Fascination (1979)

dir Jean Rollin cast Franca Mai, Brigitte Lahaie, Jean-Marie Lemaire, Fanny Magier, Muriel Montosse

 Unlike its neighbors Italy and Spain, France did not produce many horror films for the international market in the 1960s and 1970s. Jean Rollin was the French director who came the closest to attaining the international horror "star director" status of Italy's Mario Bava, or Spain's Jesus Franco. Rollin specialized in highly stylized erotic vampire movies and his reputation rests mainly on four such films that he made between 1968 and 1971, plus The Iron Rose (1973) and this film.

Our story begins in France, 1905, with a group of women drinking cattle blood in a slaughterhouse, which, we are led to understand, has become a popular "cure" for anemia. After this brief prologue, we join Marc, a member of a gang of thieves who have stolen a box full of gold coins (actually "full" may be stretching it, as we see a few coins at the bottom of the box). Briefly taking hostage the female member of the gang, he double-crosses his compatriots and runs through the woods with the gold, pursued by his erstwhile partners in crime. He comes upon a large chateau in the middle of a lake, accessible only by a stone causeway. Seeking refuge in the castle, he finds it occupied by two beautiful young women, the blonde Eva and the brunette Elisabeth. The women claim to be servants of the chateau's owners, who have arrived in order to ready the castle for their employers' arrival. Marc locks the women in a bedroom. They laugh, produce a hidden key, and make love. Then, they let themselves out of the room and tell Marc that there is someone dangerous due to arrive that evening and warn him to leave before nightfall. The seductiveness of the women and fear of his gang keep Marc at the house and he eventually meets the leader and other members of Eva and Elisabeth's "blood cult" (remember the prologue?).

Fascination starts slow, but becomes enjoyable. Rollins opts for a dreamy, not-quite-realistic feel, which he accomplishes quite well. The bleak woods and chateau make a good setting for an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The interiors of the chateau make a good setting, although they have modern-looking electric lights. The dialogue, at least in the subtitles, seems more like poetic speech than the kind of things people actually say to one another (or probably said to one another in 1905). The film is quite talky, but when Eva grabs a scythe, the promise of bloody murders does not go unfulfilled. Walking toward the castle, carrying her scythe, with the wind blowing the cloak, which has long slits on the sides, to reveal glimpses of breasts and pubic hair, Eva represents a uniquely French view of death personified.

There's an element of sadism in the film. Like Franco's Necromincon, this features a woman knifing a man to death during sex. The women are strong characters who laugh at Marc's attempts to control them; they are the ones in control. On the other hand, they also turn out to be the film's monsters; merciless killers who prey on men without apparent guilt.

Like most of Rollin's horror films, Fascination features quite a bit of female nudity, but does not skimp on the horror, though it is not graphically violent. The most explicit scene is probably the stabbing, though the knife is so obviously a blunt prop that it lends a bit of unintentional humor to the sequence. Like other French horror films, such as Eyes Without a Face, Fascination seems to exist at the nexus of art and exploitation. If you are interested in arty European horror, such as  Necronomicon, or Bava's Lisa and the Devil, this will not be a waste of your time.