Lips Of Blood

Crypt, Oh!
Through The Two Lips.

Lips Of Blood
aka Lèvres de sang
France 1975
Directed by Jean Rollin
Redemption Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Slight spoilers I guess.

After The Demoniacs (reviewed by me here), Jean Rollin returned to the realm of vampires and, although there are five, sexy vampire ladies in this one, he does also manage to include the dual theme among them as two inseparable agents of the undead in this are played by the twins, Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel. It’s also one of my favourite Rollin films (I even have a nice t-shirt with some bosomy poster art on it) because there are not that many plot points to take on board and it’s mostly focused on the main male lead running about the streets of France in the dark. That being said, I really don’t like the main character... for no other reasons than that a) he loses his temper too easily with people and b) his head seems too overly large to properly carry on top of his body. However, my lack of fondness for the man in question, Jean-Loup Philippe as Frédéric, doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the film which is a tribute, I think, to the power of the director’s beautiful imagery.

Okay, so the basic plot of Lips Of Blood... Frédéric sees a photo of a château at a party. It sparks a long repressed childhood memory of spending the night there as a young boy of 12 with a vampire lady dressed in white (Jenniffer, played by the totally cute and gorgeous Annie Belle... my favourite of the ‘Rollin Vampire Gals’ for sure). His mother denies all knowledge but when he starts to try and find out from the sexy photographer who took the shot (and also to try and find out why she’s being paid not to tell him), he unleashes various misadventures where he is locked in a room then, when he gets out, the photographer is killed, a gunman played by Willie Braque tries to kill him and he is temporarily locked up in an insane asylum. He is rescued by the twins dressed as sexy nurses because he earlier accidentally freed four vampires when they were in their ‘bat state’, when he stumbled upon their coffin in one of the bizarre series of coincidences which dreamily crop up on a regular basis, it seems to me, in the cinema of Jean Rollin (not knocking it, by the way, but can see that the internal logic, such as it is, of these films wouldn’t be for everyone).

Anyway, he keeps seeing the ghostly apparition of Jennifer watching over him and giving him clues and, at last, he finds the château and, despite the warnings of his vampire hunting mother, helps fake her death and releases her ageless vampire self from her coffin prison so they can become lovers once more. She bites him up to seal the deal so that they can be eternally together and then, suddenly, they turn up at that beach that Rollin often features in many of his movies and get in a coffin together, so they can be washed out to sea with the tide. So, yeah, it’s a romantic one.

The film is certainly simplistic in the storyline but, with the exception of Rollin’s early works such as Le Viol Du Vampire (reviewed here), that’s not unusual for this writer/director. What’s also not unusual is the sumptuous and surreal visual images and beautiful compositions which are in abundance throughout the film. Great swathes of the movie are shot at night and mostly without any dialogue... which gives contrast when a character or two do decide to open their mouths and get into an exchange of ideas. During these night sequences, I noticed Rollin does what I’d seen him do on at least one other film, which is to light only the buildings and characters which are points of interest, leaving the rest of the frame in inky blackness and using the negative space to focus the audiences eyes on the highlights he wants you to see. This also gives these scenes a kind of built in ‘unnatural theatricality’ (which obviously doesn’t hurt a Rollin film any) and it’s an unusual way of doing things. I’m not saying it’s a unique characteristic of Rollin’s film-making... I’m sure I’ve seen directors like Bertrand Blier do a similar thing on movies like Merci La Vie... but it’s also not that common either.

Also, much as I dislike the main male lead, I think the acting in this one by all concerned is a heck of a lot better than the majority of the director’s previous films and this all helps... especially in those dialogue scenes. This one never really feels stilted or jarring in the delivery, unlike in The Demoniacs, for example (although I made a special case in my review on why that one perhaps shouldn’t be judged too harshly in terms of where it goes with the style of the acting).

And I really don’t have a lot more to say about Lips Of Blood other than, it’s the usual Rollin affair with naked vampire girls pitched against richly lit architecture and dreamy ideas with a soundtrack which is appropriate to the various sequences. It’s still one of my favourites by this director and this was a good period in Rollin’s career, I think.