Shiver of the Vampires

Starring:Sandra Julien, Jean-Marie Durand, Jacques Robiolles, Michel Delahaye, Marie-Pierre Castel, Kuelan Herce, Nicole Nancel, Dominique
Director: Jean Rollin
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Jean Rollin's surreal and strange cult classic is a nutty mix of hippie vampires, lesbian seduction, and moonlight ceremonies in a graveyard bathed in red and blue light. A honeymooning couple stops at a crumbling castle to visit the oddball cousins of bride Isolde, who have supposedly just passed away but mysteriously show up for dinner. Decked out in hep Carnaby Street duds, they entertain their guests with tales of religious research and the worship of Isis, tossing the story back and forth like a game of verbal Ping-Pong. While the groom Antoine discovers their bloodsucking secret as they stake a recent victim in their cellar ("We must not pass on this terrible curse"), Isolde is seduced by a statuesque female vampire who steps out of a grandfather clock and into her bed, the first of many memorable entrances. Even more absurd than most of Rollin's low-budget horror fantasies, The Shiver of the Vampires is one of his most inventive productions, a gorgeously photographed, dreamy look into the erotic lure of vampirism set to a groovy instrumental progressive rock score. Like a skin flick for surrealists, the film is full of passages of naked women wordlessly wandering through the castle hallways and towers, and in true Rollin fashion he can't seem to decide if the gallant groom or the bloodsucking sensualists are the true heroes of this counter-culture vampire tale. The DVD features French and English trailers, a gallery of production stills, and a Rollin filmography. --Sean Axmaker
Description
Teeth, they were like bloody tent pegs! A surreal film featuring gorgeous vampires, Gallic vampire hippies and lashings of lesbian sex. Beautifully macabre, with eerie medieval castles, coffins and a strange woman who emerges from a clock, "The Shiver of the Vampires" is director Jean Rollin's third bloodsuckers fairytale and is remastered from the inter-negative.

The Vampire Collection (The Rape of the Vampire / The Shiver of the Vampires / Requiem for a Vampire)
Average customer rating:

French Vamp Collection

astoundingly beautiful

Disappointed

introduction to rollin: lesson 1

The Vampire Collection (The Rape of the Vampire / The Shiver of the Vampires / Requiem for a Vampire)
Starring: Letrou , Deville , Castel , and Dargent
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Vampyres

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ASIN: B00009Q4VY
Release Date: 2003-07-08

Description

It's terror times three with these bloodsucking classics from Jean Rollin, France's maestro of the macabre. Enter a world filled with gothic castles, nubile beauties in various stages of undress, and predatory vampires, with haunting music and images bound to linger in your nightmares. Bet you can't take just one bite! These adult fairy tales of the monstrous and mysterious represent three of Rollin's finest achievements. Includes his controversial first "banned" film, "Rape of the Vampire," the outrageously colorful "Shiver of the Vampires," and his biggest box office hit, "Requiem for a Vampire," also known as "Caged Virgins" and "Virgins and Vampires."

Customer Reviews:

French Vamp Collection.......2007-05-25

Very Arty , & very French , leaves you to fill in the spaces alot .

astoundingly beautiful.......2004-09-18

Picked up this set expecting some typical vampire films and was blown away by the photography and ambiance. This set introduced me to the beauty and strangeness of Rollin's work. It was his later films that really captivated me: Fascination, Two Vampire Orphans, and Fiancee of Dracula. These are hard films to describe but there's something very beautiful about them. You'll either get it or you wont. The films in this set aren't as captivating to me as the three films I mentioned above but they have some amazing moments and I'm very pleased that I discovered this set of films since they introduced me to the work of this visionary director and led me to experience the glory of his later films.

Disappointed.......2004-05-25

I decided to get this collection as it sounded interesting enough. I was hoping for at least something exciting.
Sadly, I found these movies boring for the most part.

The first half hour of the rape of the vampires was perhaps the best for myself/ downhill from there. Redemptions Logo at the start of the dvd's is better then the movies !@#

