Two Orphan Vampires — Two Orphan Vampires (Blu Ray)
Released in the late 1990s Two Orphan Vampires was the forty-third film directed by France’s Jean Rollin. The film feels very much like a summing up of the key/ celebrated themes & tropes from his forty-plus-year career- so we have female vamps, fleeting nudity & traces of blood, and debates about endless life. There are graveyards, crypts, and arty dwelling in sombreness & melancholia. Here from Powerhouse Films is a reissue of the film- coming either as a UHD or Blu-Ray release. It features a 4k scan of the picture, a new commentary track, and a fair selection of both new & archive extras- which is all topped off with an eighty-page book.
Two Orphan Vampires (aka Les Deux Orphelines Vampires) appeared in the year 1997. Between 1958 and 2009 Rollin had an impressive forty-six features to his name. He was most known for his arty & erotic-tinged vampire films of the 1970s- with notable titles being The Nude Vampire, The Shiver Of The Vampire (also just reissued on Powerhouse), Lips Of Blood, and Fascination. In the later 70’s to early 90’s he made non-vampiric horror, as well as more than a few adult films- mainly on the softcore side of things.
Two Orphan Vampires is a fairly literal title- as it charts a few years in the lives of late teen female orphans, Louise (Alexandra Pic) and Henriette (Isabelle Teboul). When we first meet the girls, they are living in a nun-run orphanage in the French countryside. We see them being presented to blading & rather naive rich eye doctor Denary (Bernard Charnacé) as both girls are seemingly blind- the sister pushes for him to take them both on, but he initially turns this down. That night the girls rise in the middle of the night, they can now see, and make their way to a nearby graveyard- where they suck the blood of a stray dog, and we find out the pair are vampires, who have seemingly existed at this age for at least several hundred years.
Within a few days, the Doctor returns, and the white cane-carrying girls make their way to his home on the outskirts of Paris. As the film unfolds, we get a brief flashback to their past, as well as them making trips to larger graveyards & crypts. Here they meet a selection of characters- some victims, and others with a similar affiliation to them- like a large winged & Lyrica-suited woman who flies over graveyards at night, and later a deranged earth-slamming goth. The film runs at one hour and forty-seven minutes and features a very lulling & lonesome drifting pace- which largely kept me held.
As we go on, we find out the two have been alive a lot longer than was originally implied- as we get a wonderfully descriptive dialogue scene where they talk about recalling blood-flowing steps in the time of the Incas.
Both Pic & Teboul do well enough in their roles and largely manage to sell their daytime blindness. We have a few recognisable euro cult faces/previous Rollin collaborators appearing in the cast like Brigitte Lahaie (Fascination, Caged Women, Faceless), and Natalie Perrey (The Sadist with Red Teeth, The Iron Rose, The Night Of The Hunted). And on the whole, the acting is of fair euro cult levels, with no really bad/ hamming it up going on.
As a later-day film in a director’s filmography Two Orphan Vampires is not half bad, and is largely a moody & well-realized affair. Mind there are a few issues- the soundtrack uses very late 80’s/ 90’s keyboard sounds/ synth choir elements, which at points get rather trying & overtly dramatic. Some of the elements in the film do move towards almost parodying the director's past work, but largely these remain a fond look back- instead a weak/watered-down rethreading. Lastly, in its final quarter, there are moments of lull/ lack of focus- though we do move towards a memorable if downbeat resolve.
Moving onto this new release- and we get a new 4k scan- this largely looks good, though still is a little murky in some of the night-time shots. On the new extras side, we get a commentary track from critics and authors David Flint and Adrian J Smith- and this is rather good, been very well researched & observed. They begin by talking about how the film connects together themes from the director's classic films with a downbeat resolve, and how the film didn’t compromise/ get pulled down by commercial pressures. We find out the director was quite unwell at the time of making, and he was on kidney dialysis. The pair talk about how they enjoy the film's score- though we find out the composer didn’t like it. They discuss the film's feeling of being out of time, and how it certainly didn’t feel like a late 90s production- we find out the film was made as a response to Francis Ford Coppola’s overblown Bram Stoker's Dracula. They talk about how the film was based on two novels by the director wrote- there was a total of five in the series. They discuss the two lead actresses- their mainly TV-based acting, and how good the pair are in their roles. We get talk about how the tone/ colours of the film differs from Rollin's classic films- before they discuss these. Later on, they talk about the different graveyards in the film, as well as the different types of vampires in the film. The feeling of ongoing strangeness in the picture, and how it’s so appealing- and much more. Definitely, a track I’ll play a few times.
Otherwise, we have Infinite Dreams (35.04 ) a newly edited archival interview with Rollin exploring the themes of Two Orphan Vampires and his wider filmography. Memories of a Blue World (43.30) a 2012 documentary on the making of the film featuring interviews with key collaborators. Bonded by Blood (13.33) a re-edited archive interview with actress Alexandra Pic. Eyesight to the Blind ( 11.01 ) a newly edited archival interview with actress Isabelle Teboul. The Smoking Vampires (4 .00) actresses Pic and Teboul revisit the Père Lachaise Cemetery filming location in 2002. Livres de sang (7.26) the director gives a tour of his living room displaying the books he has written and awards he has received.
The finished release comes with an eighty-page book with a new essay by Patricia MacCormack, an archival introduction by Jean Rollin, an archival production report by Peter Blumenstock, an archival interview with Brigitte Lahaie, an extract from Rollin’s source novel, and full film credits.
It is nice to see this latter-day Rollin film getting the Powerhouse treatment. I’d say first check out his classic 70’s film, then work your way back to this- as it will make more sense, as it is a wonderful (if downbeat) celebration of Rollin’s very unique take on filmmaking, and you need to see where it all started to fully put together all Two Orphan Vampires has to offer.