nodiro A wonderful, weird, vampire movie about temptation and confusion. I am very much a fan of 1970s European vampire movies and Jean Rollin was the best of them. And Shiver is one of my favorites. It has very weird dialogue and the plot is very confusing, which is why it is great! If you are looking for the best of this genre, this is one of the films to watch.

Bonehead-XL "Shivers of the Vampire" brings the groovy back. A pair of newlyweds, so newly wed they are still in gown and tux, visits an uncle's old castle. The uncles have recently been turned into vampires by the vampire woman who lives in the near-by cemetery. Despite the signs that something is afoot, like the uncle's mute female servants, the couple stays. The girl is immediately seduced by the lady vampire. The husband realizes quickly weirdness is about. Wackiness ensues. You know the drill.I think Rollin was aware of his formula. Despite the typically fast-and-loose story, he packs the film full of gorgeous images. The opening is long and almost dialogue free, as the two servants walk up a spiral staircase, bathed in red light. The opening credits play over fog billowing over a tombstone. The castle is decorated with bizarre statues, skulls, bones, and burnt-wood sculpted into human features. The vampire woman first appears nudged into a grandfather clock. Later, she shows up again, leaping out from behind red curtains. Color is hyper-stylized, as there are several late night walks into an orange and purple shaded cemetery. Rollin continues to dress his actresses in see-through shawls and it goes without saying that the nudity is abundant and often unexplained. The lesbian maids (Did I mention they are lesbians?) lunge around the castle in the nude and use an unorthodox method to wake the husband.Pretty pictures only do so much to make up for the maudlin pace. What does make up for that is hilarity. The musical score is composed of waa-waa-ing funky guitar riffs. The movie establishes it's goofy streak early when the female vampire rises from her grave, the stone moving in stop-motion and punctuated by animal screams. Upon hearing there's a library in the castle, the groom flocks to the room and is attack by psychic books. The obsessed (human) lover of the uncles is murdered with a bra fitted with metal spikes. Oh man, I haven't mentioned the crazy uncles. Dressed like fops, they ramble on about paganism, Christianity, goddess worship, while the camera spins around, as confused as the characters. The acting is more stilted then usual.Yeah, it's pacing falters by the end and there's plenty of vampires musing about what a wretched, unlovable species they are. The ending does feature an ironic take-down of the film's antagonist and that weird beach appears again. The film wasn't released in the US until the late seventies, with the new title "Strange Things Happen at Night." I actually prefer that title since it's far more evocative and also an accurate description of what's to come. This is my favorite of the director's films since "The Nude Vampire."

Woodyanders Isa (a charming performance by the fetching Sandra Julien) and her husband Antoine (a likable portrayal by Jean-Marie Durand) are a recently married honeymooning couple who stop for the night at a moldy old castle. The couple discover that the castle is the home of a horde of vampires who have very special plans for Isa. Director Jean Rollin, who also co-wrote the offbeat script with Monique Natan, relates the cheerfully outré story at a hypnotically gradual pace, does his usual ace job of creating and sustaining a dreamy'n'trippy oddball atmosphere, smartly explores an intriguing theme about destiny, and makes the most out of the rundown castle and adjacent spooky cemetery locations. Moreover, Rollins not only further spices things up with a generous sprinkling of sizzling lesbianism and yummy female nudity, but also gives the picture an extra delightful lift with an amusing sense of playful humor and a few startling moments of inspired surrealism (for example, the vampiress who pops up inside of a grandfather clock). The game cast have a ball with the idiosyncratic material: Jacques Robiolles and Michael Delahaye contribute engaging work as a pair of cordial and jolly vampires, cute brunette Kuelan Herce and adorable blonde Marie-Pierre Castel are very sexy and appealing as loyal maids who work for said vampires, and Nicole Nancell cuts a marvelously wicked figure as calculating man-hating bloodsucker bitch Isabelle. Jean-Jacques Renon's striking cinematography makes impressive use of bold and vibrant color. The funky-throbbing score by the prog-rock group Acanthus hits the get-down groovy spot. A real weirded-out blast of an entertaining avant-garde item.

Michael_Elliott Shiver of the Vampires, The (1971)** 1/2 (out of 4) Jean Rollin's third vampire film follows a honeymooning couple, Isa (Sandra Julien) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand), as they travel to the castle of her cousins. Once they arrive they only find a couple female servants and they are told that the cousins died the night before. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening including the so-called dead cousins coming back. Following THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE and THE NUDE VAMPIRE, I think most people would agree that this is the film where director Rollin started to show what good things he was working up to. This film here is certainly far from a good movie but there are several interesting aspects that make it worth viewing and there many elements that you can see the director working with and he would eventually perfect these in upcoming films. The most impressive thing here is the style in the film. One certainly isn't going to mistake the style of Rollin with someone like Mario Bava or Dario Argento but what's so unique is that this French director was able to do something rather original and all his own. What's so impressive about Rollin's style is that it almost seems so lifeless but when you consider that he's dealing with the undead, this perfectly fits the films. Just look at the way he shoots all the stuff with the living. The majority of the interior shots all look as if they were filmed on faded film stock as the walls seem as if they were bleached and the skin tones are also very light. Compare these to the scenes when the dead are ruling things and you'll see Rollin using beautiful, haunting colors and there's some terrific stuff in the cemetery with some vivid reds that really jump out. Of course, this being a Rollin picture, the nudity levels were starting to rise at this point, which I'm sure is going to sit very well with the male viewers. Not only is Julien extremely beautiful but she gives a pretty good performance as well. Marie-Pierre Castel and Kuelan Herce play the seductive maids and, as you'd expect, they're certainly easy on the eyes but they too offer up fine performances. The nudity here on full display from start to finish and the director also manages to make quite a bit of it very erotic. The one major flaw with the picture is that it runs 96-minutes and it almost feels as long as Abel Gance's NAPOLEON. The pacing of the picture is a very big flaw because it moves so slow that there will be times where you think the thing is almost over and then you realize that you've only been watching for a matter of minutes. You'll then feel as if it's almost over, check the time and then realize it's only been a few minutes since you last checked. The pacing issues aside, overall this is a rather impressive mix of horror and eroticism that fans of Rollin will certainly want to check out.