Badmovies.org Forum

Requiem for a vampire is one of those artsy foreign vampire movies.  It's wonderfully shot, but is very short on dialogue and just as a short on explaining what's going on. 

The movie starts out with the two main girls wearing clown costumes, and a guy who's dressed normally driving down the road trying to escape from another car behind them.  They're shooting at the car and the car is shooting back. 

Eventually they lose it, but the driver is hit, so they burn his body and carry on across the countryside on foot with seemingly no clear goal where they're going or what they're doing. 

And while the movie shows you this, it doesn't tell you ANYTHING about what's going on.  Why are they in clown costumes?  Who's shooting at them?  Why?  Where are they going?  Are they bank robbers or something? 

There's maybe five lines of dialogue in the first 16 minutes of the movie.  It comes from two gravekeepers that don't say anything important and only have one short scene before disappearing from the movie for over half and hour.  Also one of the two girls says the others name. 

That is it.  It's another ten minutes or so before you see the two of them get naked and cuddle, up until that point, you don't even know what they're relationship to each other is. 

Finally, after burning a dead body, stealing a motorcycle, nearly getting buried alive, and exploring a castle they randomly find only to find dead bodies in it, they encounter the vampires of the title.     

43 minutes in and THEN we get our explanations about who the girls are, why they're running, and why they were even in clown costumes to begin with. 

It's not until somewhere in the fifty minute mark where characters actually start talking on a somewhat regular basis.  They still don't say much, but there's at least dialogue and explanations for things.  Honestly though, by this point, I just kinda stopped caring. 

The movie is wonderfully shot and all (other than the horrible looking vampire fang.  I looked like they were going to fall out in one scene) it's just that the movie doesn't seem to be going anywhere and it seems to be taking it's time going there. 

All of Jean Rollin's movies are like that, and this is actually one of his best. It was also released in the U.S. as CAGED VIRGINS (!) I wrote more about it here: http://366weirdmovies.com/capsule-requiem-for-a-vampire-1973/ (http://366weirdmovies.com/capsule-requiem-for-a-vampire-1973/)

One of the stars, Marie-Pierre Castel often appeared in these films with her (equally nude) twin sister. They're something!

Well, that's a nice write up on it, but did you like it?

Yes and no. I'm glad I saw it and would watch it again, but it's not especially a favorite.

When I write a review, I'm trying to give you information and a sense of what it's like so you can decide if you would like it, not to focus about my particular subjective reaction.

Admirable enough, I suppose, although I do feel the review looses some intangible quality when you try to be objective without sharing your own thoughts on the subject as well. 

Maybe add just a Personal Thoughts category at the very end for a line or two. 

Well, we're drifting off topic here to philosophy of reviewing, but when I really like or dislike something it comes across naturally (plus I tag it with "Must See," "Recommended" or "Beware"). But there are only so many ways to say you're lukewarm about something or that it's a mixed bag. Most people only review stuff they really like or really dislike and never run into that problem. I think statements like "mixing brilliance and shoddiness together until you’re not sure which is which" do about as good a job as I could do of expressing my personal feelings.

But it's good feedback. Reviewers who express deep hatred for a movie get the most comments, but also open themselves up for the most (often legitimate) criticism.

I always wonder if I should discuss my mixed feelings about a movie in a review, but then I realized that I'm ambivalent about that topic.

I'll just show myself out.....