Orchestrator Of Storms

Rollin Alley

Orchestrator of Storms:
The Fantastique World
of Jean Rollin
USA 2022
Directed by Dima Ballin & Kat Ellinger
Arrow Films
FrightFest Screening 26/8/22

Orchestrator Of Storms: The Fantastique World Of Jean Rollin is a brand new documentary that I saw screening on its European premiere at this year’s FrightFest. And, truth be told, it was a really nice little movie. Although my first reaction to this heady concoction of talking heads, excerpts from Rollin’s cinema and behind the scenes stills was that it felt a little like “Rollin for Beginners” to a certain extent. Some of the presenters and guests for the screening seemed to be getting more out of it in terms of acquiring knowledge than I did and my first gut reaction straight after the screening was... really? You can pick most of this up from the extras on many DVDs and the few books written about the director. But then I realised that this documentary did do something new which I’m really grateful for... it did give me at least one thing I’d not known before and it also reminded me of something I’d long forgotten. And, actually, it also acts as a kind of summary for a lot of those old DVD and Blu Ray extras from times gone past so... yeah, after I got thinking about it for a bit, I figured I did get a lot out of it and, beyond me personally, this cinematic document is going to be a lot of help for people who don’t have the time or opportunity to piece together all this information like some of us were doing as teens in the 1980s, when there was no internet. So, yeah, good job.

The film talks to certain key people in the director’s life and various other experts, among them some very important ones such as the brilliant Virginie Sélavy (who I think I might have met at a seminar on Rollin’s work once and who was one of the guests here at FrightFest), the great Kier-La Janisse, Nigel Wingrove (who founded the Redemption label, instrumental in exposing a lot of people to Rollin’s work... albeit in sometimes cut form... in the UK back in the 80s and, indeed, Redemption’s recent definitive US Blu Ray editions are still the best documents of these films), the wonderful Françoise Pascal and frequent collaborator and legend Brigitte Lahaie... who was the main guest for this screening with much to say and who I was happy to meet, briefly, at a signing session after the film.

The movie takes us from Rollin’s early childhood, where I found out a little about his parents and was reminded that, when he was a very young boy, his mother was engaged in an amorous affair with the writer Georges Bataille, who was an early influence on Rollin. It goes through his early break into the film industry and talks about the riot that ensued at the screening of his first feature film The Rape Of The Vampire (which I reviewed here), putting it into context with what was going on at the time. It goes through, mostly, his personal films but it does touch on his career in the pornographic industry he used to finance his own work, perhaps a little more briefly than I would have liked since this is the stuff I genuinely don’t know much about and could do with learning a little more.

What I did find interesting was Rollin’s desire, in his final year, to try and make a movie version of Georges Bataille’s confrontational, pornographic work Story of the Eye (Histoire de l'oeil). Admittedly, it would be a tough movie to try and get past any censor in most countries but one thing which did spring to mind, when Wingrove describes the scene where a man’s eyeball is torn out and then inserted into a woman’s vagina... is that Bertrand Blier already filmed a version of that scene, pretty much, in his charming movie Merci La Vie so, yeah, maybe not necessarily that scene but it would have certainly made for a challenging movie, that’s for sure.

Kier-La Janisse once again tells the charming story about how she invited Jean Rollin to one of her first film festivals without realising the strings attached and it’s made apparent just how much that meant to Rollin and how much joy it brought him. The most moving and informative stuff in the film, though, I think comes from his technical collaborator Véronique Djaouti. There’s a point in the proceedings charting just how ill Rollin was in his final years and it gets to a point where she’s practically reliving his final night for the camera and just breaks down, unable to go on for a while. Now, I was in tears myself by this point so it’s admittedly a very powerful piece of film but I was thinking to myself... they could at least have turned the cameras off. I’m sure the footage is here by mutual consent though so, yeah, it’s strong and engaging stuff.

