Following the nearly plotless black-and-white Gothic delirium of his first film, The Rape of the Vampire, director Jean Rollin returned to bloodsuckers again for a far more visually extreme variation that still stands apart from the rest of his filmography. Though his trademark obsessions with beachscapes and aesthetic nudity are still in evidence, the ultra-saturated color schemes and mad scientist motifs instead feel like some sort of unholy mash-up between Barbarella and The Diabolical Dr. Z (and almost never like a traditional horror film). The film kicks off with a group of hooded scientists doing something nefarious with their Bunsen burners and brightly-colored beakers, while others in their cult run around in animal masks and chase passing pedestrians. During all of this mayhem, young Pierre (Martin) is captivated with a scantily-clad woman (Cartier) who winds up apprehended by the sect, which turns out to be a more sinister and deadly group than they first appeared. Visitors commit suicide, blood drinking is involved, and as usual, it all winds up with haunted characters wandering a beach as their mortality comes back to bite them in the, uh, neck.

Though the pacing of The Nude Vampire is still recognizably Rollin-esque, this film may prove easier for newcomers to swallow as its story veers from one oddball element to the next. Leopardskin fabrics, party masks, and lots of teasing partial skin shots set this one firmly in 1970, and as a mod French art film gone berserk, it's plenty of fun. Rollin mixes the sci-fi and Gothic elements together without really trying to scare anyone, but his poetic touch keeps the entire enterprise from becoming a nasty collision of contrasting styles. The actors aren't required to do much beyond wandering around and acting as clotheshorses, but the limited Martin makes a reasonable enough protagonist whose past causes him to slowly unravel as the film unspools.

Among all of Rollin's horror films on home video, The Nude Vampire has easily suffered the rockiest history. Decent video transfers were hellishly difficult to obtain for a long time, and even the DVD era proved wildly erratic. A non-anamorphic Spanish DVD that marked its digital debut contained the dubbed English track, and the French-language British DVD with English subtitles wasn't much of a visual improvement. For some reason, Redemption's North American DVD fudged the release by including only the English dub again, and the transfer was non-anamorphic which felt wildly antiquated by that point. As far as extras, you get both the French and English theatrical trailers, a plotless but lovely little early short film from Rollin (Les Amours Jaunes) centered around the beach (of course), stills galleries for the feature and short, and the usual Redemption cross-promoting trailers and book promo.

The first truly satisfying version out there came later when Redemption jumped over to Kino Lorber for HD overhauls of Rollin titles, including the first genuinely attractive version of this film in its original language. The Blu-ray release is quite the stunner,with eye-popping colors that finally capture the deranged pop art flavor Rollin was going for. It's finally presented with its accurate 1.66:1 framing as well and offers a major upgrade in every department. The short film from the U.S. release and the Rollin interview from the U.K. one go bye bye, but it's a minor loss compared to the fact that you get a far superior rendering of the film along with some new extras including a Rollin video intro, a shorter interview with the director (just under 20 minutes instead of the 40-minute one on the U.K. disc), a three-minute Natalie Perrey interview, and trailers for the first five Kino Lorber/Redemption Blu-ray Rollin titles.

In 2017, German label Wicked Vision brought the film out as a launch title for its own line of Rollin mediabook limited edition releases. The big selling point here was a new 2K scan of the original camera negative, which differs in some dramatic ways from the earlier transfer in ways that could prove divisive. It features more image in the frame and has some substantial color timing differences, particularly the reds which move away from the orange tone of the prior Blu-ray and now look darker, more subdued, and frequently more ruby red. Both the film and all of the extras are English subtitled; bonus features include a 24-page booklet by Pelle Felsch and Leonhard Elias Lemke, a Rollin video intro, "The Journey of the Naked Vampires" and "Memories: Conversations with Jean Rollin" featurettes, French and U.S. trailers, a reconstructed German trailer and trailer, the alternate Vampire German version trailer and opening, alternate main titles, poster and lobby card galleries, and press photos.

In 2024, Indicator added this to its roster of superb Rollin UHD and Blu-ray editions with separate format releases in the U.K. and the U.S. Obviously the UHD is the way to go if possible as the new 4K restoration really shines to the fullest there, with HDR-compatible Dolby Vision especially welcome for one of the director's most vibrant concoctions. (Frame grabs in the body of this review are from the Indicator Blu-ray with comparisons below; 4K ones are forthcoming.) Here you get the option to watch the film in its original French version or the genuine export English-dubbed one, which does some editorial shuffling including putting the main titles right at the beginning. The LPCM 1.0 mono tracks sound great as well and feature newly translated English subtitles as well as SDH subs for the English dub.

A new audio commentary by the always engaging Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby takes you through the peculiar landscape of Rollin's cinema and touches on his manipulation of vampire, pulp novel, and comic art tropes, the transition in Euro vampire cinema taking place that would reach fruition in the more sexually liberated 1970s, comparisons to Rollin's prior feature, the reception by the French press, and the ideas established here that would blossom in his later work. Video extras here include a slight polish of the '98 Rollin intro (5m26s), an updated revision of the "Journey" featurette by Rollin assistant Daniel Gouyette as "Le Passage" (8m54s) with Natalie Perrey, Jean-Noël Delamarre, and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, and a streamlining of the "Memories" featurette here as "Fragment d'un dialogue" (19m23s) collecting Rollin interview highlights with Gouyette from a five-year period up to 2003. New here are "An Anarchist Vampire in Paris" (5m26s), with archivist Lucas Balbo explaining how his father's friendship with Rollin and their association with the Fédération Anarchiste provided an unusual gateway to these films, and "Countercultural Gothic" (10m2s) with the always insightful Virginie Sélavy parsing out the film's place within the uniquely French strain of the hippie movement and its aesthetic ties to what was going on in pop culture. Also included are the French and English trailers, plus hefty galleries for promotional and publicity material (104 images), behind the scenes (59 images), and additional photography (46 images). The limited edition package also comes with an 80-page book with a new essay by David Jenkins, an archival Rollin intro and interview highlights from 1973 and 1996, and a dive into Lettrist artist, filmmaker, and Rollin collaborator Maurice Lemaître.

INDICATOR (Blu-ray)

WICKED VISION (Blu-ray)

KINO LORBER (Blu-ray)

Updated review on April 22, 2024