Anyone who enjoyed Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas will be thrilled to see another of his crime serials available, which this time concerns the nefarious exploits of the criminal gang known as Les Vampires, whose audacious robberies and pitiless murders strike terror into the heart of Parisian society.
The stories are the purest, lurid pulp – decapitated bodies, priceless jewels, poison ink, wall-scalings, hypnotism, miraculous escapes – and if some of the improbable contrivances in the plot make it look like the storylines were made up on the hoof, well they probably were. Les Vampires thrives on the unexpected, with startling twists, sudden deaths, and situations bordering on the surreal. And then of course, there are the aliases and disguises. Irma Vep, companion in crime of the Grand Vampire himself, is popularly known as a black bodystockinged cat burglar, but she is also a nightclub vamp, a society hostess, a count’s son and more – in fact there is hardly a character in Les Vampires that makes it through the series without adopting multiple disguises. Even the reporter Guérande, on the trail of the gang, has to adopt their methods to trap them – meaning ever more aliases and disguises, until the world depicted is one of play acting and deadly fantasy in a real setting. No wonder Rivette is a fan.
Throughout too, the viewer is involved in the action, whether through Guérande’s companion Mazamette’s mugging to camera or through Irma Vep sneaking a look at us when she is in a fix. Feuillade has an eye for a striking image to arrest our attention too – a silhouette in a doorway, a masked face peering down on a sleeping figure, policemen climbing through pollarded trees.
The director Alain Resnais said that in addition to the traditions of Méliès and Lumière, ‘there is a Feuillade school, which makes marvellous use of Méliès’ fantasy and of Lumière’s realism.’ Indeed. When in Les Vampires the everyday suddenly and unexpectedly changes into something darker altogether – sudden asphyxiation, murder, an S&M tango in the Vampires' den, Irma Vep taken unawares, gagged and lifted onto a man’s back – this is just one of the reasons why it retains such a compelling fascination even today.
A gripping serial about the exploits of a vast criminal organization, 'Les Vampires', who blackmail, kill and steal from the high society in Paris. They go largely unsuspected until their removal of a government investigator brings ambitious reporter Philippe Guerande in to investigate them. The black body-stockinged Musidora plays the sensual, dangerous vamp Irma Vep.
Anyone who enjoyed Feuillade's serial Fantomas will need no persuading about the merits of this legendary early masterpeice of French cinema.
The London Nobody Knows / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize
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Les Vampires
