LIPS OF BLOOD: I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)

Trailer

A quirk of my overactive mind is a constant need to recall how certain events played out. At any point in the day, an old memory or image will pop into my head and my brain will try to determine a particular detail of that moment or whether it even happened at all. I like to think of it as déjà vu on steroids, but that probably sounds a lot cooler than the experience actually is. I think it’s this state of mind that draws me toward French director Jean Rollin’s filmography. Along with his Spanish contemporary Jesús Franco, Rollin’s pulpy horror tales of vampires and ghouls seem like plotless phantasmagoria (and on a certain level are) but underlying that is a desire to hold on to quickly fading memories or fragments of dreams and to reconstruct them as best they can. Rollin’s 1975 film Lips of Blood is the apotheosis of these concerns, embellishing his usual motifs of seductive vampires and otherworldly landscapes with a surprisingly moving tale of lost love and idealism. 

The sparse plot of the film centers around a Frederic (Jean-Loup Philippe) who is haunted by a memory of a girl he met outside of a castle when he was a boy. His mother frequently chastises him and says its just his imagination, but he believes he must find her. Over the course of a night, he seeks to find her, quickly getting involved in a conspiracy that dark forces are trying to keep buried.

70s Eurohorror movies like this tend to expose a lot of my hypocrisies as a movie nerd. Stilted dialogue or illogical plotting are things I’ll immediately take the latest MCU tentpole or Blumhouse tax shelter project to task for, but I tend to forgive these same attributes in something like Lips of Blood. Why is that? In lieu of having a certified professional actually diagnose that for me, I’d conjecture that it has a lot to do with the visual presentation. Though clearly low budget, Rollin’s heavily saturated color palettes of blues, reds, and purples is perfect for the surreal atmosphere he’s crafting here. It’s those same warm colors that frequently clash against the brown and grey backgrounds of urban 1970s France, a visual parallel of the thematic concerns of the film. 

Rollin’s films play out like tapestries depicting neogothic fairy tales, ancient supernatural mystique often clashing with the emotional coldness of modern rationalism. To circle back to the color palette, Rollin was often interested in generation conflicts, something that plays a big part in his other films such as The Nude Vampire and The Shiver of the Vampires. The vampires here, symbolizing freedom and romanticism, are dressed in the visually alluring colors I alluded to earlier. In contrast, modern bourgeois society and those who inhabit it are draped in harsh tones of brown and black. 

Not only does the color contrast draw your eye toward the characters in the film, but it also compliments the running motif of the film: the oppression of the dreamer. Frederic spends his life in a melancholy daze, unengaged with the banal banter of high society parties and disposed to vacant-gazed daydreaming. His mother represents the need of authority to bury the past in the name of power preservation, burying the past persecution of the vampires in order to keep the next generation in line. That’s not to say that the film is a direct youth counterculture allegory, but it does lend credence to the real-world implications of Frederic’s dream-inspired romanticism against the cold harshness of daily reality.

All of this culminates, as many Rollin films do, on a beach. I’ve long sense given up trying to parse what exactly Rollin’s fascination with beaches was, but my best guess is that they represent an escape of sorts, with the endless horizon symbolizing the endless opportunities freedom offers away from restrictive modernity. If a single frame of celluloid were chosen to symbolize Rollin’s career, the shot of a vampire coffin floating away on the ocean waves would be a damn strong contender. 

One of my moviegoing dreams would be to see a Rollin film alone in a theater on a pristine 35mm print. Isolated and in the dark is probably the best way to full immerse yourself in his world, as they feel so personal in a viewer’s interpretation of them. Such a dream probably isn’t feasible in quarantine, but watching a Rollin movie in the early hours of the morning and dealing with insomnia-induced delirium is probably a pretty good approximation. Give it a try.