The erotic vampire: Cult sexuality goes mainstream

My main idea with this paper is firstly to draw attention to a French director only a few may have heard of. Jean Rollin made among his many films no less than eleven films that in some way or another included vampires. To explain the interest in this peculiar monster I will employ the somewhat speculative theories about the connections between eroticism, violence and death by George Bataille. What is interesting about this perspective is that what Jean Rollin did in his films in the late 60’s and early 70’s was – and has been for a while – considered cult film material. But throughout the latest popular vampire phenomenon excessive violence and softcore pornography has become popularized mainstream TV-fiction.

This paper is a very short version of the article “Batailles godnathistorie – Jean Rollin, True Blood og den erotiske vampyr” [Bataille’s bedtime story – Jean Rollin, True Blood, and the erotic vampire] that is to be published in the anthology Monstrology (2012), edited by Jørgen Riber Christensen and Steen Christiansen.