I’m happy to post the final chapter of my continuing series on Jean Rollin. This segment is about what became of Rollin’s career following the fallout of The Living Dead Girl, and how is final stretch of movies were organized around themes of nostalgia and self-referential pastiche. I argue that in Rollin’s career, we can see a clear passage between two cultural epochs: from the modernism of his experimental early work, to the funereal postmodernism of his late films.
0:00 - Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia
2:51 - Streets of Bangkok
4:22 - Lost in New York
7:06 - Fredric Jameson’s theory of postmodernism and the significance of nostalgia
9:53 - self-reference in Killing Car, Two Orphan Vampires, and Dracula’s Fiance
11:02 - Night of the Clocks
13:22 - conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, I want to say thank you. This has been my most challenging project so far, but it’s also turned out to be some of my proudest work. I hope that the series contributes to the broader conversation on Jean Rollin, both by helping new viewers approach Rollin’s work for the first time, and perhaps to enable new meanings for seasoned fans.
If you enjoyed the series, please consider making a donation and sharing the series with others. A project like this depends entirely on word of mouth, so please help put it in the fans of Jean Rollin fans everywhere.
As for what’s next: I have a few straggler videos that I’ve been wanting to finish, including more nunsploitation, as well as a return to Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws.
Longer-term, I want to do videos on Hellraiser, Jess Franco, Joseph Sarno, Nazisploitation, Paul Naschy, Lucio Fulci…and much more. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know via email or Instagram.
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