Director: Jean Rollin
Script: Jean Rollin
Cast: Joёlle Coeur, Lieua Lone, Patricia Hermenier, John Rico, Willy Braque, Paul Bisciglia
Running time: 108.5 minutes
Year: 1973
Certificate: 18
Director Jean Rollin’s films are hard to summarise since the story takes second place to the visuals, which are nicely served by this excellent release; hence there’s little point in me going into too much detail concerning plot details, but I will try to summarise, regardless.
Effectively The Demoniacs is a historical horror film set during a time period when so called ‘wreckers’ were active along the coastlines of the world, deliberately causing ships to flounder against rocks and then later beachcombing for booty washed up from the shipwrecks. These specialist thieves were opportunists, given to taking advantage of any potentially self-fulfilling situation that arose. In Rollins film a band of four wreckers (three men and a woman) take advantage of a stormy night to wreck a ship and later, not content with the few trinkets they find washed up on the shore, decide to sexually assault and kill two washed-up female survivors from the recent wreck.
However, the next day, when they’re nursing hangovers down the local inn, they hear of two shipwrecked women who’ve been stumbling around the town, seemingly looking for them. Scared that their heinous crimes might come to light, should their victims talk, they go looking for the women again, meaning to kill them once and for all. But our corrupt quartet don’t know that the two innocent women have been ‘saved’, sort of, by a demon, who’s happy to help the women enact their own breed of vengeance on the wrecker gang.
Les Demoniacs or Curse of the Living Dead, as it’s known in America (in its dubbed version), is perhaps a little more coherent than some of Rollin’s better known vampire films, but still shares many of the same traits, both good and bad; namely, an almost incoherent plot, am-dram level acting, risible dialogue and inconsistences in story-logic. But it’s also nicely shot (despite being shot on a low budget), makes good use of some great locations and provides plenty of eye candy, if you enjoy seeing plenty of pert female flesh on display. In fact, Joёlle Coeur, playing Tina (one of the wreckers), probably provides the most delicious sort of eye candy here.
Powerhouse have very magnanimously given us three versions of the film, the theatrical cut, the longer uncut European export version and the dubbed Curse of the Living Dead version. I chose to watch the longer version for this review. However, there’s no great advantage to choosing this viewing path unless you’re keen on patently unerotic erotica. Although, if like me you find watching other people having bad sex relatively unappealing, then you might want to visit the original theatrical cut instead.
It’s at this point in my review that I should say that my first encounters with Jean Rollin films were during my attendances of a few horror film festivals in London during the nineties and early noughties. Sadly, on a couple of those occasions subtitles weren’t available so I had to sit through said screenings unable to translate the majority of the French dialogue – French was not my strong suit at school. So, I blamed my frustration with the auteurs’ films on my lack of language skills. However, I later learned that even having subtitles sadly doesn’t really improve one’s viewing pleasure of Jean’s movies – they still make little sense. And this is quite surprising given that Jean Rollin always appeared to be a very erudite man during his lifetime, seemingly knowing exactly what he wanted to convey in all of his films.
So, is Les Demoniacs worth watching? Sure, but one must approach it as one must with all of Rollin’s films, i.e. with a very open mind, and be prepared to ‘go with the flow’, with no preconceptions or expectations, since he often tears up the rules of ‘normal’ cinema and just does his own thing, which often results in viewers becoming frustrated, but also inspired and finding their breath taken away by the sheer audacity of some of his stunning visuals.
Jean Rollin has many detractors, but also has a growing number of fans, and I find myself drifting helplessly towards the latter group, despite my better judgement. All I’d say is Les Demoniacs is certainly worth checking out, at least once, since some of the performances are very memorable (not always for the right reasons) and the visuals are frequently moving pieces of expressionistic art and are meant to turn heads.
Les Demoniacs is being distributed by Powerhouse on their Indicator Blu-ray label. There are some decent extras included in the package, namely:
Export Cut Audio commentary with film critic Tim Lucas– Tim Lucas (best known as editor of Video Watchdog magazine and sounding, vocally, like actor Anthony De Logis) goes into a lot of detail about the film and about Rollin’s cinematic output in general. He describes this, Rollin’s 6th feature film, as unapologetic melodrama, but seems to quite like the film. Apparently Rollin was influenced by expressionist painters, such as Picasso and Munch, which doesn’t overly surprise me.
Selected scenes audio commentary with Jean Rollin – The writer/director chats in detail about several key scenes from the film, especially how he wanted to show the symmetry of the boats on the beach and how difficult it was to light the shipwrecks.
Jean Rollin introduces Les Demoniacs (3 mins) – Here Jean explains how the film was shot as a co-production with a producer from Belgium, which is why much of it was shot there too; well on a Belgium island anyway. He also remarks on it being quite difficult to shoot and that it’s a tribute to the old expressionist films that he watched as a kid.
Jean-Pierre Bouyxou: Un des dėmuniaques (21 mins) – A likeable chap, Jean-Pierre talks about how he first met Jean Rollin (in a bistro), how he ended up being an extra/press secretary on the film, and also ended up being the assistant director as the actual AD was crap, but they couldn’t get rid of him due to the fact that he had a significant part in the film too.
Willy Braque – The Iron Eagle (10 mins) – Actor Braque talks about getting typecast playing bad guys in films, but also about hitting it off with Rollin, who he says was very funny and charming. Apparently, Rollin edited his first film for him and they remained friends.
Paul Bisciglia: One perfect shot (9mins) – Paul played, cough, Paul in the film and recalls working with Rollin for next to nothing, but really enjoying his time with him, He felt that Rollin was always looking for that ‘one perfect shot’ and his crew were happy to help him in that endeavour. He’s particularly proud of his character’s death scene, which he helped set up quickly in order to make the most of some atmospheric clouds in the background.
Stephen Thrower: Vengeance and Purity (50 mins) – The ever reliable Thrower takes us on a tour through Rollin’s films and through his mind-set, and goes into a lot of depth as to how Rollin operated and what his influences were. He also talks about how English-speaking audiences were only exposed to small amounts of Rollin’s work in cinemas – for example, The Nude Vampire was the only Rollin film that received a theatrical screening in a UK cinema.
Outtake footage (2 mins) – Mostly shots of the fires on the ships and the Captain seeking Tina, his mistress.
Original theatrical trailer (3 mins) – This is strangely beguiling, although over-long and a bit random.
Image gallery – 94 production stills from the film, including some cool posters and video art work. I can’t help but think that the demon statue in the tavern looks a bit like the creature in Michael Mann’s The Keep. Maybe Mann’s a secret fan of Rollin?