After the film finished there was a quite good Q&A with Sélavy, Lahaie and the man behind the new book about LeHai’s films and, I learned a lot from this too. I already had an inkling but it turns out that Lahaie has been successfully hosting a very popular two hour, daily radio show since early in the millennium and so she’s actually a very busy person these days. I’m not going to say too much about the Q&A because Arrow were filming it for inclusion on their Blu Ray of the movie, due to be released sometime next year. There were some interesting questions that came up though, including one about Rollin’s connections to the underground jazz music scene at the time.

And, yeah, I think that’s me done on Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin. I got so much more out of it than I at first realised and fans of this director’s filmography should appreciate this one... especially the future fans who will certainly find this an invaluable insight into the director’s life and work. This is probably my favourite film of FrightFest this year, I think.

Images In A Convent

Pagan Sandwich

Images In A Convent
aka Immagini di un convento
Italy 1979 Directed by Joe D'Amato
Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B

Warning: Some spoilers.

Well Images In A Convent is, so far, the dullest of the three of the four films I’ve watched in Severin’s splendid Nasty Habits nunsploitation boxed edition. It’s also, despite the tediousness of many of the sex scenes, quite an interesting film so... yeah, I think it’s definitely a bizarre contrast by what I see as, not that great execution in terms of cinematography etc but with some twists in the tone that certainly make for a wild viewing experience if... possibly not for the reasons the director was intending.

Don’t get me wrong... I love seeing young, nunned up females in a state of undress as much as the next person and this film is certainly the most sexualised of the ones I’ve seen in the set so far. But, I dunno, it didn’t make me feel much of anything while I was watching it and there’s not too much of a plot on this one either. Ultimately though, after the wonderful cinematography I saw on Cristiana Devil Nun (reviewed here) and Story Of A Cloistered Nun (reviewed here), this one seems much less interesting visually, at least in terms of the way the frames have been designed and the way the camera runs through them.. and it just didn’t feel that exciting. There was one moment when the camera is placed in the corner of two intersecting corridors and shifting the view to follow the action before shifting back to the other corridor to catch the next bit but... it’s then followed by another standard cut to more of the same and, to be honest, there’s way too much walking down corridors in this movie for my liking anyway.

The actresses playing the main nuns, especially Paola Senatore as new recruit Isabella, are all very attractive and get up to lots of pleasuring in the film... doing unto others as they do unto themselves, so to speak. Perhaps because there are so many extended sequences of nudity and sexual activity in this one, the very simple plot is not referred back to as much as it should be and so this element equally didn’t engage my interest.

However, what there is of the story (very loosely inspired by Prosper Mérimée's La Vénus d'Ille, as we are told on the credits) is quite wild and the narrative takes some lovely genre turns. The plot is simple... Isabella has been forced to come to the convent to escape the attentions of her uncle. As soon as she gets there, things get very sexualised, partially because of her presence and partially because of a demonic statue in the courtyard. Cuts back to the statue from the camera show things like windows blowing open and then nuns engaging in spontaneous sexual outpourings. The film also includes the, almost compulsory, whipping scene as one nun called Licinia, played by Marina Ambrosini, is flogged by a senior nun with a cat o’ nine tails (judging by the looks of the wounds) before the dominatrix is overcome by her own desires and starts ‘lesbianing up’ Sister Licinia herself.

However, the devil statue keeps appearing in places it shouldn’t be by ‘camera magic’... okay, they mostly just cut the film and plonk the statue there... like a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who (hmm... one wonders if Steven Moffat didn’t take some inspiration from this movie and, yes, I know the effect is achieved differently) and pretty soon a wounded traveller turns up who is brought into an outer building and who is also sexing up as many nuns as he can. Perhaps he is physically linked to the demon. Or perhaps, as I suspected, the devil character is linked to Isabella. One thing’s for sure, they never should have built that convent on top of an old Indian burial gro... err... I mean, on top of an old pagan temple, as we are told at one point in the movie. That’s a bit of a rookie mistake, I guess. At which point, after a fairly graphic rape scene... famous genre actor Donald O’Brien turns up and, well, things take another turn.