Anyone know of some good vampire movies !@#

introduction to rollin: lesson 1.......2003-09-16

OH YEAH! it's great & redemption has made this collection available with an amazingly low cost. yes, that's 3 great films of rollin at a small price. for those of us who've wanted to study the maestro's classics or just indulge in some fantastic eurotrash, this is an absolute dream come true. infact, this was my introduction or 1st lesson in my education of jean rollin. of all three films, i'd have to say i love rape of the vampire best. as strange as this might sound, i was initially very confused when i saw this film & wouldn't have rated it so highly had i not given it a second viewing. having said that, i loved the images which are macabre & beautiful almost all at once. needless to say, that 2nd viewing really stole my attention & gave me a deeper appreciation of the film altogether. i was able to piece together the events & characters the 2nd time around & i realized what a genius jean rollin truly is. rape of the vmapire is to jean rollin as eraserhead is to david lynch. a rare landmark film that should be talked about for years & could be deemed an instant cult classic. the next film was equally enjoyable but not as confusing. shiver of the vampire is campy, macabre, and ironically funny. you'll find yourself shivering with delight at the hilarious but philosophical dialogue & shuddering with some of the images of erotic & vampiric activity. i could see this film would probably be more embraced by the mainstream than perhaps some of his earlier. not exceptionally graphic but there is a great deal of implied homoeroticism here. the next film was perhaps one of his most mainstream films (or should i say popular) of all time. released under various names through the years, requiem for a vampire is presented here in all of it's uncut glory. not my favorite of the three but it does have a surreal, child-like fairytale quality to it as many have mentioned. strangely enough, this film is by far the most sexually explicit or graphic film out of the three by far. the dungeon scene alone merits an NC-17 rating easily. had the film's dialogue been 30 lines shorter, this could have been a silent film. if you enjoy these films, thne you might go on to try living dead girl or night of the hunted which are also terrific films. although they are far more depressing than either requiem or shiver, they are indeed undisputed rollin classics. in fact, amazon.com has listed a a zombie collection which should have those titles included & will be released early october. this should save you some money & still provide the same entertaining quality you've come(or will come to expect) with redemption's wonderful catalog.

Average customer rating:

low budget-vampires from the seventies
Interview With the Foppish Vampire
Recommended, with Reservations
Recommended, with Reservations
Not worth the trouble

Shiver of the Vampires
Starring: Sandra Julien , Jean-Marie Durand , Jacques Robiolles , Michel Delahaye , and Marie-Pierre Castel
Director: Jean Rollin
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Requiem for a Vampire
Lips of Blood
The Rape of the Vampire
Two Orphan Vampires
Grapes Of Death - Special Edition

ASIN: B00000JWW8
Release Date: 1999-09-21

Amazon.com

Jean Rollin's surreal and strange cult classic is a nutty mix of hippie vampires, lesbian seduction, and moonlight ceremonies in a graveyard bathed in red and blue light. A honeymooning couple stops at a crumbling castle to visit the oddball cousins of bride Isolde, who have supposedly just passed away but mysteriously show up for dinner. Decked out in hep Carnaby Street duds, they entertain their guests with tales of religious research and the worship of Isis, tossing the story back and forth like a game of verbal Ping-Pong. While the groom Antoine discovers their bloodsucking secret as they stake a recent victim in their cellar ("We must not pass on this terrible curse"), Isolde is seduced by a statuesque female vampire who steps out of a grandfather clock and into her bed, the first of many memorable entrances. Even more absurd than most of Rollin's low-budget horror fantasies, The Shiver of the Vampires is one of his most inventive productions, a gorgeously photographed, dreamy look into the erotic lure of vampirism set to a groovy instrumental progressive rock score. Like a skin flick for surrealists, the film is full of passages of naked women wordlessly wandering through the castle hallways and towers, and in true Rollin fashion he can't seem to decide if the gallant groom or the bloodsucking sensualists are the true heroes of this counter-culture vampire tale. The DVD features French and English trailers, a gallery of production stills, and a Rollin filmography. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Teeth, they were like bloody tent pegs! A surreal film featuring gorgeous vampires, Gallic vampire hippies and lashings of lesbian sex. Beautifully macabre, with eerie medieval castles, coffins and a strange woman who emerges from a clock, "The Shiver of the Vampires" is director Jean Rollin's third bloodsuckers fairytale and is remastered from the inter-negative.

Customer Reviews:

low budget-vampires from the seventies.......2007-02-24

The well-known vampire theme is taken on once again. This time in a French low budget-movie from 1970, featuring actors & actresses who cannot act.

Nevertheless director Jean Rollin cleverly adapted a very seventies setting. Complete with many fashionable elements from those days, such as freedom, female nudity and popmusic. Its mixture makes 'le Frisson des Vampires' (= French for 'the shiver of the vampires') work -- even promotes it to some cult status. Yes indeed, strange things happen at night ...

Interview With the Foppish Vampire.......2006-03-19

I'm wild about Euro-horror from the sixties and seventies. And while France doesn't have the same reputation as Italy, largely thanks to the brilliant giallos of Dario Argento and Mario Bava, France does have the mighty legacy of Louis Feuillade and the Grand Guignol. But those are largely silent-era thrills.

