Le viol du vampire

Le viol du vampire (English: The Rape of the Vampire, also known as The Queen of the Vampires) is a 1968 film directed by Jean Rollin. It was his directorial debut. The film consists of two parts: The Rape of the Vampire and The Vampire Woman/Queen of the Vampires. Originally, the film was only supposed to be a short, but a second part was filmed and added later so that it could be released as a feature film.

Critical reaction to the film was very hostile. Its poetic spirit and strong inspiration from American serials did not seem to attract viewers or critics at the time of its release. The film was received negatively and provoked a scandal, but it remains an important film in the Rollin oeuvre. Themes developed in his subsequent feature films were already present: vampires, a fascination with old cemeteries, lesbianism and a pronounced taste for eroticism. Some scenes and characters were copied almost identically in his later films.

Four sisters living in an old château are convinced that they are vampires. One believes she was raped by the villagers years before and is blind. Another is afraid of sunlight. They all react violently to crucifixes. The sisters are being manipulated by a sinister old man who alternates between admonishing them to kill newcomers that threaten their exposure and groping their breasts. The four seem to worship a bestial idol in the forest who speaks to them with a disembodied voice.

The newcomers are three Parisians, Thomas, Brigitte, and Marc, who have come to the countryside to cure the sisters of their so-called illness. They do not believe that the sisters are vampires and don't believe in vampires at all. Thomas is a psychoanalyst, determined to cure them of their madness. He believes it has been induced by the superstitious villagers, who have driven the confused women insane with their religious symbols and persecution. Thomas tries to convince them that crucifixes and sunlight won't harm them and that the blind sister can actually see. He takes all of this as proof that their vampirism is all in their minds. When one of the sisters falls for Thomas' charms, the old man orders another sister to kill him, Brigitte and Marc. When this fails, he unleashes the peasants, who brutally murder all the women they can find, including Brigitte.

Thomas asks one of the sisters to bite him to prove her wrong and discovers she is, in fact, a vampire and that his own preconceptions misled him. The two flee to the beach and are gunned down by Marc, who is distraught by Brigitte's death at the hands of the peasants.

The vampire queen is introduced. She briefly arrives by boat to the beach where the dead couple lies. She commands her hooded cohort to grab the old man and pin him down to the slab of rock, then proceeds to sacrifice him, and licks the knife covered in his blood. The vampire queen tells her leading female minion to dismember the bodies of Thomas and the vampire sister so that they don't come back to life, but she fails. It is later revealed that she is in rebellion against the vampire queen. The blood from the old man revives Thomas and the vampire sister.

The human doctor who runs the demented clinic is under the supervision of the vampire queen and he has been secretly searching for a cure for vampirism.

The vampires abduct Brigitte's body from the cenotaph, and Thomas later discovers that Brigitte is alive. She tells him that he imagined the entire trip, but he doesn't believe her. He follows her to the hospital where she is listening to an instruction tape. He stops the tape and kills her.