So the thing about the movie is, it starts of as nunsploitation with a strong sexual element but, somewhere along the way it turns into proper pornographic content (apparently, according to whether you’re watching the long or short cut... being as Severin are always thorough and don’t scrimp on their releases, this is the full length version)... showing erect cocks (which probably wouldn’t be allowed if it came out from a UK label) along with every other orifice and wooden dildoes etc, as the nuns sex up everything that moves and engage in all kinds of acts such as forced fellatio and sixty nining... well, okay, I guess in this case it’s sixty nunning. And then, bizarrely, O’Brien turns up and it turns out he’s there to eradicate the devil from the convent so, yeah, for the last twenty minutes or so it turns into an exorcist movie, albeit a highly sexualised one where various nuns are following him around to try and distract him from his rituals by flaunting their frenzied, masturbating bodies at him as he walks the convent to perform a ritual in every room. The ending is totally lacking any closure after Isabella stabs the ‘wounded traveller’ to death and the priest presumably finishes his exorcism. It’s all left in a bit of a cyclic state, to be honest. The traveller, by the way, has the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen... even hairier than Sean Connery’s chest... and that’s saying something.

There are a couple of bizarre things which have been unearthed by the Severin team which are of interest though. The main feature commentary track, which I’ve not listened to yet, is by the delightful Kat Ellinger but she also talks over 25 minutes of silent, rediscovered lost scenes deleted from the final cut. As she says, only in a D’Amato movie would all the cut scenes be those with character building moments... the sleaze was retained while plot and story points were deleted. Now, there’s a moment in the movie where Isabella slaps the traveller and then we cut to a reverse shot where her head is also thrown back and, coupled with the ensuing dialogue, it gives the strong impression that the traveller slapped her back full in the face too. However, on the cut, extended version of the scene, it shown that they both take a couple of good slaps at each other here.

The real eye opener is the alternate ending. I said I’d suspected Isabella all along as being a manifestation of the devil and so, when she stabs the traveller and things seem to die down for a bit, I was kind of disappointed. Well, there’s an alternate ending here where she finishes up having an intimate, topless chat with the devil statue, clearly showing the two are in league with each other. This then concludes with the statue’s grey arm actually manifesting as living stone and strangling her. I’m with Kat Ellinger on this one... this is a far better ending and I wish the producers had left it in.

But, overall, while the film passed the time... well, like I said, I found Images In A Convent to certainly be the least inspiring of the movies so far in my journey through Severin’s wonderful Nasty Habits box set (although my memory of it is kinda growing on me now... might have to revisit). One more to go in that set but, also, a few other nunsploitation movie reviews coming to the blog at some point soon (more about that in tomorrow’s review).

All The Colours Of Giallo

A Bava And Beyond
The Call Of Duty

All The Colours Of Giallo
USA 2017 Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A

There’s a moment during Kat Ellinger’s commentary track for a giallo trailer on Severin Films’ new release All The Colours Of Giallo, where she says “Thanks God for multiregion and bootlegs.” I’m so grateful someone finally said this because, for people who are accustomed to passing time in the shadowy world of the predominantly Italian giallo thriller, this is often the only way such films can be seen. If this kind of black market, cinematic contraband didn’t exist then I suspect the giallo film wouldn’t be experiencing the kind of popular resurgence that it has, internationally, since the dawn of the DVD age... for a number of reasons.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

All The Colours Of Giallo is a new, three disc Blu Ray set from Severin which you can/could buy either as a stand alone title or, as I did, with a special double slip case release (with a cool t-shirt and accompanying pin badges... always wanted an Edwige Fenech pin badge) housing both this and their newly restored, two disc edition of Sergio Martino’s All The Colours Of The Dark. I’m not cracking into the Martino film and accompanying soundtrack CD (which I hope is a remaster or is in some way different from the previous Digitmovies release) yet because I need to start watching and revisiting the genre with a fair few giallo Blu Ray upgrades from the last year or more but, I couldn’t resist breaking into the All The Colours Of The Giallo release before I watched anything else.

