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Released by: X-Rated Kult
Released on: 1/31/2005
Director: Jean Rollin
Cast: Mireille Dargent, Francoise Pascal
Year: 1973
The Movie:
La Rose De Fer, one of Jean Rollin's most obscure films at least in terms of visibility, is short on plot but high on atmosphere. A young man and a young woman (Francoise Pascal of The Grapes Of Death) are drawn to each other after they meet and soon head off on a bicycle ride that leads them to a creepy old cemetery. The wander in and the man decides that they should head on down into one of the tombs for a little romance. She's not too keen on the idea but decides that rather than be left alone among the gravestones she'd better oblige him.
Once they're down there, and they've done their thing, the come out of the tomb to find things have taken a turn for the worse and as they try and find their way out of the cemetery, things spiral out of control and soon they both find themselves going quite insane.
As much an art film as it is a horror film, if not more so, La Rose De Fer is a very nice looking film that has a lot of Rollin's trademark touches on very obvious display. The beach scene, a random clown (Rollin's favorite cinematic clown, Mireille Dargent of Requiem For A Vampire, Demoniacs and Lips Of Blood) , plenty of gothic architecture and even a guy who may or may not be a vampire running around amongst the tombstones at one point. The more the young couple explore the burial grounds, hoping to find their way home and back to safety, the more complex their travels become and it seems that the land itself is conspiring against them to keep them inside its gates.
Plenty of long, lingering shots of the cemetery provide an eerie setting for the events to transpire inside of, and Rollin's camera work does a great job of capturing how intimidating a large burial ground can be at night. Trapped in among the dead, the two characters slowly but surely lose themselves much like the viewer will lose him or herself in the film not through intense dialogue (there's actually not a lot said in the film, really) but through the ambience and the atmosphere that the director creates with his nightmarish mood.
La Rose De Fer is a poetic film that functions less on the linearism of its plot and story and more on the claustrophobia that its characters experience as the movie builds. While it doesn't all happen at a break neck pace and there aren't any horrific set pieces or over the top moments of sex or gore, the film doesn't need them and as a semi-surrealist, and at times almost minimalist, take on what is, at the literal core of its plot, simply a night out gone wrong, it works very nicely.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.66.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is in pretty nice shape. The colors look quite good and while there is some minor print damage appearing in the form of specks and a tiny scratch or two, overall the image is pretty strong and very clean. Flesh tones look natural and there's a nice level of detail present in the image. Black levels could be a little stronger and there is some very mild edge enhancement and every once in a while some blurring, but there aren't any compression artifacts and the movie, for the most part, looks quite nice on this DVD.
Audio options on this DVD include your choice of French or German Mono tracks with optional German or English subtitles. There are a couple of scenes that contain some background hiss but other than that there aren't any serious audible defects with the track. As far as the subtitles go, there are a couple of minor discrepancies that my very poor French language skills were able to ascertain and some of the English phrasing used is rather strange leading me to assume that the film was translated from French to German and then from German to English. Either way, in the long run it's not a huge issue and the film's dialogue is easy enough to follow that this really doesn't take away from the experience all that much.
X-Rated has dug up two trailers, one in French and one in German, and they've also supplied a large still gallery. The interesting thing about this still gallery is, if you take the time to go through it, there are some shots of the characters that don't appear in the film (most notably some topless shots of Francoise Pascal, leading one to wonder if this is a trimmed version or if these were merely photos taken on the set or for publicity reasons?).
The Final Word:
While it would have been nice to see a few more supplements, X-Rated's release of La Rose De Fer looks good and sounds okay. The movie itself is an interesting effort from Rollin and while casual fans may want to wait for the inevitable R1 release, those who can't wait could do a lot worse than picking up this import.