Requiem for a Vampire

With its scenario dredged from director Jean Rollin’s subconscious and a script written in only two days, the dreamlike horror fantasia REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE was cited by its maker as his purest work and his personal favorite among his films. It opens with an action scene already in progress: two women in full clown makeup (Marie-Pierre Castel and Mirielle Dargent) fire guns at a retaliating car as a handsome associate mans the steering wheel. This being a Rollin film, we quickly dispense with the man and get on with the vital, almost plotless accumulation of fetish. Eluding their pursuers, our clowns continue their never-explained flight on foot, ultimately coming upon a cemetery and a chateau inhabited by “the last of the vampires.”