Jean Rollin
Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil (3 November 193815 December 2010) was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his work in the fantastique genre.
Jean Rollin
As Jean Rollin's career continued into the 1980s, he started off the decade with the release of "La nuit des traquées" ("The Night of the Hunted") in the summer of 1980. This mainstream feature seen the return of pornographic actress Brigitte Lahaie, in her first leading role in a Rollin film. Upon the film's debut, it was considered a failure. However, it eventually garnered somewhat of a following in later years, as several of Rollin's works have done in the past. "La nuit des traquées" was shot in less than ten days on an extremely low budget, similar to his pornographic films. Rollin admitted that "I was tired of X-films", as the film was intended to be another hardcore sex film and told the producer "if you want a horror film for the same cost", then, "I can make it in 9 days". Rollin came to the decision to cast actors of the pornographic industry in the picture in order to keep production cost down and to give the actors the opportunity to show their legitimate talent. The film stands as a noteworthy piece of work in Rollin's canon, as it differs from any of his previous work and is a departure from the fantastique genre that his films are greatly known for; the film is often poetic, yet it serves a realistic tone and chilling atmosphere. Lahaie portrays the character of Elizabeth, a young woman discovered wandering around in the rain on a dark night, by a man named Robert (Vincent Gardère). As Elizabeth has no recollection of why she is there and frequently continues to lose her memory every few minutes, Robert drives her to his apartment in the city where they make love. The following morning while Robert goes to work, a doctor named Francis and a woman named Solange (Bernard Papineau and Rachel Mhas) locate Elizabeth and accompany her back to the clinic where she has escaped from. It is revealed that Elizabeth and fellow patients are currently confined to the hospital for a deteriorating disease in which they have been contaminated by an environmental accident.