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Released by: Encore Entertainment
Released on: 12/2/2005
Director: Jean Rollin
Cast: Jean-Loup Philippe, Annie Belle, Nathalie Perrey, Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel
Year: 1975
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The Movie:
One of Jean Rollin's more interesting films, 1975s Levres De Sang (better known in North America as Lips Of Blood, which is how it was released on DVD a few years back from Image/Redemption) begins with the simple image of a van heading through the night towards an eerie old building. When it stops, the two male passengers emege, open the back of the van up, and pull out a dead body. When an older woman (Nathalie Perry) appears, she leads them down into the crypt where the body is placed inside a coffin that lies waiting for it. As the men begin to seal the coffin and nail it closed, the camera reveals to us that the corpse is still breathing. We don't know why these people are doing this, but when the old lady puts up a cross at the entrance to the crypt facing the four coffins, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the four people who lay buried in this eerie locale might just have a penchant for sucking blood.
From here, we cut back to the hustle and bustle of city life, where Frederic (Jean-Loup Philippe) is hanging out at a chic party in celebration of a new perfume's launch. While hanging out he's drawn to a poster that features a decrepit but somehow still elegrant looking castle that reminds him of his days as a young boy where he became lost while exploring the area with his parents. He wandered into this same castle where he was helped out by a gorgeous woman in a white gown (Annie Brilland). The next morning when he knows he needs to go out and find his parents and return to his normal life, he tells her that he loves her and that one day he'll return to her. He gives her one of his toys and heads out on his way, but his promised return never happened. With the flashback out of the way and the basic premise of the story now in motion, modern day Frederic decides to fullfill that promise and head out to that castle and see if she's still there.
To find out more about the castle and its whereabouts he talks to the photographer who snapped the shot (Marine Grimaud) but she is quite elusive about the location and agrees to tell him where it is only if he meets her one night at a location of her choice, an old theater. He agrees despite the strangeness of it all, but when he shows up to meet her he finds she's been murdered. Frederic refuses to let this stop him from his mission, if anything, her death serves as further fuel for the fire that now burns within him. Later that night, Frederic notices a beautiful woman wandering in the dark. He follows her and she leads him to four female vampires who abduct him and bring him back to the crypt from the opening sequence. Frederic escapes the next morning and tells his mother of what happened to him. Her reaction is, of course, disbelief, but she seems to know more about what is happening to him than she lets on. Eventually, Frederic is reunited with the woman who has haunted his dreams for so long, but it's not the romantic reunion he'd been hoping for and in fact it will put him at the biggest crossroads of his life and force him to choose between life and love.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Good news and bad new. First the good - Levres De Sang looks excellent on this DVD despite some mild print damage in the form of the odd spec or two here and there. The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen image, transferred from the original negative, boasts great color reproduction and a very clean, colorful picture with a nice amount of both foreground and background detail present throughout. You'll probably pick up on some softness here and there but transfer on this release bests the Image/Redemption release that came out a few years ago in almost every way possible. Skin tones look nice and natural, black levels are strong and deep, and there aren't any serious problems with edge enhancement or heavy aliasing present during playback. Putting the disc onto a dual layered disc probably helped eliminate some of the compression artifacts that were present on the first wave of releases like Les Demoniaques. Now for the bad news - as pointed out by Matt Jones on our forum here, the framing for this otherwise very nice transfer is off by a noticeable degree revealing slightly more information on the bottom of the image but in turn sacrificing the top of the image by compromising compositions. The tops of heads are slighty trimmed and it looks a little odd. Also worth noting is that while all of the film is there, the opening credits themselves that normally appear over the images at the beginning of the movie are suspiciously absent.
At the time of this writing, Encore is looking into fixing the problem. Once it has been addressed, this review will be updated with details on the resolution.
For a film more than three decades old that was low budget to begin with, the French language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track sounds pretty solid on this release. There is some mild background hiss throughout much of the movie and if you listen for them you'll pick out the occasional pop here and there but for the most past, things sound all right. Dialogue is fairly clean and pretty consistent even if sometimes the levels fluctuate just a little bit. It's not a perfect track, but it's pretty decent none-the-less and it suits the film just fine. The extensive selection of optional subtitles for the film includes choices in English, Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Polish.
Encore has spreads the extras for this release across all three of the discs that are housed within the classy looking digipack packaging. Here's how it all goes down…
DISC ONE:
Rollin, speaking in English, provides another one of his fine video introductions to the film on the first disc. For just over ten-minutes in length he gives his honest feelings about the strengths and weaknesses of the film, and covers some of the difficulties that arose during the shoot and how they affected the final version of the movie. He also talks about working with the two Castel Twins and seems to have really enjoyed how their performances turned out and how they added to the film.
DISC TWO:
The second disc in the set starts out with a twenty-four minute video interview with Jean Rollin conducted on the instantly recognizeable beach where so many of the more famous moments from his filmography have been shot. Rollin, speaking in French this time with optional English subtitles, reveals how he came to find the beach as a kid growing up in the area and how it has always been a special place to him as it is partially responsible for how he got into film in that he felt he should capture the beauty of the scenery somehow. He talks about projects that he wanted to film in the area that never got off the ground for one reason or another and he talks about shooting his first feature there as well. Rollin is in fine form in this interview, he's very jovial and obviously quite enthusiastic to be on the beach talking about its importance to him and to his work and as such, this interview proves to be not only very interesting but also very revelatory.