Jean Rollin's 'Shiver of the Vampires,' a title that screams high camp, is a shoestring production that, while possessing little of the directorial innovation of Italy's horror greats, does make much of France's own horror legacy. And as you might suspect, it's very theatrical in its merits.

The budget was minimal, as evidenced by the graffiti marring virtually every wall of the film's 'inhabited' castle (although the exterior photography is outstanding) and that awful strawberry-icing blood. And like an amateurish theatrical production, the viewer is expected to bear with the proceedings in spite of silly continuity errors (and there are some doozies here, especially when an actor who has "left the room" is clearly visible in a mirror for the rest of the scene) and melodramatic acting that would make Nora Desmond blush.

But the film is filled with memorable shots and absolutely unforgettable characters, namely the three vampires who haunt the castle grounds. Isolde is pure Grand Guignol, milking every scene with overwrought posturing and campy menace-- but when she's dealing with scenes involving murder by nipple-spikes, it seems like the only appropriate response. She even looks as though she just stepped out of an Edward Gorey illustration. Five bonus points for her Art Deco wardrobe. The undead brothers, who dress like Austin Powers and speak like Charles Nelson Reilly, are surely worthy of a footnote in contemporary vampire lore for their effeminate-Victorian characterizations. My mouth was literally hanging open in stunned awe every time they were on camera in their Carnaby Street couture delivering their pseudo-intellectual soliloquies. And, as anyone familiar with Rollin's work knows, there are the women. The achingly beautiful women, always on hand to provide a cheap thrill and some gratuitous nudity. One brilliantly laughable scene has two gorgeous young castle servants-- tasked with waking the male protagonist one morning-- decide that hopping into bed with him and teasing him awake through manual stimulation is the only sensible approach. Only to run giggling from the room when he does awaken, of course.

While 'surreal' is an appropriate description, the plot actually makes perfect sense and employs plenty of established 'vampire lore,' in addition to hinting at a tantalizingly-structured vampire society with its own castes and rulers. Having the vampires' servants conceal the cemetery's crucifixes beneath silk scarves at nightfall was a nice touch (even though that, too, is undone by a continuity gap in the film) in that regard, as well as the 'class struggle' between Isolde and the brothers, social superiors she turned to vampirism who begin to wonder why they shouldn't still be upper-crust after death.

And I haven't even mentioned the occasional use of psychedelic guitar-driven rock over the course of the film. All told, it plays out like an over-baked production by a community theater rebel, and 'Shiver of the Vampires' sticks to its guns every campy step of the way. And although the music isn't as good as the legendary 'Vampyros Lesbos' soundtrack, it ain't half bad.

While serious-minded viewers looking to discover another Argento will be sorely disappointed, the campy-yet-sincere aesthetic of this film qualify it for status as a minor classic. Especially since we'll never have the chance to take in a performance at the legendary Parisian theater of the horrific.

On a final note, one has to assume that these films had a tremendous influence on Anne Rice and her (in my opinion dreadful) vampire novels. Homoerotic subtext delivered with a sledgehammer, the blood of animals as an intro for the newly-undead, conflicted & self-hating bloodsuckers and a vampiric class struggle. It's all here. Rollin's films might be too theatrical by half and cheaply-made, but there's no doubt that they deserve a place in the canon of contemporary horror. Particularly because his vampires are the logical followers and forebears in vampire evolution over the twentieth century.

Recommended, with Reservations.......2002-06-15

I an overjoyed that after years of bad bootlegs, Redemption is releasing pristine copies of Jean Rollin's films. However, while the beauty of this transfer cannot be denied (it probably never looked this good when it was originally released) this particular version has 4 scenes that are missing, and that were available on a Something Weird version (which was missing a key scene that Redemption has).
The missing scenes invove a lesbian orgy after the wife is bitten, a heterosexual coupling, a weird rite where the comatose wife drinks a cup of blood (taken from a cut in a breast), and an almost out-of-place scene (that looks suspiciously like an insert) involving two girls being tortured in a dungeon.
Since Redemption claims to work from Rollin's originals, I wonder why these scenes are missing. Well, just one of those mysteries...
Still, despite this, this DVD is well worth owning. It remains one of Rollin's best works, along with Lips of Blood & Fascination.

Recommended, with Reservations.......2002-06-15

Not worth the trouble.......2002-02-22

The first thing that struck me was the picture quality ..it stinks !! ..I really don't know what the fuss is all about with dvd.. but anyway, the movie itself has an average story line however, the heavenly creatures that appear from time to time makes up for it

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