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Set to be released in the summer of 2017, this collection of essays covers the wide range of Rollin’s career from 1968’s LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE through his 2010 swansong, LE MASQUE DE LA MÉDUSE, touching upon his horror, fantasy, crime and sex films—including many lesser seen titles. The book closely examines Rollin’s core themes: his focus on overwhelmingly female protagonists, his use of horror genre and exploitation tropes, his reinterpretations of the fairy tale and fantastique, the influence of crime serials, Gothic literature and the occult, as well as much more.
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"Rising out of the smoky Parisian Mai 68 shrapnel and claiming his stake as the first French vampire movie director, the inimitable father of European Horrortica, Jean Rollin (1938-2010) has smudged the painted face of surrealist cinema for over five decades. Dragging his roots from beneath the Letterist/Situationist movements, avant-garde theatre, Belgian fine art groups and entwining them around the minds of sexual revolutionaries, the European comic book cognoscenti, the Parisian free jazz and rock scene, Rollin stopped at nothing to bring his macabre phantasies of zygotic vampirism and back-ward blood cults to Gallic cinemateques and beyond." - Andy Votel, Finders Keepers Records
LOST GIRLS is the third book in Spectacular Optical’s ongoing series of limited run film and pop culture books, which includes KID POWER! (2014) and SATANIC PANIC: POP CULTURAL PARANOIA IN THE 1980s (2015) and will precede the previously announced YULETIDE TERROR: CHRISTMAS HORROR IN FILM AND TELEVISION, which will be released in fall of 2017.
Curated and edited by Samm Deighan (DIABOLIQUE), contributors to LOST GIRLS include some of the most important critical voices to emerge over the last decade of genre journalism: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (SENSES OF CINEMA), Kat Ellinger (DIABOLIQUE), Virginie Selavy (ELECTRIC SHEEP), Alison Nastasi (SATANIC PANIC: POP-CULTURAL PARANOIA IN THE 1980s), Marcelline Block (ART DECADES), Rebecca Booth (DIABOLIQUE), Michelle Alexander (CINEMADROME), Lisa Cunningham (THE LAUGHING DEAD: THE HORROR-COMEDY FILM FROM BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN TO ZOMBIELAND), Heather Drain (DANGEROUS MINDS), Erin Miskell (THAT’S NOT CURRENT), Gianna D’Emilio (DIABOLIQUE) and Kier-La Janisse (HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN), as well as veteran horror journalist Marcelle Perks (SHIVERS, EYEBALL).
Our cover art and chapter headings are being created by illustrator Jessica Seamans, known for her work with Landland and posters for MONDO. Below is the final artwork for the book's cover, featuring the Castel Twins among a combination of imagery from Rollin's films Fascination and La Rose de Fer:
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Page Samples (chapter headings not final):
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FULL LIST OF CONTENTS:
Le viol du vampire and the Last Surrealist Riot
By Gianna D’Emilio
Cults of Decadence, Cults of Rebellion: La vampire nue and Fascination
By Kat Ellinger
Les paumées du petit matin: A View of Female Violence
By Lisa Cunningham
Blood Sisters: Female Intimacy in Jean Rollin’s Conte de fée
By Samm Deighan
Poète maudit and cinéaste paria: Tristan Corbière as Inspiration for Jean Rollin’s films Les Amours jaunes and La Rose de fer
By Marcelline Block
Disgracing the Family Name: Vampirism as Societal Rebellion in Le frisson des vampires
By Heather Drain
‘Castles of Subversion’ Continued: From the roman noir and surrealism to Jean Rollin
By Virginie Selavy
Les démoniaques: Politics, Poetry, and the Supernatural Rape-Revenge Film
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Manifestations In The Physical Plane: Rollin, Rape, and the Effects of Sexual Assault
By Erin Miskell
Phantasmes: Jean Rollin’s Hardcore Reveries and Work for Hire
By Samm Deighan
“Final Girl” Strategies in Les raisins de la mort, La nuit des traquées, and Les paumées du petit matin
By Marcelle Perks
The Zombie-Gore-Disaster Film…Jean Rollin Style
By Michelle Alexander
Love Among the Iron Roses: The Cemetery as a Romantic Nexus in the Films of Jean Rollin
By Alison Nastasi
Les trottoirs de Bangkok and Killing Car: Serials in Soulless Cities
By Gianna D'Emilio
Ostension, Orality, and the Ogress: The (Material) Feminist Fairy Tales of La fiancée de Dracula, La nuit des horloges, and Le masque de la Méduse
By Rebecca Booth
Afterword
By Kier-La Janisse
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The funds raised here will go specifically toward printing costs and artist fees – not only designer fees, but all contributors to the book receive royalties on every copy sold. Part of our goal with Spectacular Optical is to create a small but sustainable business that is able to pay artist fees to the many awesome (and often underpaid) writers and graphic artists working in our field, and to give them books they are proud of. Any writers who contributed to our last books, KID POWER! and SATANIC PANIC: POP-CULTURAL PARANOIA IN THE 1980s can vouch for us on this count.
