Synopsis
A professor and his protege's search for Dracula leads them to a group of nuns who have held a young woman captive, so she can be married off the vampire.
A professor and his protege's search for Dracula leads them to a group of nuns who have held a young woman captive, so she can be married off the vampire.
Dracula's Fiancée, La fiancée de Dracula, Fiancée of Dracula, Narzeczona Draculi, Draculas Braut, Невеста Дракулы, La novia de Drácula, 孤独灵魂俏狼女, L'amante di Dracula
Very late period Jean Rollin. The film riffs on his common themes, but wraps it around a tale all of its own. Dracula's Fiancé feels like a film in its own right, rather than just the director retreading old ground. The film stats out like an odyssey as we follow an aging professor and his assistant on the hunt for Count Dracula. They track down various "parellels", whose information leads them to The Order of the White Virgins. It's all very dreamy and surreal, of course. The film is like a half remembered daydream as we pull from scene to scene, some making more sense than others. The locations mostly take the form of fields, cemeteries, old castles etc. Mixed…
"Dans toute folie, il y a une cohérence cachée."
This one will bear the hashtags of being the most #derisory but #astounding (and last) vampire movie Jean has made. The fiancée is glowing in her white dress, she bites a dwarfismed-jester before undressing and laying on a tombstone. After, a stupid in-live hypnotization is done on a mistreated-by-everyone and unspecified with-autism-spectrum girl, hypno coming from the superpower of a man looking like a bad magician. Turning to appropriate a soft nunsploitation syndrome, launching on the counter the presence of a cunty ogress and the she-wolf Brigitte Lahaie to ensure the smooth running of the story, the church-devoted sisters are mingling with cuckhold moves and oriental dances, keeping in beaks their smoky gadgets. Mentioning gadgets, i can't be sure staying tranquil in my burial chamber without knowing the amazon link/where to buy that one radiant cross lighter of mother superior making music, so fashionable it brings my vibe in the convent.
“His passion for what he’s doing comes across in every scene, and so does his use of humor, which comes out a lot in this film.”
🗣️ Rewatched with audio commentary by Samm Deighan, editor of Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin.
Embrace death. Life will begin anew. A wonderful commentary. I can’t think of anyone else that could so clearly explain the layered themes of this oft-ignored, but beautifully weird, latter-period Jean Rollin film. Rollin was always influenced more by art and literature than cinema, and those inspirations come across strongly in Dracula’s Fiance: the artwork of Clouvis Trouille, Gaston Leroux, Poe’s Hop-Frog, and much, much more.
The sisterhood of female monsters. Comes close to creating something…
This is Rollin film that has grown on me the most over time, one of his most self-referential, and thus one that benefits the most from repeated viewings and getting to know his entire career. His late period Lips of Blood in a sense that it is the most comprehensive yet delirious sublimation of all his long-standing romantic obsessions, culminating here in definitive realization of his surreal universe dominated by this unique sisterhood of female monsters. Watched it this time with excellent commentary by Samm Deighan.
I nearly got too caught up in all the nuns smoking big cigars like Baby Herman and mooning professors and making out and adorning their desks with hentai figures and wearing funnels as hats and delivering one-liners before shooting old women ("God commanded, 'Thou shalt not kill!'" "Yes, but I'm insane." *BANG*) to register what Rollin's saying about organized religion's potential to be a dangerous con that maligns the innocent and justifies all manner of evil, but I hear you, Jean. I particularly enjoyed when nuns being turned into flesh-eating spiders is dismissed as an example of how, "God works in mysterious ways."
I'm surprised someone hasn't adapted this into a sprawling YA series, what with all its talk of…
u can tell this is a jean rollin flick cuz the most striking crystalline poetic images are juxtaposed again the trashiest most kitsch forms of psychedelia & it’s so endearing jean went out streamlining his aesthetic idiosyncrasies in such a concise fun & endearing way!!
also literally obsessed with the baby-eating y2k ogress with tribal sun tattoo who is very hot and very confused and very emotional <3
“At 2:15, like always, may Jesus fill your heart.”
Buried deep in his latter period, when Rollin was more in the mood to summarize his career than create something wholly new, is maybe his most epic fantasy. Female vampires. Dwarves in jester hats. Tower of the Damned. Parallel creatures. Sisters of the Order of the White Virgin. Queen of Shadows. Rollin wastes no time throwing the viewer headfirst into the phantasmagorical.
Our two heroes of light (a hypnotist and his kind, young assistant) are searching for The Master, Dracula. Their journey takes them to a house of mad, obscene nuns, a tunnel guarded by a beautiful ogress, a vulgar ceremony presided over by a She-Wolf (a wonderful cameo by Bridgette…
today i decided to treat myself to a little halloween eve double feature of a couple jean rollin films i’ve been meaning to watch for quite some time now; dracula’s fiancée and the rape of the vampire! i figured it would be pretty interesting pairing these two since one is from later in his career and the other happens to be his first feature length.
i kicked it off with dracula’s fiancée and my oh my, i think i’ve got a new favorite from rollin on my hands. in my opinion, rollin is his best when he’s at his most fantastical and this picture is truly that side of him encapsulated; corrupt nuns chainsmoking cigars and pipes, a particularly gorgeous…
Just another Rollin Monday…
How much crazy is Too Much Crazy? That seems to be the bet that Jean Rollin took here to start the 2000s. In this comedy (at least I am treating it as a comedy, intentional or not), a professor and his assistant are hunting Dracula, and have tracked the fiancée of the title to the location where she is being guarded by nuns of the Order of the White Virgin. But Isabelle, Dracula’s fiancée, is insane, and being around her makes others insane, so you have a bunch of crazy nuns, including one who smokes a big stogie, one who smokes a bigger pipe, one who jumps rope (and it’s a cameo from the past), a…
Jean Rollin always knew how to make pale vampires looks beautiful on an overcast beach. This movie has a lot of his signature imagery that's largely why I keep returning. 'Fiancee of Dracula' almost felt like Rollin does Rollin. Reaching for himself, but something's way off. There's kind of a non-presence that forces you to lose interest. Usually the negative space in his films is apart of the strange dark energy, but in this film it was just radio silence. Kudos to him for attempting to make another provincial vampire movie with the climax taking place on the same beach as basically all of his films. I hate to be judgmental when it comes to a master filmmaker but I…
"We have all lost our minds, but our mission is accomplished."
A minor Jean Rollin film for sure, but the ending is really great.
These late films are by no means a good entry point for Rollin newbies. I think you can only get something out of them if you have the context of his entire body of work. Otherwise, I'm afraid they'll just seem silly and confusing. But if you're a Rollin fan I'm sure you'll like it, at least to some extent.
If anything could adequately describe the state of Jean Rollin near the end of his life, it would be that he's sober. His fixation on undead sapphicism was wrongly billed as his main allure to cover up the fact that he weaved elucidating and resplendent pictures of feminine carnality combating draconian anti-pleasure norms. Call it pornography or call it gorgeous, but it existed in a realm where it was both. After so many years, though, it seems Rollin lost the verve and replaced it with a total exhaustion for the myth and monument of vampires as walking, (un)breathing afterlives, demons that made love voraciously and existed on the margins. Now, it's all a ruse that serves "normal" people, Rollin's greatest enemy. Sad but important.