Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The first must-see film of the year.

Men in folky animal masks pursue, imprison and monitor a young lady (Christine François). The imagery is at once bizarre and unsettling, but it doesn't stop there. We see Cathy and Pony Tricot next, French Director Jean Rollin's Castel twins as maids, dressed in extraordinary metal and spike-adorned fetish gear. They don't speak initially, just observe in a detached fashion and tend to the members of the house. Their presence is sprinkled throughout the film; always they are resigned looking, forlorn and fascinating.Olivier Martin (actually Rollin's brother) is Pierre Radamante the hero of the piece, typically rather fey nevertheless provides a welcome wholesomeness in the face of so much apparent evil and strangeness. His father Georges (Maurice Lemaitre) is the head of the organisation that has enslaved the young girl, and his secretary Solange (Ursule Pauly) is his nefarious subordinate.The young girl is being enticed as a form of spectacle for the mask-wearing guests of the house, tempted by blood. It seems as if she is a vampire and they are a secret suicide cult hiding under a veneer of respectability. There are long periods where there is no dialogue, and this at the film's beginning, revealing no compromise to the telling of the story. It is there, but you need to pay close attention. It is a good half hour before any explanations are forthcoming.At times this can be ponderous: scenes are inserted for their own sake that appear to have no bearing on anything else. The ending could almost be seen as a tribute to the Universal films of old (watching 'House of Dracula' is cited as one of Rollin's formative horror experiences) with masses of people (lead by Michael Delahay nicely underplaying the Grandmaster, a role he would repeat in the following year's 'Le Frisson des Vampires/Shiver of the Vampires') with fiery torches descending en masse.The apparent death of the evil Solange is accompanied not by strident music, but simply by the guttural shrieking and bleating of night animals, making her demise an isolated, detached affair. Solange is responsible for the unforgivable act of injuring, or possibly killing, the twin maids in one of the film's most notorious sequences. Knocking them both down with an iron candelabra one twin falls all the way to the bottom of the lengthy flight of stairs, in actuality knocking herself out in the process! Luckily, they both appear later, bloodied but alive, and it is due to them that Solange meets her fate.The Castels appear sporadically throughout Rollin's films (though sadly not in his retrospective 'La Nuit des Horloges' (2007) – at least not outside the archive footage used to represent them). They are more effective than ever here, the stars of the show. Dark haired, dressed in a variety of eccentric costumes, they are mainly unspeaking.Inexperienced as actors they may have been, but their twin presence is extraordinary. Even an uneventful scene of them going about the business of changing clothes or procuring refreshments for their masters or slowly descending stone stairs with their crackling fiery torches, is enlivened by their other-worldly silence, their silent observation of each other's actions. 'The Nude Vampire' is their greatest achievement, and the overall alien atmosphere would have been far lessened without their contribution.The end of the film, customarily filmed on 'Rollin's beach' in Dieppe, provides the platform to reveal the imprisoned young girl was never a vampire, indeed there have never been such things as vampires (!) – rather, she is a mutant. The nature of her condition is unspecified, but it seems to be impervious to bullets and display distinct vampiric tendencies. Indeed, these mutants are what the human race will become.

Wealthy and decadent industrialist Georges Radamante (a nicely icy portrayal by Maurice Lemaitre) rules over a strange secret suicide cult and wants to acquire immortality by figuring out the biochemistry of a mute orphaned vampire woman (lovely and entrancing brunette Caroline Cartier). Complications ensue when Radamante's son Pierre (a likable performance by Oliver Rollin) finds out what's going on and falls for the comely lass. Director Jean Rollin, who also co-wrote the compellingly quirky script with S.H. Mosti, concocts an ingeniously weird, stylish, and poetic blend of horror and sci-fi elements that unfolds at a deliberate pace, positively drips with a hypnotically brooding and enigmatic atmosphere, and delivers several sizzling moments of inspired eroticism and kinky fetishism for good measure. In fact, the genuinely peculiar and mysterious, yet fascinating experimental vibe that pervades throughout certainly gives this picture its own singular identity. Rollin regulars and real-life twin siblings Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel are sexy and captivating as Radamante's servant girls while Ursule Pauly is effectively nasty as the treacherous Solange. Jean-Jacque Renon's striking cinematography makes bold use of vibrant color and offers a few stunning surreal images. Yvon Serault's moody and atonal jazzy score does the wonky droning trick. Worth a watch for Rollin fans.

Following a strange encounter with a young woman, Pierre (Olivier Martin) begins snooping around the location where he last saw her and quickly uncovers a mystery leading all the way to his own father. See, Pierre's dad has kidnapped this vampire girl and is using his company in order to try to find out the secret to her immortality. This is director Jean Rollin's second vampire film but the first one that I've witnessed. I'm not sure it is entirely successful, but it clearly establishes some Rollin motifs. I did enjoy the dream-like staging even if it has a slumber-like pace at only 81 minutes long. As always, Rollin has a keen eye for the ladies and everyone here is downright gorgeous. Especially of note are the twin servants, played by real life twins Marie-Pierre & Catherine Castel. Rollin also has an equally good eye at catching some great images and the final half hour set in a picturesque château in the country features some really striking bits. Of course, you know he is going to work that beach in there too and the last few minutes feature that famous location (plus a dimensional jump and twist that reminded me a bit of PHANTASM).

From the title and the opening sequence of 'La Vampire Nue' it looks like you're in for a dreamlike erotic nudie vampire flick ala Jess Franco (which is not a bad thing mind you!). Very quickly though it metamorphoses into something more complex, and difficult to categorize. The mysterious and sensual title character played by Caroline Cartier actually has very little to do on screen, but is the key to the mysterious events involving scientists studying immortality, and a surreal suicide cult. A young man discovers his father is somehow involved in a secret society who favour animal masks and (apparent) murder. When he investigates he finds that not everything is as it seems, and that the enigmatic, mute beauty at the centre of it may hold the key to the future of mankind's evolution. A very strange, poetic and unique piece of 60s exploitation, quite unlike any other. I was fascinated by the whole thing. Highly recommended to fans of the offbeat and unusual.