A second interview finds male lead Jean-Loup Philippe sitting down in front of the camera for just over sixteen-minutes, speaking in French with English subtitles about his experiences on the film. He talks about his early career as an actor, how he came to meet Jean Rollin and how he came to be involved in Levres De Sang specifically. Interestingly enough, Philippe has apparantly worked with Ingmar Bergman (famed director of The Virgin Spring and many others) on the stage before and he explains how that came to happen here. Lots of good stories here, and this proves to be another very interesting piece.
Interview number three rounds up the still lovely Nathalie Perry, who speaks for just over twelve minutes in French with English subtitles about her work on the movie and about her many collaborations with Jean Rollin that stretch back all the way to the late sixties and about the circumstances that lead to him casting her in one of his films for the first time. She talks about her relationship with Jean-Loup Philippe and how it turned into something more than just another working relationship, how she was completely charmed by Serge Rollin's unusual technique of practicing his lines for the movie, and how she feels about Rollin and his work three decades after the fact. This interview is just as good as the first two and again, Perry's got a lot of great stories to tell and if you've ever wanted to know more about the woman from the opening of this film, here's your chance.
The fourth interview features Jean's son, Serge Rollin, who speaks in French with English subtitles for just over thirteen minutes in length about how he played the younger version of Philippe's character in the film (it's a brief but important role) which made him the envy of all of his friends in his youth. Jean knew early one that Serge was fascinated by his career as a director and because of that, this part was created specifically for him so that he could experience the real world of movie making for himself and get a taste of what it is really like, rather than assume it's the glamorous lifestyle that so many young people assume it must be. From all accounts, everyone treated the young first time actor very professionally and very nicely, likely due in part to the fact that he took his work very seriously and was there to do the best job that he could and not to skirt in on his father's coattails.
The fifth and final interview on this disc puts the lovely Catherine Castel in front of the camera so that she can speak in French with English subtitles for just under fifteen minutes about her work in Levres De Sang and this proves to be a fantastic opportunity for fans to learn about how she and her sister Marie got into the industry. They were both underage at the time they were discovered by Jean Rollin but once their birthday's came he was ecstatic to be able to start using them in his movies starting with La Vampire Nue. While some actresses might shy away from the rather unorthodox casting that they found themselves lined up with, Catherine shows no remorse at all and is more than happy to talk about her work in French cinema fantastique as well as her work in the adult industry a few years later. She goes into some very torrid detail about the way that she and her sister worked together and this one is quite an eye opener and will likely be, for many fans, the highlight of the extras on this release!
Finishing up the extra features on this second disc is a decent sized still gallery set to music from the film's score running just over four minutes in length. As it plays out, we get a chance to check out a nice selection of promotional photographs, and behind the scenes photographs some of which detail some material that didn't make it into the final cut of the film.
DISC THREE:
Rollin provides a screen specific commentary for roughly thirty-three minutes worth of material from the film to start this disc off and he does so in English (no subtitles this time, oddly enough). He covers some of the interesting oddities that popped up during pre-production, how he and the crew had to over come them, and what it was like shooting so much of the material for this film out on location. He goes into no small amount of detail about the history of certain buildings that we see in the film, talks about the beach a little bit more as well as some of the other interesting places that the movie takes place in, and does a really excellent job of giving us a feel for what it must have been like for him on the set of the film.
Also included on this third disc is Jean Rollin's very first short film, Les Amoures Jeunes, which clocks in at just over ten minutes in French with English subtitles and is presented in a decent if slighly beaten 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. It makes sense to include the short with Levres De Sang as it takes place on that very same beach that Rollin loves so much. Shot in 1958, this one is pretty odd but it sure looks fantastic from a technical perspective with so much emphasis put on capturing the natural beauty of the area. Sadly, there's no Rollin commentary provided for this short, which is a shame as it would have been nice to hear his thoughts and memories on this first project of his.
The third disc finishes up with a trailer for the feature on this disc as well as trailers for Les Demoniaques and Requiem Pour Un Vampire. All three are in widescreen and while not as pretty looking as the features themselves, they're in decent enough shape. They are presented in French with no subtitles.
Rounding out the extra features is a full color sixty-four-page booklet that presents an essay from Rollin that details the origins of the film as well as his thoughts on the movie and on the people he found himself working with during its production. He also details how the XXX version of the movie came to be, and what he thinks of it. While it would have been ideal to see those scenes included in this set as an extra, that didn't happen though some stills are provided in this book. It's quite a lavish production, once again printed on heavy, glossy paper stock, and the text is all in English and although it covers some of the same information that the commentary track does, it's still quite a nice presentation and the pictures are very, very cool.
The Final Word:
Framing issues aside (if it's fixed down the road, I'll be only too happy to bump up the overall rating for this release!), this is an otherwise exemplary presentation of one of Jean Rollin's most interesting films. Levres De Sang is the very epitomy of the director's trademark style of erotic, gothic horror and the extra features developed for this release are simply outstanding.