THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES [Le Frisson des Vampires] aka SEX AND THE VAMPIRE aka THRILL OF THE VAMPIRES aka STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN AT NIGHT (1971)
Director: Jean Rollin
Starring: Sandra Julien, Jean-Marie Durand, Michel Delahaye, Jacques Robiolles, Dominique, Nicole Nancel, Marie-Pierre Castel, and Kuelan Herce.
Newlyweds Isle (I AM A NYMPHOMANIAC's Sandra Julien) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand) arrive at her ancestral castle to visit her distant cousins for the first time only to hear from the locals that both have recently died. Isle visits her cousins' tomb where they are being mourned by their communal bride Isabelle (chanteuse Nicole Nancel). The couple are nonetheless offered the hospitality of the castle by a pair of scantily-clad maids (LIPS OF BLOOD's Marie-Pierre Castel and Kuelan Herce). A mourning Isle begs Antoine to let her sleep alone, but the stroke of midnight brings a mysterious visitor to Isle's bed in Isolde (REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE's Dominique) who leads Isle to the cemetery to take part in a rite of bloodletting that leaves the bride weak the next day. The maids surprise the couple by announcing that Isle's cousins will see them at dinner that night. Rollin's fourth vampire film, Shiver of the Vampires takes the makeshift decaying elegance of his previous films and adds mod decadence to the mix with cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon (LES DEMONIAQUES) breaking out the color gels and illuminating the massive castle exteriors and cemetery locations at night and Acanthus providing a progressive score that goes against the grain to interesting effect. Dominique – first seen emerging from a tomb that opens via stop motion, then from a grandfather clock, then the curtains over the headboard, and later down the chimney of the castle keep's fireplace – cuts an impressive figure while Delahaye in mod clothing makes an interesting contrast to the industrialist who wanted to exploit the secret of vampiric longevity in THE NUDE VAMPIRE. Rollin's films are generally female-focused, but the ones that have male protagonists either have passive ones open to the supernatural – like the youth of THE NUDE VAMPIRE and the hero of LIPS OF BLOOD triggered by a childhood memory – or the macho and narrow-minded who are either consigned to madness or limbo like the hero's father in THE NUDE VAMPIRE or the vampire hunting duo of DRACULA'S FIANCÉE. Antoine is the latter, and this is depicted visually in two scenes in which the cousins lecture him. Both are shot from Antoine's POV, but the first has each cousin moving in and out of his static field of view as they speak while the second has his gaze panning back and forth between one and the other as they speak. Additionally, in the English dub of the film, the cousins' discussion of their family's pagan roots is muffled by added voice over thoughts of Antoine as he sneers at their appearance and their affectations. THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES was acquired for U.S. theatrical release by Harry Novak's Box Office International in a package that also included THE NUDE VAMPIRE and REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE; however, Novak only released the latter film as "Caged Virgins" while another fly-by-night distributor put the film out as "Strange Things Happen at Night" while it got the handle "Sex and the Vampire" in the U.K. When Redemption signed a new deal with Koch Lorber's successor company Kino Lorber, the film made its Blu-ray debut in 2012 and the new transfer was able to feature more saturated colors without bleeding. This master also appeared on Blu-ray in the U.K. from Screenbound who licensed the Redemption library and also in Germany in a limited edition mediabook from boutique Wicked-Vision who utilized the master to also reconstruct the shorter German cut of the film which actually featured some exclusive nudity and sex scenes shot by the distributor. First up is the audio commentary by Rollin created for the Encore edition in which he reveals that he had no choice but to shoot the film in color after the monochrome Rape of the Vampire, and that he and cinematographer Renon decided to play with the contrasts of warm and cold colors – while gels were employed, the color temperatures of the daylight and tungsten film were exploited as well – while the shot of the "bleeding" castle was accomplished with colored water that stained the porous stone of the castle for years after. He discusses several of the cast and crew, including art director Michel Delesalle who also doubles here as both a staked vampire but would subsequently play the leader of the vampire cult in REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE, Robiolles who he describes as a "crazy character" who sold brushes, assistant director Jean-Noël Delamarre who also produced and recorded the Acanthus score and became the romantic partner of Rollin regular actress and costume designer Natalie Perrey, and Nancel who was a protege of producer Monique Natan who the crew initially thought was standoffish and snobby until an incident described here and elsewhere (more amusingly and affectionately) in the extras.
The cousins (filmmaker Jacques Robiolles and THE NUDE VAMPIRE's Michel Delahaye) dismiss the news of their deaths as village gossip. Although the cousins reveal that they are unavailable during the day because of their intense research into the pre-Christian roots of their family, Antoine spies on them later that night drinking the blood of a young woman before having the maids drive a stake through her heart. Although Antoine is not ready to believe that they are actual vampires, Isle's increasing weakness and her alienation from him in favor of her mysterious cousins has him believing that they have gained some kind of control over her; however, it is Isolde who plans to bring Isle into the fold for reasons of her own.
