Discuss Two Orphan Vampires
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Didn't like it, read the book, re-watched the movie, loved it.
posted by rooprectSTAFFMOD on September 21, 2022 at 10:01 AM
Rollin film boards aren't getting much traffic, but if there are any Rollin fans out there it would be cool to talk about this deceptively complex film. I'll just leave this as a marker.
Like the title says, I didn't really like it on 1st watch. But I found a copy of the book on ebay, read it in an afternoon (it's only 80 pages), and watched the movie again. Suddenly I get it. What's funny is the book doesn't really reveal anything that isn't already in the film. It's all there. But when you read the book you pay closer attention to the dialogue which is brilliant and sets this apart from your standard B-movie horror cheese.
Mild thematic spoiler below.
What really got under my skin on 2nd watch is the recurring theme of whether this whole thing is a dream. But who is dreaming? The girls? Or are the girls figments of our dreams? (Pure inventions of fiction? --breaking the 4th wall and telling the audience that they know they are just a made up story?) One of the first dialogues in the graveyard is Henriette & Louise laughing at mortals for failing to see that they can't be killed; they just come back over & over because they are simply dreams.
Bookending this dialogue is its compliment at the end where they are talking to the peasant girl. But this time they aren't laughing; it's a more somber and tragic tone. The peasant girl asks if she'll see them again and they answer something like "We'll see you again. The dead dream of the living, not the other way around." This is a thematic shocker because suddenly they're turning the entire story upside down, saying they are the ones dreaming, and everything else--perhaps even the audience--is fiction.
If you grasp what this is touching on, you realize this film is in league with other great films that dive into questions of ontology, at its most basic level turning Descartes' "I think therefore I am" on its head. Movies like Kaufman's mind blowing "Synecdoche NY" or Soderbergh's spin on "Solaris" come to mind, where the main characters themselves become conscious of the fact that they are fiction.
On 2nd viewing, and especially if you read Rollin's book, you realize that this is the central theme of Two Orphan Vampires. Probably most of his other films too. They all play out like dreams, and maybe Rollin's entire approach to film was to explore who's the dreamer, us or them.
Reply by rooprect
on December 16, 2023 at 12:25 PM
Psyching myself up for a 3rd watch because I recently picked up the new Indicator 4k release of this flick. Indicator did an amazing job with packaging, including a thick booklet that includes some great essays & photography.
I'm thrilled to see I wasn't just fanboying with my analysis above. The booklet really gets into it, talking about how Rollin was presenting the idea that we the audience are figments of the fictional characters' dreams. I still haven't wrapped my head around it, but I suppose the core idea is that fiction is the master while reality is its slave.
In that respect, it's true. We all die; the reality is that we are transient. But fictional/film characters live forever.
Rollin's films are technically flawed. Micro budget constraints, lazy crews and interference from producers forced him to rush things and make awful compromises. But the ideas driving his films are solid. There's even something extra special about seeing how unpolished his movies are, kinda like looking at a child's drawing that's so much more honest than any masterpiece in the Louvre.
Reply by rooprect
on December 17, 2023 at 6:13 PM
3rd time was the best. After reading the Indicator booklet’s interviews with Rollin, cast & crew I was well prepared. This time I really digested the dialogue word for word.
The metaphor isn’t just dreams & reality, the movie is a requiem for a very specific kind of “dream”, the bygone days of uninhibited imagination. The final shot says it all: a child in a field of tall grass clutching a book about magic tricks.
This is Rollin’s best.