Imagine my surprise when I found out the main reason I was buying this set was, actually, the extras and not the main part of the release (although, frankly, that’s debatable because the extras are where the main meat of these discs are). The main attraction, so to speak, is supposed to be a feature length documentary about the genre which... I watched with interest but I certainly didn’t feel I was the target audience. I must have hundreds of these kinds of movies lining the shelves by now and I think the documentary from which this set gets its title is more for those viewers less experienced in the form and who would like a little more info about the history of the genre.

The documentary is predominantly one guy, Fabio Melleli, telling the audience about the history of the genre with a few other, ‘hands on’ talking heads from various movies of the time. Some of the usual suspects plus a few others. This includes discussing the meaning of the term giallo, which means yellow, coming from the yellow covers of the Mondadori thriller reprints in Italy and then goes on to cover some... but not all.. of the major players that were making these things. So, yeah, if you’ve been hanging around in the world of giallo for a while then you’re probably not going to have much of a takeaway from the documentary itself as you’ll already know it inside out but this piece, indeed the whole set, would be an absolute essential purchase for people who are only just starting to explore the field. Yes, there are some translation short cuts in the subtitles and, bearing in mind I know no Italian whatsoever, even I could see the damage done when the subtitles translate a very specific word, 'giallo', at one point as the resident expert uses it to illustrate a point, as 'gialli'... which is the plural and implies other films within the same genre, which isn’t what the guy was getting at in this particular instance. Even so, though, it’s a pretty good documentary for people who are new to this stuff and it also touches briefly on the influence of the German krimi movies of the time (okay... I’ll come back to that point a little later in this review).

I must admit, the documentary for me was a little disappointing but I didn’t mind that so much because the stuff I was after listed as extras was the real main course. However, before that main course there was another little starter, which is a mini documentary on the same topic called The Giallo Frames, an interview with John Martin, editor of The Giallo Pages and it’s something I found much more palatable but also a more or less compressed version of the other documentary on this disc. Again, like all the stuff here, this is an excellent introduction to the genre and I’m sure a lot of people who are just starting out watching these films will find it very informative.

And then we have 'the main course' of the first disc... the thing I was actually buying it for... the Giallothon. Which is 82 giallo trailers comprising just over four hours of viewing time. Now this is where the fun really begins... I’ve bought giallo trailer compilations before on DVD but this one, although it only has one trailer for each film it presents here, by far surpasses all of those previous trailer selections. Why? Well the reason is two fold. Surprisingly, two fold, in my case.

Firstly the quality of these trailers is amazing. I’ve never known some of these trailers to be in as good a shape as this and I can only assume the people at Severin have spent some time lovingly restoring them all... which is great. There are still a couple which are a of a slightly, dodgy quality but I suspect that speaks volumes about what terrible shape the material was in, in the first place. Seriously folks, the quality of these trailers is phenomenal.

Secondly, the whole four hours comes with an optional, continuous commentary track by Kat Ellinger. Now, I’ve read some of Ms. Ellinger's work in a couple of print venues and, I have to admit that in the past I have sometimes found her writing style a tad dry and academic for what she’s trying to say but, I have to say, after hearing this fantastic commentary I’m willing to give her another try and buy some more stuff with her writing in it (maybe her new book on Sergio Martino, one of my personal favourite giallo directors). Asides from the comfort issue of someone who sounds, just a little bit, like Eileen Daley... she really seems to know her stuff and comes across as quite chatty and knowledgeable about the subject. I was properly impressed because I’ve only seen about 70 of the movies Severin chose to showcase here (a few of my favourites were not included here, either) but Kat seems to know them all fairly well and, bizarrely, I found myself agreeing with almost everything she says on this track (yeah, that almost never happens).