What separates the film from much of the glut of lesbian vampire films to come in subsequent decades is Rollin's fascination with vampires not as simple bloodsuckers but as supernatural beings that exist alongside the living, either in a parallel dimension or just in those places forgotten by the living like cemeteries and crumbling castles. The backstory of the family's pagan roots includes transforming a local male deity into a female one of foreign origin in the Egyptian goddess Isis as a means of evading persecution while observing rites that mock Christianity (in keeping with J.K. Huysmans' LÃ -bas in which Satanism is characterized as an inversion of Christian rites). Although the vampire cousins are dressed like aging hippies and have a shared lover – and entertain the possibility of incest with Isle – wandering vampire calls the pair "bourgeois vampires" who were once vampire hunters but their subconscious desire for eternal life sealed their fate. 
Although Julien launched a brief career as a popular softcore star with this film, her character is largely decorative (nude or clad) as she is deployed for the film's visual set-pieces from the rather chaste lesbian seduction, the cemetery rites, or a scene in which she drinks the blood of a dead dove and then sets it on Isolde's coffin as an offering. Isle wears her wedding gown for much of the first half and, although it is never explicitly stated, it appears she must remain a virgin and her marriage unconsummated either to become the cousins' new bride or for Isolde who was never human but states that she abhors the touch of men (suggesting that lesbianism in the film is as revolutionary and reactionary as in Vicente Aranda's "Carmilla" adaptation THE BLOOD-SPATTERED BRIDE rather than one of the many "perversions" of DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS' Countess Bathory).
Castel and Herce are yet another example of Rollin's "twin" characters – with Castel appearing alongside her real-life twin Catherine in THE NUDE VAMPIRE and LIPS OF BLOOD – along with the shipwrecked orphans of LES DEMONIAQUES, the amnesiacs of NIGHT OF THE HUNTED, the LIVING DEAD GIRL and her living keeper, the heroines of THE ESCAPEES, THE TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES, and LOST IN NEW YORK; and it is tempting to believe that the liberated pair at the end of the film became Castel and Mireille Dargent in next film REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE.
The film was hard to see outside of the mail-order video circuit where Something Weird Video licensed the Novak catalog and issued the English-dubbed print as "Thrill of the Vampires" (the credits remained in French) which turned out to be the export version featuring some additional nude and sex scenes not shot by Rollin but by his producer (including a sex scene between Julien and her hirsute real-life husband body doubling Durand which contradicts the notion in the film that the vampires are keeping the marriage unconsummated). That release quickly went out of print when Video Search of Miami struck a deal with Rollin himself for several titles in his catalogue stateside while Redemption struck a deal in the U.K. While Redemption made use of print materials – with some titles subject to BBFC cuts – the Video Search of Miami tapes were derived from Rollin's Betacam masters and were also prohibitively expensive to the casual viewer with the company's membership fee and steep price for video dubs.
When Rollin sold off his catalog to Redemption, US and UK viewers got DVD editions from newer transfers at the dawn of the DVD age with Image Entertainment's 1999 DVD featuring a handsome-for-the-time 1.61:1 letterboxed transfer. Most of the original digital transfers of the Rollin films from that period were non-anamorphic, but they were followed up in the middle of the next decade by two-disc and three-disc special editions in Holland from Encore Entertainment – like Redemption Benelux from the VHS days, it was a division of Redemption used to distribute film that required BBFC cuts in the U.K. – featuring newer anamorphic transfers.
All of the newer transfers were framed at 1.78:1, some by cropping the top and bottom from the original aspect ratio and some by stretching the 1.66:1 image; however, a few like LIVING DEAD GIRL revealed considerably more information on the sides compared to the cropped 1.66:1 non-anamorphic transfer. SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES' 1.78:1 transfer revealed a combination of more side information and a little stretching, and this transfer appeared on DVD in the U.K. from Redemption in 2007 while the 2010 U.S. DVD from Koch Lorber – who took over distributing Redemption after their Image deal concluded – used the same transfer but more accurately squeezed it to 1.62:1 while maintaining the same compositional information. 
It is a testament to Redemption's and Kino Lorber's work on their first HD master that the framing of the new 4K 2160p24 HEVC 1.66:1 widescreen DolbyVision HDR10-compatible master is virtually identical compared to the tighter SD masters. The older HD master sometimes offers slivers more on the left or right and sometimes is identical to the 4K while the newer master opens up the bottom of the frame a hair over the older master. Minor damage and occasional instability evident on the earlier master has been completely obliterated here.
