The Scare Salon

Jean Rollin’s ninth film, Fascination (1979), is generally regarded as one of his finest, and is probably his best known work in the United States. It’s an arthouse movie for sure, so those looking for some gory, fast-paced 70s sleaze should look elsewhere, because Fascination is more like an atmospheric, slow-moving narrative with some beautiful imagery and lots of nudity, but not much in the way of plot or deep character development. Additionally, although Fascination is technically a vampire movie and is often described as such, the vampires here are not of the supernatural variety, being more akin to degenerate nobles with a taste for Satanism and subversion of societal morals.

Set in 1905, the film opens with a striking scene in an abattoir, where aristocratic women gather to drink ox blood as a fashionable cure for anemia. The juxtaposition of the prim society ladies in their spotless white dresses standing in the midst of hanging carcasses and viscera-streaked floors is really effective, foreshadowing the events to come and highlighting the beauty/death dichotomy at the heart of the story.

We then shift to a gang of criminals arguing over a large chest of gold coins they’ve just stolen. The seeming leader of the gang is Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), who sorta resembles what would happen if 80s-era Sting and 80s-era Simon Le Bon got stuck in the Brundlefly machine. He’s very obviously trying to convince his cohorts that the money will be totally safe with him, you guys, and he will totally and very fairly divide it all up at a later time, yessirree Bob. The other thieves are not (that) dumb, though, and see through his bullshit, though Marc kinda gets the drop on them and then takes off running with the money anyway.

The one female member of the gang catches up to him and attempts to get him to see reason by flashing her titties at him, but he just laughs uproariously at her in a way that makes him look like a gigantic jackwagon. The long and short of it is that he manages to escape, and stumbles across what appears to be an abandoned château in the countryside, where he figures he can hole up until nightfall, after which he can sneak out under cover of darkness and get a train to London.

At first, the manor house does appear to be empty, but soon enough, he finds two impossibly gorgeous women, Eva (Brigitte Lahaie) and Elisabeth (Franca Maï). One claims to be a chambermaid, while the other is allegedly a companion to the Marchioness who lives in the château. The Marchioness and her retinue will be returning in a day or two, they say, but they’ve come ahead to get the house ready.

Marc isn’t entirely sure he believes their story, and he low-key bullies them, holding the women hostage with his revolver. They act as though they’re scared at first, but it’s clear they have some weird shit going on that they’re not telling him. He informs them he’s only going to stay until dark, then locks them in their room.

Giggling, they retrieve their spare key from the dresser, then proceed to have sex in an extended (and pretty fucking hot) scene. Meanwhile, Marc is in the parlor, running the gold coins through his fingers like Scrooge McDuck, when Eva sneaks up behind him. The two women, previously pretending to be terrified of big bad Marc, are now openly mocking him, even while he’s pointing a gun at them. They offer to let him rape them (!!!) and just generally act like sketchy weirdos. They also reveal that they have a secret little statue thing mounted on the wall that has two daggers inside, which they take out and brandish at Marc.

At this point, Eva seductively lures Marc into the next room, where they have sex on the rug in front of the fireplace. Elisabeth says she’s okay with this, but she’s obviously jealous, both because of her relationship with Eva, and because she’s apparently starting to catch feels for Marc, in all his condescending douchery. While he and Eva are banging away, though, Elisabeth sneaks into the room and swipes his revolver (although he gets it back almost immediately afterward, so I’m not sure what purpose that served).

Meanwhile, the other criminals are outside, and have twigged onto the fact that Marc is hiding out in the château, which duh, because it’s like the only building around for seemingly miles. They start shooting at the place, which both Eva and Elisabeth find very exciting, though Marc is understandably a bit more concerned.

While Marc is preoccupied with shooting back at his former gang, Eva grabs the box of gold coins and goes outside to hand it over to the thieves, claiming that Marc wants them to just take the money and go away. Marc is livid as he watches this, but there isn’t a hell of a lot he can do about it, since the thieves are all armed. The gang doesn’t trust Eva and wants to count the money, so she offers to accompany them to the stable where they can count the ill-gotten loot in peace.

Two of the guys set to counting the money, while a third guy and the one woman thief (who is actually his wife) take Eva in the back. The guy says that Eva should give his wife her dress for some reason. I guess he figures she can sneak back into the house without getting shot because Elisabeth and Marc will think it’s Eva, but the gang has the money now, so why would they need to get into the house anyway?

Regardless of the pointlessness of the exercise, Eva gamely gets naked while the guy vigorously molests his wife’s ample bosom, looking Eva dead in the eyes as he does so. After the wife is wearing Eva’s duds, she heads back toward the house, telling the two counting guys that her husband wanted Eva and she’s apparently okay with this because open relationship, y’all. In one of the stalls, Eva lays back on a coat and lets the guy have sex with her, but in the middle of the festivities, she stabs the shit out of him with her dagger.

