Blood and Roses

Roger Vadim's Barbarella has been one of my favorite films ever since I first saw it a decade or so ago. Even though it's campy and ridiculous, it holds up as an entertaining film, with great visuals, and set in an imaginative, fully realized universe. I don't know why it took me so long to think, "Hey, I wonder if Roger Vadim made any other movies?"

Well, I finally did think that, and after some rudimentary research on Wikipedia, I learned that the answer is, yes. He made a lot of other movies, some to much acclaim. After a little bit more looking, I learned that one of those other movies can be found on Netflix Instant Watch, and it is, of all things, a vampire movie. Awesome!

Blood and Roses (1960, French title: Et Mourir de Plaisir) is based on the classic Gothic story Carmilla, which itself was a predecessor to and influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula. A group of friends are staying at an ancestral home in Italy, celebrating Leopoldo and Georgia's engagement. Carmilla (Annette Vadim, the director's second of MANY wives), in love with Leopoldo, is jealous and depressed, unwilling to go outside for the costume party at the family graveyard.

Drawn hypnotically to an old wedding dress, Carmilla dons it and trance-walks into the crypt of its owner, Mircalla, a vampire who takes over her mind. Her friends don't pay much attention the changes in Carmilla at first, animals are afraid of her, her skin is cold. Every day, she must secret herself off to the place of her burial, in order to survive. At night, she hunts and feeds on innocent girls.

Blood and Roses is one of the coolest vampire movies out there. It has a great story, told with atmospheric and surreal cinematography by Claude Renoir (who also shot Barbarella). And as a bonus, the girls are totally 60's French sexy.

The only problem is that the version on Netflix is dubbed, and I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like the sides of the frames were cropped. I've heard the film was edited for release in America, and this may have been that cut. I would love to see the full French language version of the film.

Carmilla has been adapted more than once before. I read that Dreyer's silent film, Vampyr is somehow based on it, but it bears little similarity to Blood and Roses. There's another one from 1970 produced by Hammer, that I'm probably going to check out in the future. I assume it's going to be more of an exploitation film than Blood and Roses (which also has its share).

I'm going to have to watch more of Roger Vadim's films now, too. I'm happy to see that Barbarella wasn't a fluke, and that he totally had directing chops.

Vampyr

The 1932 film Vampyr, by director Carl Theodor Dreyer, begins with a card that reads: "This story is about the strange adventures of young Allan Gray. His studies of devil worship and vampire terror of earlier centuries have made him a dreamer, for whom the boundary between the real and the unreal has become dim." It's a fitting way to start this film, which, like its hero, blurs the lines of reality and dream.

Vampyr follows Allan Gray, who stops at an inn to sleep. He is awakened by a strange old man in his room, who mysteriously tells him "you mustn't let her die", and leaves behind a package with instructions not to open it until the event of the man's death. Sensing the urgency in the old man's plea, Allan investigates, and is guided by shadows, independent of their owners, to the home of the old man, just in time to witness the man murdered by gunshot.

When Allan opens the package, he finds a book on vampires and demons. Upon reading this, he realizes that the old man's youngest daughter, who has taken ill, has been bitten, and he must find the vampire who has taken control of this family.

Vampyr is very dreamlike, with haunting and surreal imagery. There were times when I wasn't sure if Allan was supposed to be dreaming or not, because it felt like I myself was dreaming. The film was shot with blurry lines around the borders of the frame. It was made very early in the development of sound movies, so the talking is few and far between. It plays like a combination of a silent film and a talkie. When there is talking, it's in German and kind of muted and unclear. It almost sounds like English, but what it really sounds like to me is when someone is talking to you in a dream, and you can't quite make out what they're trying to tell you, but you sort of get their intent.

Though very short in length, the hazy, dreamlike quality had a bit of a soporific effect on me. I didn't fall asleep, but I could have laid down and took a nap as soon as the movie ended. I'm sure you're all happy to know that I stayed awake so I could bring you all this masterpiece of a review while the film was still fresh in my mind.

Some of the other great expressionistic horror films of the silent period, such as Der Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Nosferatu, really have a way of staying with you. The lack of sound just adds to the power of the images. Vampyr is right on the tail end of that whole thing, though it does have some sound, it still feels very sparse, and the imagery still holds a lot of power. This is a great movie for a late October night.