Fascination

Dir: Jean Rollin

1979

***

Classic French horror erotica bores me to be honest. Even as young teenager, I’d stay up late and watch them as they were all screened regularly around midnight during the early 90s but would find myself going to bed before the end unaroused and uninterested. However, Jean Rollin’s Fascination has something a bit more to it then the others. Set in the early 1900s, the film begins with a group of fashionable Parisian women in an abattoir drinking ox blood believing that it will cure their anemia. The imagery is striking and got my attention immediately. Nearby we follow a group of thieves discussing a successful robbery they have just completed. Nervous of each others reliability the group fight until one of the group, a young man called Marc, escapes from the others with a bag of gold coins and seeks refuge in a nearby chateau. There he discovers two chambermaids, Elizabeth and Eva, who are awaiting the arrival of the Marchioness and her servants. The women, who appear to be the only people in the house, believe Marc is taking them hostage. Even though the women seem to be in a sexual romantic relationship with one another, they are not scared of Marcbut attracted to him. Soon, he forgets about his fellow thieves who are chasing him and becomes more and more curious about the women and the house in which they are in. Marc ends up sleeping with Eva, spurring jealousy from Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Marc’s former associates discover where he is residing and start shooting at the house. Eva goes outside to hand over the gold, but while two of them count it, a woman accompanying the thieves takes Eva's dress. Eva seeks revenge by seducing one of the men inside the stables before stabbing him to death. She also kills the woman and the two other men with a scythe – in the nude of course. Finally, the long-mentioned Marchioness arrives with her servants, and they hold a party in which Marc is the only male. Suddenly, Marc feels uncomfortable with the attention he is receiving and when midnight comes, it is revealed that the women habitually lure people into the castle and drink their blood. Elizabeth helps Marc escape, so they hide out in the stables while the servants eat Eva alive. Marc confesses that he loves Elizabeth, whereas she admits that she never loved him and promptly kills him. Elizabeth and the Marchioness live happily ever after and probably have sex with each other. The story is a little predictable – or maybe I’m as perverted as Rollins – but this isn’t the usual soft-core titillation you’d expect from the 1970s. There is something uniquely artistic about the film and that isn’t me suggesting that any form of nudity is art for the sake of it. Sure it is a sexy vampire film but it also successfully explores the lost art of doomed romanticism in classic French cinema. It’s basically the French version of Hammer Horror – the comedy elements are replaced with sensuality and nipples and the imagery is a bit more striking.