Now, I have to admit, in regards to this commentary, I was expecting the subject to be about the trailers themselves and the way the companies were marketing the films but, no, this is actually Ellinger diving into various facts and figures about each giallo in question and giving a fairly good, informed critique of each one... not an easy thing to do with some of the shorter trailers and, I did note, that on a few of the promos she ran into the next one too, when she got really passionate about a subject. She also seems to have the same kind of knowledge of the home video industry of the last couple of decades that I have too so, there were some refreshing observations about availability of prints on here that I really appreciated.

Which brings me back to her brilliant “Thank God for multiregion and bootlegs” because, yeah, I suspect the popularity and availability of a lot of these movies over the years has increased because of these kinds of supplies, as people finally got to see the films and were able to appreciate them and look for better quality sources and transfers. So good for her and, again, if you are just starting out to explore the genre then you will find Kat Ellinger’s commentary track absolutely indispensable here. There were a few films trailered here which I personally didn’t think quite belonged in the giallo genre (and I suspect if I were to ever meet Ms. Ellinger we might come to verbal blows as to the validity of The Perfume Of The Lady In Black as a giallo... as great a film as it is... although that’s also not included here, either) but that just opens up people to seeing other Italian genre movies too so no real complaints from me here on that score. I would say that you might want to not try and watch all four hours (with or without commentary) in one straight sitting but, if you do attempt that, make sure you have a bottle of J&B by your side.

Okay so, after the main course of this set, as it were, we are given two discs of really great dessert...

Now the second disc is great for me because the subject matter is something I am a complete novice in... the German krimi. There’s a short, fairly informative documentary called The Case Of The Krimi which is presented by an interesting guy called Marcus Stiglegger and which does a similar thing to the documentaries on the other two discs. He talks about the origins of the Krimi in the red covered paperbacks of authors like Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and, of course, as a giallo fan, I could immediately see the parallel. He also talks about the way the krimi and giallo films kind of overlap by influencing each other at a certain point in their respective cycles, which I also found fascinating. And then, of course, there’s the really great feature of this second disc... 32 beautifully restored Krimi trailers. No commentaries this time, which is a shame but, as someone who’s never had the bulk of these available to watch in my home country, I found the whole slew of trailers both fascinating and, in many cases, hilarious. And, my gosh, these krimi films must have kept the young Klaus Kinski in steady employment for years, by the looks of it. And Karin Dor, who Bond fans may remember from You Only Live Twice, is in a fair few of these too. And there’s even a couple which feature a young Christoper Lee here. I loved the fact that almost all of these were based on Edgar Wallace films and were almost all set in London which, as Stiglegger explained in his mini documentary, were almost always shot in places like Hamburg with English signs going up and cars imported to ‘do London on the cheap’, as it were. I absolutely loved this stuff and I’m so glad Severin included these because I would have never had known to bother to explore this strand of films until now.

Oh... and the third disc in this package is another thing I was highly anticipating. It’s a CD called The Strange Sounds of the Bloodstained Films... presumably as a mixed gialloistic, parody/homage of the title What Are Those Strange Drops Of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body? (which was an alternate title for The Case Of The Bloody Iris) and The Bloodstained Shadow. It’s basically a musical compilation of tracks from various gialli and, while I love this, I have to confess I was slightly disappointed because I have already got the full score CDs to all but one or two of the films represented here and I was hoping for some more obscure, previously unreleased tracks, truth be told. Still, that being said, it’s a lovely compilation and something people unfamiliar with some of the famous giallo scores outside of Argento’s collaborations with Goblin and Ennio Morricone might use as a kind of music sampler to allow them to go off and explore the full albums at some point.

So yeah, all in all, All The Colours Of Giallo is a blisteringly good release from Severin, who have really gone ‘a bava and beyond’ the call of duty to bring us this beautifully packaged set (I love that double slip case) and it’s something which should be on any cinephile’s movie shelves, as far as I’m concerned. Especially if they’re not into this material in the first place. This is an excellent place for newbies to start and I wish I’d had something like this to hand a few decades ago when I started being drawn into the genre. An absolutely first class release and something which shouldn’t be ignored. Try and grab one of these if you can... it’s one of the best releases of the year, so far.