Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Admirable film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Shiver of the Vampires, The (1971)** 1/2 (out of 4) Jean Rollin's third vampire film follows a honeymooning couple, Isa (Sandra Julien) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand), as they travel to the castle of her cousins. Once they arrive they only find a couple female servants and they are told that the cousins died the night before. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening including the so-called dead cousins coming back. Following THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE and THE NUDE VAMPIRE, I think most people would agree that this is the film where director Rollin started to show what good things he was working up to. This film here is certainly far from a good movie but there are several interesting aspects that make it worth viewing and there many elements that you can see the director working with and he would eventually perfect these in upcoming films. The most impressive thing here is the style in the film. One certainly isn't going to mistake the style of Rollin with someone like Mario Bava or Dario Argento but what's so unique is that this French director was able to do something rather original and all his own. What's so impressive about Rollin's style is that it almost seems so lifeless but when you consider that he's dealing with the undead, this perfectly fits the films. Just look at the way he shoots all the stuff with the living. The majority of the interior shots all look as if they were filmed on faded film stock as the walls seem as if they were bleached and the skin tones are also very light. Compare these to the scenes when the dead are ruling things and you'll see Rollin using beautiful, haunting colors and there's some terrific stuff in the cemetery with some vivid reds that really jump out. Of course, this being a Rollin picture, the nudity levels were starting to rise at this point, which I'm sure is going to sit very well with the male viewers. Not only is Julien extremely beautiful but she gives a pretty good performance as well. Marie-Pierre Castel and Kuelan Herce play the seductive maids and, as you'd expect, they're certainly easy on the eyes but they too offer up fine performances. The nudity here on full display from start to finish and the director also manages to make quite a bit of it very erotic. The one major flaw with the picture is that it runs 96-minutes and it almost feels as long as Abel Gance's NAPOLEON. The pacing of the picture is a very big flaw because it moves so slow that there will be times where you think the thing is almost over and then you realize that you've only been watching for a matter of minutes. You'll then feel as if it's almost over, check the time and then realize it's only been a few minutes since you last checked. The pacing issues aside, overall this is a rather impressive mix of horror and eroticism that fans of Rollin will certainly want to check out.

"Les Frissons des Vampires" can't be considered, in the strict sense, a horror film, because there are no suspense and/or scares waiting for the viewer. What the film has to offer is atmosphere, plenty of atmosphere. The plot is thin: a couple arrives in a castle, in order to pay the fiancée's two cousins, a visit (they were once brave vampire hunters, but one night they fell in battle, and became afterwards enthusiastic vampires). These cousins, together with their team (two beautiful servant maids and a solemn vampire girl that emerges out of the most unexpected places), prowl around the innocent guests. This stuff could lead to a really suspenseful film, but I guess that was not Jean Rollin's intention.The lighting effects create beautiful night colors. Every new night, bathed in a different color - the castle - a visual leitmotif. The conversations are frequently literary (especially the two philosopher vampire cousins) and a self-parody - not to be taken seriously. Delicate camera movements, strange angle shots, various colored lights flooding landscape, castle and graveyard.... the idyllic prog rock of Acanthus..... the fog grows and spreads in wonderland.We should relearn to watch films. "Les Frissons des Vampires" is slow-paced - maybe if you just relax and don't hang too much on the story, you may experience the film - enjoy its gorgeous colors effects, its poetic-humoristic dialogues (spoken in French, a very sweet language) and its bizarre atmosphere.Welcome to the fantasy world of Jean Rollin. Give free reins to your senses and imagination. Dive in.

"The Shiver of the Vampires" is one of the better erotic vampire films around.**SPOILERS**On their honeymoon, Isle, (Sandra Julien) and Antoine, (Jean-Marie Durand) decide to stop off at her cousin's castle for a while. Finding that both her cousins, (Michael Delahaye) and (Jacques Robiolles) have both passed on, and soon afterward, she comes down with a strange illness that forces her into bed. That night, wandering around the castle, he witnesses two men who resemble her cousins alive and performing a black magic ritual with a strange women, Isolde, (Dominique) who later appears to Isle and attempts to seduce her. When he realizes that all of the inhabitants of the castle are a coven of vampires who want to initiate her into their group, he races to stop them before it's too late.The Good News: This is far better than it should've been. The film's impressive and continuous Gothic atmosphere is it's greatest asset. With the action mostly concerned with a large castle, filled with stone and rock, cobweb-laced furniture and all sorts of Gothic-influenced surroundings, including winding staircases, giant candles illuminating the proceedings, large, cluttered rooms, coffins in the middle of a ruined abbey, flowing dresses and much more to give off a real eerie feel to the setting. Taken place in a fog-covered graveyard doesn't hurt either, and the sequences inside, including the initial ceremony, some random dialog sequences, and a naked unconscious woman draped over a cemetery vault just a few examples of this. It has its occasional moments of surreal glory as well, including a vampire that sleeps inside a grandfather clock and giant ornate chimney places, only rises at midnight to the accompanying image of a female victim draped willingly around the clock waiting for her to awaken, the image of a female vampire wearing giant spiked black nipple caps to kill a troublesome woman, skulls in a goldfish bowl and the like. These surrealist images are seemingly inserted less with logical purpose in mind and more for the visual image they provide. They are wonderfully inserted and make the film that much more entertaining. The plot isn't that bad, and actually is pretty understandable. It's not exactly linear, but it's not that difficult to get an understanding of the film's motivations and intentions. The vampire plot is strong and well-defined, allowing for most of the best scenes to come from their appearance. Most of the rest of the time the film seems assembled in order to display as many women in a state of undress as possible. There are a large number of scantily-clad women in see-through gowns, a near-continuous stream of stripping for unnecessary events, a naked lesbian couple caressing on a fur blanket, a couple of seduction and sexual scenes and more, and is nicely integrated with the film artistically rather than being there for the sleaze appeal and it's a nicely different touch. There's also a really great pace on display, as something is always happening even if they don't make sense. It's a really great, underrated film.The Bad News: There isn't a whole lot wrong here. One of the main problems is that the film really fails to make the most of the connections drawn between vampirism and sex. Despite the great pain taken to set up the allure cast over the wife: she is mesmerized by the female vampire, nothing much occurs of the plot-line until she is led to a cemetery and the vampire bites her neck, the wife instantly collapses. The act of vampirism is reduced to a nano-second event with no eroticism other than the naked bodies on display. For a film containing vampires, that is a surprisingly small amount devoted to it's official status. The dream-like atmosphere maybe a source of frustration to some, as it's quite hard to get into and results in it being an acquired taste, but beyond these, the film isn't that bad at all.The Final Verdict: With abundant Gothic overtones, impressive scenery, lesbianism and only minor flaws, this is one of the better erotic vampires films around. This is certainly required viewing for anyone interested in the genre or a fan of the European Vampire films, and is a nice starting point for the uninitiated as well.Rated UR/R: Full Nudity, Violence, several sex scenes and Mild Language

It seems axiomatic that the more cruddy a movie is, the more variant titles it will collect along its merry way, and this pretentious, self-conscious mix of "horror" and "sex" is tedious, dreary and almost embarrassing in its desperate attempt to appear "meaningful". With hammy acting and posturing substituting for emotional expression, what little plot development there is, gets padded by longeurs which, whilst evidently intended to convey some kind of "significance", merely provoke a yawn and a glance at the clock. What this film seemed to be aiming for, and so miserably failed to achieve, was so much more successfully captured in DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, so, give this one a miss, and fast-forward to that title instead if you want a vampiric theme pregnant with dark sensuality and sexual energy.