Virgins and Vampires: The Expansion of Gothic Subversion in Jean Rollin's Female Transgressors

Best known for the vampire films he made in the 1970s, Jean Rollin was a singular French filmmaker who straddled the boundaries between art, horror, and exploitation. Working on the margins of the mainstream film industry, he also made adult films in order to finance his more personal work. Due to this association with the exploitation circuit and because of the peculiar eroticism and fanciful tone that characterized his films, he was violently scorned and ridiculed by French mainstream critics and audiences, who saw him as nothing more than a base purveyor of sleaze. Here, Selavy examines Rollin's films.