After that guy’s dead, she dons a black cloak that’s open in the front so her glorious boobies show, and she grabs a convenient scythe, with which she slices the necks of the two other thieves. She then makes her way to the house, where the female thief is wandering around outside, and scythes her too, dumping her body into the moat.

So at varying times during all these shenanigans, Eva and Elisabeth have told Marc that he should probably leave before it gets dark, because they’re expecting guests and Marc probably doesn’t want to be around when they get there. He seems intrigued and asks them multiple times who exactly they’re expecting, but all they’ll tell him is, “Death.” Sounds like a party!

And indeed, the guests soon begin to arrive. The first to show up is the Marchioness herself, Hélène (Fanny Magier), who seems wryly amused by Marc’s presence. After nightfall, a handful of other aristocratic women arrive, and it’s pretty clear that these ladies ain’t here for book club (unless that book is The Satanic Bible or The Necronomicon or something).

At first, it just seems like a bit of a lark. The ladies and Marc are drinking, they put some music on and dance, and it all appears rather harmless. The women tell him that the real action doesn’t start until midnight, and he’s interested to see what’s going to happen, because he’s honestly kind of a dimbulb who can’t pick up on the most obvious red flags.

They play a game of Blind Man’s Buff, and after Marc correctly identifies Hélène despite him wearing a blindfold, he says that for fifteen minutes, Hélène has to do everything he says. She sportingly agrees and accompanies him to another room. I know what you’re thinking, but Marc really is a boring bag of piss, I have to say, because he doesn’t come up with anything all that titillating or creative. He basically just asks her to undress, which she does (well, down to her underclothes; I guess that actress didn’t have nudity in her contract), and then threatens to burn her with his cigar, but doesn’t, laughing incredulously because she didn’t flinch. Hélène also seems highly disappointed at Marc’s lack of imagination, telling him that his fifteen minutes are up, it’s almost midnight, and now it’s their turn. Uh oh.

Don’t get too stoked about seeing Marc get tortured and sacrificed, though, because Elisabeth, as I mentioned, has fallen for the dude and decides to save him. She takes him out to the stable to hide, where she informs him that all the women present are part of a blood-drinking cult who sacrifice a male victim on this day every year. They don’t need to drink blood to survive or anything like that, they’re just really into it and get off on killing their perceived inferiors. Good to have hobbies, I suppose.

After the pair are discovered by Eva, Elisabeth shoots her former girlfriend (perhaps to save Marc, perhaps because she’s mad that Marc fucked Eva but turned Elisabeth down, perhaps a little bit of both), and then she has a change of heart, decides she doesn’t love Marc after all, and stabs the shit out of him. I sort of liked that Elisabeth was set up as having doubts about this whole sacrifice thing so that the audience would think she’d grown a conscience, but nope, she’s just as crazy (if not more) than the rest of them. I was under the impression, in fact, that she only pretended to save Marc so she could have his delicious murder all to herself.

At the same time, a gunshot Eva has stumbled back toward the house, but all the other women—who have since changed into sheer robes of varying autumnal colors—fall on her and start drinking her blood. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that this is a fellow member of the vampire sex cult; a free meal is a free meal, right? Hélène tries to tell them to have some dignity, for fuck’s sake, and after taking a few more slurps, they sheepishly climb off Eva’s corpse and shuffle back inside.

Elisabeth then returns to the house and tells Hélène that Eva actually killed Marc, so Elisabeth was then obliged to shoot her. Hélène evidently buys this and thinks it’s no big deal, because all she says is that Elisabeth looks beautiful with Marc’s blood on her mouth, and then the movie freeze frames before the credits roll.

As I mentioned, this is not a scare-a-minute horror movie by any means; it’s very languidly paced, and though there is some blood, it’s not over the top gory. The eroticism is very pronounced, but it’s not quite as exploitative as some other films of the era, being more artistically done. The movie as a whole has a sort of hypnotic power to it, and it looks gothic as all get out, with Rollin’s painterly compositions creating a surreal, almost fairy-tale-like quality. It actually reminded me pretty strongly of 1971’s Daughters of Darkness, especially in its more dreamlike aura and its focus on decadent nobility rather than strictly supernatural creatures, so if you liked that, you’d probably dig this as well.

Fascination is definitely not for all tastes, as its languorous pace and lack of a strong plot might test some viewers’ patience, but if you’re interested in European surrealist, erotic, and gothic horror from this time period and you’re new to Jean Rollin’s work, this is a good one to start with to see if you vibe with his style.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.