Thanks to the superior resolution and greater color reproduction of 4K, the gels and accents of the cinematography and production design are even more hellishly-saturated than ever before while those shots that are actually lit with gels versus a few shots that appear to have a gel in front of the lens without bleeding into the whites of wardrobe and the skin tones of the actors; that said, the new transfer also confirms that some scenes were always just over-lit including the scenes in the dining room as well as various corridors in which the candles or torches held by the actors seem unnecessary.
As with most previous releases of the film, audio options include the original post-dubbed French mono and the English dub – here in uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono – and, while some elitists may find the English dub unnecessary, the track as well as the option of both English subtitles for the French track and English SDH subtitles for the English track reveal some interesting variations between the two tracks.
Besides the aforementioned added narrated thoughts of Antoine which disrupt the lectures of the cousins about their heritage, the English track is occasionally more poetic. Isolde describing herself on the French track as a "wandering vampire" but as a "vampire errant" on the English dub, and describes the cemetery to Isle on the French track as "where the living make a religion of respecting the dead" and "where the dead make a religion of preserving their lives" while the English dub has her saying "those that think they are alive make a religion of respecting the dead" and "those considered dead make a religion of preserving the continuity of their lives."
While Kino Lorber's Blu-ray dropped several of the extras produced for the Encore edition in favor of a new documentary and an archival interview with Rollin, Indicator has assembled their own package that includes extras from both editions as well as some new ones. 
New to this release is a commentary by Jeremy Richey Рauthor of Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol Рwho discusses Rollin's collaboration here with Natan, the widow of a filmmaker Emile Natan, who had previously rejected a film proposal from Claude Chabrol among others and became intrigued with Rollin's plans for the film's color experimentation. Richey also discusses Rollin's inspirations drawn from Ren̩ Magritte and Belgian painter Paul Delvaux, as well as Rollin's expressionist approach that included deliberately stagey violence, and the notion of vampirism as a political statement.
Next up is an archival introduction from 1998 by Rollin in which he touches upon the "war" with Natan over his irrational and illogical touches, working with Renon, and the castle location.
"Rouge Vif" is an updated version of the documentary included on the Kino Lorber edition featuring interviews with Perrey and Delamarre. Delamarre descibes the film as the start of his working relationship with Rollin on which he was a jack-of-all-trades and had a music recording studio in his father's basement where bands rehearsed and he recorded the Acanthus score. Perrey speaks highly of the score specifically because it goes against the grain of the images. They both discuss the cast, including Nancel who they thought was snobby but then realized was putting up a brave front after she showed her dedication by not only jumping into a fetid moat during the rehearsal when she thought they were filming and then did it again without complaint.
"Fear and Desire" is a 2004 interview with Rollin by Patricia MacCormack which appeared on other Rollin DVD releases in partial form. It is more of a career overview than focused on the feature as MacCormack prompts him with questions as to why he prefers female protagonists – noting that LIPS OF BLOOD's male protagonist has autobiographical aspects – literal or figurative twins, and why vampires are more attractive to him than other movie monsters, and his attempts to be personally expressive with other monsters like the atypical "zombies" of LIVING DEAD GIRL and GRAPES OF DEATH.
Also new is "Macabre Psychedelia" in which Virginie Sélavy discusses the surrealist and expressionistic elements of the film as well as the mix of the Gothic and the psychedelic.
The selection of export sex scenes is more comprehensive than the Encore edition which only featured a two scenes with the maids – actually Castel and a very obvious double for Herce, including one involving S&M that anticipates Requiem for a Vampire – as well as a more explicit scene with the maids, Isle, and a double of one of the cousins. The Indicator release also includes the scenes shot for export that appeared in the aforementioned Something Weird Video release – supplied by yours truly – including the sex scene between Julien and her real-life husband. Unfortunately, the disc does not include the extra bits shot by the German distributors.
The disc also includes virtually-identical French and English theatrical trailers as well as two image galleries.
The limited edition of three thousand copies – three thousand in the U.S. and the U.K. with an allocation of the former made available in Canada – includes an an 80-page book with a new essay by David Hinds – who discusses the film in the context of Rollin's evolution as a director and as the point where his motifs and style starts to coalesce – the introduction Rollin wrote as part of the Encore edition booklet, an archival interview conducted by Peter Blumenstock reprinted from the wonderful Rollin-focused Video Watchdog issue 31 – which also included coverage and comparison of some of the competing Video Search of Miami and Redemption VHS releases – an archival interview with Castel from a 1971 issue of "Sex Stars System", as well as liner notes by Andy Votel on the mysterious group Acanthus penned for the 2010 Finders Keepers CD soundtrack.
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