Wonderful character development!

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Film begins at same seaside locations as Rollin's own The Rape of the Vampire, giving a familiar, yet alien, look to the landscape, as a guy and girl meet, followed by eerie images of the girl in bright yellow walking in fog-enshrouded fields, and next to a huge freight train, enveloped in a thick cloud of fog.The film takes its time setting up the premise, as the bored guy and girl walk aimlessly through beaches and train yards, and ultimately, a cemetery. A beautiful Gothic cemetery, peopled by a surreal clown, and caretakers cloaked in what appear to be burlap sacks.Unlike Rollin's earlier black-and-white The Rape of The Vampire, which used its black-and-white photography to build atmosphere, this could not have worked in black-and-white: good colour composition of the girl in bright yellow and the guy in bright red turtleneck, to set them apart from the grey surroundings of the cemetery, and surreal images of clown walking around and laying flowers on graveside needed colour photography for the characters to stand out from surroundings.After nightfall, when they are finished banging, they try to leave the cemetery. No easy task, with this guy. They stumble onto open graves, coffins littered with human bones, as they try to find their way out. But are they really lost? Or is the guy just f 'ing with her? And does he, too, become as scared as she is, which only makes her even more scared? Or is she, herself, behind everything? Bear with it through its slow start, it doesn't really get going until about 25 minutes into it, and even then, there really isn't anywhere for it to go. It's a good movie, in a bewildering, Jean Rollin type of way, but I think it would have benefited from a shorter run time.

Girl meet boy. He asks her out. His choice of places is somewhat unusual. First they visit what appears to be a graveyard for old steam trains (a joy for the train spotters I should think), then off to the local cemetery, because it is quiet.The girl is somewhat scared when he wants to enter a tomb, and he seems to enjoy this. Then she agrees to join him in the tomb, and they make love.And we are treated to a fully-dressed clown wandering around the cemetery, like they do not. What on earth is that supposed to be about? I think it was Chekov who said that when you have something in a short story, then it must have to be there. So if you have a gun, it has to go off. And when you have a clown, the clown has to do something, be a pivot for something. This appeared to be pointlessly weird.Essentially this is an over-long short story. There is something in it, but the central point is not wholly clear. If I were to have a stab at it, I would say the boy was trying to frighten the girl , then she becomes more fascinated by the whole experience than he is, then he becomes terrified. Has he driven her mad? Was she mad already? To that extend it was similar to Hamlet, but only to that extent.Not a lot happens for much of the film. Early on , I guessed where it was going, save for the very last part. Quite what it was about is that clear, but strangely that is a good reason to watch it again. It is not rubbish, and certainly very odd.

Two happy young lovers explore first an empty train then an empty cemetery in a cold and misty atmosphere. They find an underground crypt entered by ladder through two iron flaps. They strip and make love standing up. Already it's a horror movie. Who can make love standing up in an icy crypt? Only in a horror movie.There's no point in going on about the plot because there is no discernible plot. It's as if the cast and crew were given a night to film in a shabby thanatopolis and made up stuff as they went along.I gather -- okay, I'll take a stab at it -- I gather that the pretty young girl goes mad. For some reason, after a night full of meandering and arguing, they come across that same crypt. The boy, for some reason, goes down into it again and invites the girl to join him, where they'll be "safe." Instead, she clangs the trap doors close and locks him in. He shouts that he's suffocating, but she ignores him.She wanders off with an enigmatic smile. She props one foot against a tombstone and uses it as a barre, then dancing off among the graves and administrative buildings, humming to herself while doing grotesque gavottes. This wordless, pointless scene lasts a full ten minutes.When dawn peeps through the drab sky into the withered weeds and frozen marble of the grave yard, she returns to the crypt, opens it, climbs down to join her deceased lover, and slams the iron doors closed.The general atmosphere is enough to make anyone climb into the crypt and suffocate, and the dialog -- if that's what it is -- amounts to writer-assisted suicide. "My darling, your fingers are burning. The rose is of iron. Why do we fear the living? They only decay." I tried to read some social or moral message into this rarefied baloney but failed completely. Since the movie is as amorphous as a Rorschach ink blot, anybody can read anything they want into it, I suppose. Maybe it's really very relevant and meaningful. Maybe it's all my fault. Honestly. Because every time I see one of those ink blots, no matter which one, it always looks like the face of Bette Midler.

Like LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (one of the greatest if most often underrated vampire movies ever made), ROSE OF IRON is a quiet, subtle little exercise in terror. While it lacks the heart-stopping jolts that help make LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH so unforgettable, it DOES boast some low-key moments of pure fright that are nigh unforgettable: when the lovely Ms. Pascal begins to feel something strange coming over her, for instance, or when she begins to show signs of possible possession or- my favorite- when she entombs her boyfriend in an airtight underground tomb. The ending alone makes this one a classic. The director's focus on the couple as they wander through and then become lost in the graveyard is commendable, though I would've liked to have seen more close ups when the "changes" started to occur.