Fascination (1979 Jean Rollin's Film) Review & Facts

In this article, I will share with you a few interesting facts about one of the best Jean Rollin's movies — Fascination and will explain why this film is still my favourite one, after all those years that I've been exploring European cult classic cinema.

Let's get down to business.

 

Plot Summary

This decadent story mesmerizing viewers with a combination of malicious beauty and dark mystery, is telling about a young outlaw, who, while escaping from a gang of his bandit colleagues, finds an old chateau with two young ladies inside and decides to hide there till night for resuming his run more safely, in the darkness. But being intrigued by the upcoming night arrival of a mysterious company expected by the girls, he decides to stay for longer.

Trailer:

 

What's so Fascinating About Fascination?

The whole film has a hypnotizing vibe of a sinister mystery served with a sophisticated beauty contained in the howling of the wind, sounds of the background music, in the outfits, mimic, speech and movements of the characters. It was shot during an appropriate weather, in a beautiful location: Château de la Motte situated in Château Renard. The chateau, surrounded by water on a cloudy day, looks spooky and elegant. The young ladies look cute, weak and pretendedly scared, obviously hiding a dangerous, malicious intent.

Facts About The Film

A Glass of Blood (Un verre de sang) by Jean Lorrain

The film was inspired by a decadent short story "A Glass of Blood" (Un verre de sang), 1893. This story, written by a French homosexual writer Jean Lorrain, is about a lesbian pedophile woman who married a man to get closer to his little daughter. The little girl got sick, and doctors prescribed her drinking a glass of bull blood on a daily basis.

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), the idea of drinking bull blood for therapeutic purposes is the only detail that the film Fascination has in common with this perverted story. In the film we have no little girls - only adult young beautiful women. But they are pretty perverted too.

Here are more details about the story of Jean Lorrain:

Text from the book Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture edited by Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, found on Google Books

The Title

According to Requiemforjeanrollin.blogspot.com (the site no longer exists), an extensive resource dedicated to Jean Rollin:

Jean Rollin discussed the origins of Fascination to Peter Blumenstock in the pages of Video Watchdog and Virgins and Vampires. He recalled that, “the title and general flair of (Fascination) is an homage to a French magazine of the same name”, and that the publication was, “dedicated to all kinds of eroticism in art.”

Less Sexy than It Could Be

I remember Jean Rollin told in one of his interviews that the producer Christine Renaud actually insisted on adding many more erotic scenes for making the film more trendy. He even wanted the general mood to be completely differeent, so it would have been a silly erotic movie. But, fortunately, Jean Rollin didn't let the film be spoiled with excessive sexploitation elements.

Release Failure

Fascination was prepared for a powerful release with a large French mainstream distributor UGC. However, the promised screenings were cancelled at the last minute. As a result, the film stayed unreleased and unknown by the audience for years.

Characters

There are no protagonists in the film. The main character (played by Jean-Marie Lemaire) is actually quite a nasty sort of a "bad guy", far from being a gentleman. He evokes revolt, but, interestingly, herewith he is the sanest person in this story, showing healthy humaneness in a matter of life and death.

The only girl who seems to be almost a nice person in the beginning, will later turn out to have a much more complicated personality.

 

Exploitation Elements

There is some voilence in the film, but the amount of cruelty is perfectly balanced to keep it nice. The scythe scene, performed by Brigitte Lahaie and Myriam Watteau looks gorgeous - even if you are not a fan of bloody violence on the screen you will probably notice beauty in it.

 

 

For those who have already watched the film and loved the scythe fight scene, I created these T-shirt designs.

 

Download them for free (as well as my 50 other b-movie shirt prints) and order a shirt from any print-on-demand service you like.

Being often considered a vampire story, it has little to do with vampires. There is no supernatural element in the film, though the way it's filmed gives a spooky, haunted feeling. You will get one lesbian erotic softcore scene and a couple of straight ones. Having been filmed with a small budget, Fascination doesn't have a taste of a cheap ridiculous film. It's the first movie of Jean Rollin that feels serious. But it still has a cozy feeling of a low budget picture, contrary to an ordinary, overproduced mainstream film.

Fascination can be a perfect newcomer's introduction to Jean Rollin's works, as well as to the whole genre of low budget euro cult classic exploitation cinema.
 

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