My favorite film director, France’s Jean Rollin, passed away on December 15th at the age of 72. 

There are three types of people in the world: those who love Rollin, those who will eventually love Rollin once their eyes are opened, and those who just don’t matter.

When I first told Arleigh that Rollin had passed, he mentioned that the American director Blake Edwards had died as well.  Oddly enough, I sometimes think of my favorite Rollin film — Night of the Hunted (which I reviewed on this site) — as being a rather grim, Grindhouse version of another one of my favorite films, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  The main difference, of course, is that Edwards’ Holly Golightly is allowed to triumph at the end while Rollin’s version is destroyed by an embarrassed mainstream establishment.  History, I think, has given us little room for doubt concerning which vision is closer to the truth.

In his best films (Night of the Hunted, The Living Dead Girl, Two Orphan Vampires, Requiem For A Vampire, The Grapes of Death, Fascination, Lost In New York, The Sidewalks of Bangkok, Shiver of the Vampires), Rollin proved himself to be a cinematic poet with an eye for dream-like imagery and a special skill for capturing the mysteries, ambiguities, and ultimate beauty of female friendship and sisterhood.