From Lesbian Vampires To Zombies: Your Ultimate Guide To Jean Rollin

Like Tobe Hooper and David Lynch, Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava, Jean Rollin is one of those truly visionary horror filmmakers able to take the well-worn symbols and motifs of the genre and arrange them into something wholly singular. While we at FANGORIA have celebrated him for decades, ours wasn’t always a sentiment shared by wider audiences. Rollin is for the grown-ups, you see. This isn’t Horror 101. 

Known as a director of exploitation-budget surrealist art-horror erotica, Rollin was a devotee of the French fantastique tradition that categorically rejects matters of realism. He provides no definitive answers to the matter of what is real or unreal, natural or supernatural. To this point, his films all feature exquisite cinematography, divine scores, and heavy atmosphere. For these qualities, his work is often described as dream-like and at times, nightmarish. Frequently, while watching, it’s as though you can smell the wind blowing. 

Many (not all) of his films feature full nudity and explicit sex scenes, as was expected by the exploitation circuit of the seventies. He’s also well known for the complexity of his leading ladies, many of whom appear in multiple features, and the prevalence of lesbian vampires throughout his filmography. But the unifying feature of his characters is that they refuse to be either wholly “good” or “bad,” here nor there, acceptable or unacceptable. His is a world of liminal landscapes where being is being-between-things. 

Since the good folks at Shudder aim to disgust, confuse, and delight, they’ve included a slew of Rollin films in their roster. Consider this your ultimate guide to his world of beachside castles, forested chateaus, and overgrown crypts where nightgown-clad vampires, ghouls, she-wolves, and doubles roam.