Hellfire Video Club: Suckers!

Jean Rollin, 1971, France

Jean Rollin is a legendary French director in cult film circles, similar in many key ways to Jess Franco: They both had highly idiosyncratic filmmaking styles that lead to output that was highly alienating to ordinary film watchers, both doggedly kept churning films out into their later years, and both paid the bills by resorting to making a bunch of sex films.

"Shiver..." is possibly Rollin's masterwork, featuring all his key traits: Old French castles, garish colour-tinged lighting, nudity, glacial pacing, and his ability to conjure a hypnotised/somnambulist vibe from all his actors. The plot concerns a honeymooning couple staying in an old castle that turns out to be the home of an ancient vampire cult... but Rollin's films are not watched for their story or coherence - you stick this on for the vibes! Confounding brain-fog and dream-logic squat unrelentingly over all his films, making the end results very difficult to accurately recall the next day, but very comfortable to soak in at the time. Killer psych rock soundtrack too.

Nick Millard, 1976, USA

Mark heads to his hometown to investigate the apparent suicide of his sister, only to find she may actually have joined a satanic cult and become a vampire!  Nick Millard made A LOT of hardcore pornography in the 70's, but also made a handful of extremely odd genre films. This film is short (61 minutes run time?? yes please!), weird, and punctuated with day-glo blood, beautiful 70's American backdrops (filmed around Monterey), and highly strange acting choices. We've almost certainly described things as being "fever dreams" in these Noods editorials before... this is another one of them. Seek it out. 

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