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If we don't reach our goal, the book will still be printed and perks will still be delivered - the book is completely written and copy-edited, contracts have been signed, photographs have been sourced and the book is being laid out. We’re well on our way! But pre-sales through Indiegogo ensure the necessary cash flow to keep everything in the allotted timeline so that we can take advantage of promotional opportunities through the busy upcoming festival season. Our goal is to debut the book at the Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2017.
LOST GIRLS will be a beautiful 6X9", perfect-bound book, roughly 400 pages and heavily illustrated throughout with stills, posters, ads and other visual ephemera related to Rollin's films. If we meet our goal, the book will be printed in full colour. If we don't meet our goal, it will be in B+W with an extensive full-colour section. So if you want your book to be in full colour, please help us spread the word about the campaign so we can get the number of pre-orders we need to make that happen.
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Perks are unique added incentives to support the book now; they are free gifts you get with contributions of anything over the basic cost of the book - and some of them are pretty spectacular!
Jessica Seamans who has done our cover art will also be creating the artwork for one of our most unique perks - available in a limited edition of only 50 copies - a full-sized Rollin-themed mystery boardgame! A familiar 'whodunit' game will be given the Rollin treatment, complete with kooky cousins, sinister twins, crypts, coffins, candelabras, a secret passageway behind the grandfather clock and more! All lovingly rendered in Jessica's inimitable illustrative style and professionally manufactured for long-term enjoyment. We've also just confirmed the individual weapons pieces for the game are going to be sculpted by British FX artist Dan Martin, who does the effects for Ben Wheatley’s films, was the effects supervisor on Human Centipede 2, and created the custom cameras used to film Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers.
Below are some initial rough sketches, and the first complete character card (Isolde from Le frisson des vampires) and room (the master bedroom, also from Le frisson des vampires)!
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Here's a short video of FX artist Dan Martin sculpting one of the weapons pieces!
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And most exciting of all for those who want the true interactive Rollin experience:
Tour de sang: The Rollin Locations Tour
A three-day tour held approximately September 11-13 2017, through eight French locations from Rollin’s films, including chateaux, cemeteries and more from Levres de Sang (Lips of Blood), Les Frissons des Vampires (Shiver of the Vampires), La Rose de Fer (The Iron Rose), La Vampire nue (The Nude Vampire), Requiem for a Vampire and Rollin’s beloved Dieppe beach, which appeared in many of his films. The tour will begin and end in Paris, and will NOT include airfare, but will include ground transportation to the locations, any entry fees to the locations and two overnight hotel stays as well as admission to L'Etrange Festival in Paris (currently scheduled for Sept 6-17, 2017). This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so meet us in Paris and come join us on the tour!
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LOST GIRLS will be an integral contribution to the legacy of Jean Rollin - it will be the most comprehensive book to date on his unique film world, and the first written from an entirely feminist perspective. This is important because Rollin's films have traditionally been viewed as objectifying women; instead, LOST GIRLS posits that through his female protagonists and monsters, Rollin's films explore themes of female friendship, expressions of sexuality, and the elusive search for freedom in a restricted world.
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In just a few short years, Spectacular Optical has garnered a reputation for making quality books that showcase underappreciated or under-examined aspects of pop culture - and we hope to make many more. This is the third book being published under my own imprint (we also have a fourth, YULETIDE TERROR, coming later this year) but I have managed many projects at this scale - from running film festivals to operating my own microcinema. And aside from whatever skills, experience and connections we bring to the table (you can read our full bios below), we’ve also been mentored all along the way by the British cult film publisher FAB Press - so we have some good people on our side making sure we don’t fall.
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About Spectacular Optical:
Owned and operated by film writer and programmer Kier-La Janisse (HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN) with managing editor Paul Corupe (Canuxploitation.com), Spectacular Optical is a Canadian indie press that specializes in film and pop culture books, in addition to featuring articles, essays and interviews on the Spectacular Optical website on a year-round basis.
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Samm Deighan is the Associate Editor of Diabolique Magazine and co-host of their Daughters of Darkness podcast. She's contributed to Blu-ray releases from companies like Arrow Video, Mondo Macabro, and Indicator. Her book on Fritz Lang's M is forthcoming in 2018 from Auteur Publishing.
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Kier-La Janisse is a film writer and programmer, Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical Publications, founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and the Festival Director of Monster Fest in Melbourne, Australia. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine and founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival (1999-2005) in Vancouver. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012), and has contributed to the books Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), Recovering 1940s Horror: Traces of a Lost Decade (Lexington, 2014) The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale (Spectral Press, 2015). In addition to her work on forthcoming Spectacular Optical books LOST GIRLS and YULETIDE TERROR, she is currently writing A Song from the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time about children's programming and the 60s counterculture, as well as a monograph about Monte Hellman's Cockfighter.
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The creator of Canuxploitation.com, Toronto-based writer and editor Paul Corupe has been exploring and documenting the secret history of Canadian genre movies for more than 15 years. A regular contributor to Rue Morgue magazine, he is has also written about film for The Toronto Star, Take One Film and Television in Canada and Cinema Sewer, among others.
Other Ways You Can Help
Just because you can’t contribute financially doesn’t mean you can’t help! It would be a great help just to post a link to our campaign on Facebook, Twitter and/or other social media using the Indiegogo share tools - and encourage others to share the link too!