The Seduction of Amy (1975)

So Jean Rollin died. I find that quite sad; I kind of like the idea of him, if you know what I mean, even though I’d never seen any of his films until this evening, he and his films always struck me as at least sounding interesting in theory. Of course I used to think the same thing about Dario Argento until I actually saw his films (thanks for not very much, Maitland McDonagh), and I fear I probably won’t like Rollin either if/when I get better acquainted… Still, at least I knew going in not to treat this (the only Rollin I have at hand, which is on the second Satanic Sickies box; I really should return those to their rightful owner) as altogether representative of his oeuvre, in which I gather it occupies an interesting place by being the only porn film he released under his own name (though not here; the Alpha Blue print has no credits at all). Where Rollin apparently shot X-rated inserts for his horror films, this looks more like he shot horror inserts for a skin flick; Amy gets attacked and nearly killed by a rapist in an attack about as random as the rest of the film, then rescued by the mysterious Gideon, proprietor of a conveniently nearby isolated chateau, then a bunch of other people show up, the plot fails to advance for another half hour or so, Gideon just needs the love of a pure woman or something, a lot of sense is not made. From what I gather, the setting, some of the actors, and the incoherence are typical Rollin fare, the rest not so much, so I can’t really use this to judge him fairly, I suppose… the American release lost about 20-odd minutes from the original which probably didn’t help, and neither does the godawful dubbing (which seems even more disconnected from the visuals than it usually does for some reason). Nice try by Rollin to tell a proper (if hard to discern) story in a porn film, but I suspect I’m better off sampling his straight horrors…

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