Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Great Moments in Movie Shelves #201


Ooh y'all know how hard a secret door in a library makes me! Or at least you should. Well maybe not exactly the "hard" part, that's an overshare specific to today. But I am sure I have spoken before about how much I love a secret door in a library in this extensive series now past the two-hundred mark. But maybe what you don't know is that even better than a secret door in a library is when the books then come to life and throw themselves at the person who's just come through the secret door in the library! I mean you couldn't have known that because I didn't know it myself until i saw it happen myself for the very first time in Jean Rollin's groovy 1971 weird-ass erotic-ish French horror film Shiver of the Vampires two nights ago. 

This was my first Jean Rollin movie because I was pretty sure what was in store for me going in, and it's not entirely my cuppa -- lotsa boobies, basically. I mean boobies are fine, y'all enjoy your boobies if you have them. They're just not really a drawing point for me personally when picking out movies to watch. And Shiver of the Vampires is indeed chockfulla boobies. There's not an actress in the film who doesn't wear a sheer nightgown at some point during its runtime, and many of them wear nothing but. So anyway I hadn't rushed to watch a Jean Rollin movie. But then I saw that this one was getting the 4K fancy treatment from the smart folks at Indicator -- pre-order your copy on Amazon! And then I saw it's streaming for free on Tubi and I said fuck it, let's give it a twirl. And I'm glad I did.

I love how they're literally just throwing books at this poor dude's face at one point. Being an actor is seriously the weirdest fucking job in the world -- my hat off to any of you people who do that shit because I can't even imagine. "Today we're going to lock you in a room and throw books at your face!" I mean, really. Anyway this movie is fucking bizarre in ways I did not expect. All the boobies are out in full force, but then the grand high lesbian vampire makes her grand entrance by unfurling herself from the inside of a grandfather clock?

Sure, why not. It becomes a running joke after this -- where will she pop out from the next time she arrives -- which told me that Jean Rollin wasn't just boobies. Dude was having fun. Obviously I should see more of his movies. I know that Indicator is also putting Two Orphan Vampires from 1997 out on 4K at the same time as this one, so perhaps that's next? Any recommendations? Anyway this library scene goes on too long for me to make all of the gifs I wanted to make from it so here, I uploaded it to YouTube. (Sidenote: video doesn't have any sound but who cares, you don't need it.)

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