for us.The point of all this is apparently the celebration of the rigor and 'purity' of youth, remember those where the Vietnam years, who in Rollin's garbled set of metaphors are equated with a mutant race of immortals.Rollin's problem is that he is not content to be a perfume master who seduces the senses, he wants to be a bit like the meditating mentor in this film, someone who promises initiation into the 'hidden dimension' of truths so he ends up being as silly..
Bizarre vampire/sex fantasy about rich brat Martin, who stumbles upon secret bourgeois-like society, which conducts secret perverse ceremonies in a mansion rented by his father.
It turns out the members are protecting a female vampire from extra-terrestrial mutants!
Rollin's second feature (following LE VIOL DE VAMPIRE) has occasional flashes of style but drags on and on and on, bordering on pretence due to low budget..
Jean Rollin artistic nonsense about vampires, aliens and the quest for immortality.The women are beautiful and the photography stunning.
Great to look at but as any semblance of a horror film or thriller purely awful.
Its an odd mix of art film and horror that never quite meshes and while its nice to look at it never seems to "mean" anything, and its by no means scary even if the occasional shot or sequence creates a moment of frisson Its well made pretentious twaddle.
Another Elegant But Messy and Tedious Erotic Vampire Film From Jean Rollin.
Jean Rollin is admired by many of my fellow Eurohorror enthusiasts for his delirious visual elegance.
I agree that Rollin's films are visually overwhelming.
While I get why people admire this talent, however, I mostly do not find the style of Rollin's films sufficient to make up for the complete lack of a logic, continuity, or anything happening.
The prime example for Rollin's tendency to be stylish but boring is arguably "La Rose De Fer" ("Rose of Iron") of 1973, which is simultaneously one of the most visually elegant, and one of the most tiresome Horror films I ever sat through.
However, they almost entirely lack any logic or tension.The storyline is (very vaguely) about a bunch of scientist who want to examine the secret of immortality, and a pretty girl who is immortal as long as supplied with blood.
Luckily for her, there is a suicide cult of people willing to sacrifice their own lives in order for the girl to maintain her immortality.
However, there's not even quite as much female nudity as one might expect in a Rollin flick called "The Nude Vampire".
The two twin maids (played by twins Marie-Pierre and Catherine Castel), who are dressed up in nothing but a bunch of bizarre gold plates, are the most notable aspect of the whole film; apart from being lovely to look at, they also provide the film's funniest and most interesting moments.I cannot say that "La Vampire Nue" is a complete failure; the film has its qualities, and might be appreciated by fans of surreal stuff.
When it comes to European directors associated with erotic Horror films, I will personally always prefer the great Spaniard Jess Franco, some of whose films may be nonsensical, but almost all of them highly entertaining.
I've been watching a lot of so- called "B" rated vampire flicks over the last few weeks.
The opening scene was odd, yet very well done.If you like watching sexy Euro women walking around scantly clad, and getting undressed for no apparent reason, creep yet sexy twins, and a very modest attempt at making something different, you will like this addition to the cheap horror movie genre..
In the second scene, a young girl, clothed in a see-through orange shawl, is stalked by people (creatures?) wearing bizarre animal mask, the most striking of which is a deer mask with antlers made of tree branches.
We peer down a desolate beach, broken pier legs sticking out of the sand like rows of huge teeth, a bright red casket between the ranks.While the movie is full of legitimately striking visuals, there are a few times when Rollin's trashy, Euro-schlocky side pokes its head out.
There's an extended sequence of a mostly naked young woman dancing for a group of men, wearing an odd outfit that features little plastic spikes covering her nipples.
There's a vampire girl, a rich man trying to exploit her abilities, a cult who worship her, and the millionaire's son who falls in love with her.
The copy I have is a brief 81-minutes, shorter then the 90-minute French cut, and all ready feels like it could have lost ten minutes.There's little blood and the film, overall, has a gentle, dreamy tone.
It all begins with a little mystery as we see a pretty girl trying to escape from a bunch of masked guys wearing smokings (really).
The girl comes across Pierre, a young playboy whose father is a bored millionaire experimenting on all kinds of artificial youth.
