Lèvres de sang
Director: Jean Rollin
Writer: Jean Rollin, Jean-Loup Philippe
Cast: Jean-Loup Philippe, Annie Belle, Natalie Perrey, Martine Grimaud, Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel
Seen on: 28.3.2026

Plot:
At a party, Frédéric (Jean-Loup Philippe) sees a photograph of a castle ruin. It’s an ad for a perfume, but it triggers long-buried memories for him. He knows that he spent a night at this castle as a child after getting lost, helped by a mysterious girl (Annie Belle). He is determined to find out more, but it proves to be surprisingly difficult to find out information about this castle or his own childhood as his mother (Natalie Perrey) keeps deflecting him.

I like vampire stories and I can appreciate B-movies and their charms, but this film, for me, fell both too much and not enough into sexploitation territory to really work.

Lèvres de sang is basically the story of a man trying to find the first girl he ever wanted to fuck who happened to be both a poor little victim and a man-eating monster. On his way, he stumbles from one half-naked woman to the other, and they pretty much all want to either fuck or kill him, possibly both.

This Freudian story would have been the perfect set-up for a porn film, but the film never really dares to go much further than to ogle those (half-)naked female bodies, making the fact that all of them are so little dressed feel extremely strange – and way too objectifying. Had it been an outright porn, it may still have been objectifying, but at least the nakedness would have been enjoyable for the women, too. As is, there was too much nudity to make sense for the story, and not enough story to make the film work.

This never becomes more apparent than when Frédéric visits the photographer (Martine Grimaud) who took the picture of the ruins. Not only is she in the middle of a shoot when he arrives – a shoot, where she of course takes pictures of a naked woman – that the movie shows us for quite a long time. She then sends the model home, gets naked herself, tells Frédéric basically that he is so hot, she’ll break her NDA for him and the next time we see her, she is a practically topless corpse. The entire thing had me rolling my eyes very hard.

The movie does have a sense of style with striking visuals that stand out. I also liked the slow pacing that takes its time to explore its scenes (and not just the women’s bodies). I am sure the film has a lot of offer for psychoanalytical interpretation – that just isn’t my preferred lense to watch movies through for the most part.

Summarizing: not for me.