The girl gets shot, the masked murderers escape with her body, and later Pierre finds out that the nymph is his father's prisoner.
But when the dialogues kick in, it just goes down, because Jean Rollin sure isn't a real convincing poet.
The movie was maybe daring in '69, but it is a little dated now and we can't help but laugh when we see the improbable ending, where some guys on a beach pretending to be in another dimension and wearing blue make-up tell the viewer to take care about the mutant race of the future...
The second Jean Rollin movie is a lot better than the first one, "Rape of the Vampire".
These things add up to a better movie in my opinion.This one is something about a rich man who believes he has found a vampire and is trying to learn the secret of her condition.
When we see a young woman supposedly commit suicide with the group, she does so with the most unconvincing gun shot I have ever seen.
The bits at the beginning with the girl wandering around and the guys in horse masks creeping up on her were generally scary and could have been great in a better movie.
We find out that no one in the movie is a vampire, but rather they're all mutants, and one day humanity will be immortal?
We see Cathy and Pony Tricot next, French Director Jean Rollin's Castel twins as maids, dressed in extraordinary metal and spike-adorned fetish gear.
Their presence is sprinkled throughout the film; always they are resigned looking, forlorn and fascinating.Olivier Martin (actually Rollin's brother) is Pierre Radamante the hero of the piece, typically rather fey nevertheless provides a welcome wholesomeness in the face of so much apparent evil and strangeness.
It seems as if she is a vampire and they are a secret suicide cult hiding under a veneer of respectability.
There are long periods where there is no dialogue, and this at the film's beginning, revealing no compromise to the telling of the story.
The ending could almost be seen as a tribute to the Universal films of old (watching 'House of Dracula' is cited as one of Rollin's formative horror experiences) with masses of people (lead by Michael Delahay nicely underplaying the Grandmaster, a role he would repeat in the following year's 'Le Frisson des Vampires/Shiver of the Vampires') with fiery torches descending en masse.The apparent death of the evil Solange is accompanied not by strident music, but simply by the guttural shrieking and bleating of night animals, making her demise an isolated, detached affair.
Solange is responsible for the unforgivable act of injuring, or possibly killing, the twin maids in one of the film's most notorious sequences.
'The Nude Vampire' is their greatest achievement, and the overall alien atmosphere would have been far lessened without their contribution.The end of the film, customarily filmed on 'Rollin's beach' in Dieppe, provides the platform to reveal the imprisoned young girl was never a vampire, indeed there have never been such things as vampires (!) – rather, she is a mutant.
This film essentially begins with a scantily clad woman (Caroline Cartier) being stalked at night by men wearing animal masks.
She happens to come across a young man named "Pierre Radamante" (Olivier Rollin) and although she doesn't say a word to him appears to be attracted to him all the same.
It's all rather strange but this is essentially how most of the movie plays out with one bizarre occurrence after the other and the audience is left trying to make some sense of it all.
Only at the end does the director (Jean Rollin) tie it all together.
On the other hand, I liked the artistic use of nudity and the way the director maintained the mystery from start to finish.
Typically offbeat Jean Rollin curio.
Wealthy and decadent industrialist Georges Radamante (a nicely icy portrayal by Maurice Lemaitre) rules over a strange secret suicide cult and wants to acquire immortality by figuring out the biochemistry of a mute orphaned vampire woman (lovely and entrancing brunette Caroline Cartier).
Complications ensue when Radamante's son Pierre (a likable performance by Oliver Rollin) finds out what's going on and falls for the comely lass.
Rollin regulars and real-life twin siblings Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel are sexy and captivating as Radamante's servant girls while Ursule Pauly is effectively nasty as the treacherous Solange.
Worth a watch for Rollin fans..
from the start of this movie you soon become aware that the name of the film has nothing to do with the movie itself from watching a naked woman being chased by people in very silly masks to servants running round in the worst clothing I've ever seen and all this in subtitles makes this the kind of movie you should think twice about seeing and as the film slowly moves along you soon realise that the vampire is not a vampire you got to wonder where the title came from some parts of the film made a bit of sense with Pierre and is father but as the film gets to its really silly ending you have got to think why end a film this way and surly they had a better ending if only in there heads this is not a film to watch basically