“Drink, my dear. It will bring back your color.”

“I am naive, I shoot as I think. All my films are made with sincerity and what interests me is poetry.”

— Jean Rollin, Interview with Isabelle Marinone, 2004

“There is a magic about this film that literally shines through on the screen. Despite its flaws, it’s a very pretty film. It is certainly the one in which I am the most beautiful. I was in some absolutely magnificent scenes.”

—Brigitte Lahaie, The Cult Films of

French director Jean Rollin’s doomcore erotic opus, Fascination is more anemic Elizabeth Bathory than female vampire; more blood cult chateau of the fantastique than Bram Stoker. Developed with producer Joe De Lara as an elegant hardcore film, Rollin convinced his investor to make a horror movie with some strong erotic scenes instead. His argument was that the film would be much more profitable if it appealed to both the raincoat crowd and the cineastes.

His suggestion that he could make “a truly fantastic film for the same price” turned out to be true, but Rollin, forever plagued by production woes, found his film pulled from bookings at the last minute due to company personnel infighting out of his control. Thus, one of his most commercial and easily approachable works of his cinematic second act was hardly seen until it started making the dupe VHS rounds in the early 90s.

The idea for the film, like so many Jean Rollin projects, started with a single image that he felt compelled to memorialize on film: two women dancing the waltz on a drawbridge to the music from an old phonograph. The project was churned out in two weeks, with no shooting script, no technical support, no continuity. Rollin just liked to watch his characters move around the chateau, and gave vague, emotional instruction to his actors:

“If Sergio Leone can spend a quarter of an hour showing people waiting for a train, why can’t I have a girl meandering through a fantastic chateau with a candelabra in one hand?”

For Rollin, it’s always poeticism over plot.

As I’ve said before (and instructed to have chiseled on my headstone): slow cinema < horny cinema < slow horny cinema. Fascination is the slowest of horny cinema, with photography by Georgie Fromentin, who worked on three of Rollin’s previous hardcore films (none currently listed on Letterboxd). So, if you need more evidence for the importance of Golden Age pornography (French or otherwise), Fromentin’s beautiful work here is proof that there were often very talented people behind the smutty camera.

All said, I’ve gone back and forth on this one. Initially I loved it, then I kind of soured on it (I was probably just being contrarian over its popularity among new fans), but I’ve found myself loving it again. The thievery angle is admittedly a bit silly, but that’s just a standard Rollin thing: he was obsessed with French crime serials featuring shootouts and cat burglars (see also: half his filmography, even the penetrative ones). When we reach the chateau proper, and the blood drinkers start dispatching with the little hoodlums, it reaches a quietly fantastic crescendo of sex, madness and Mellotron. 

Our main male protagonist, Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), is written as extremely stupid, but as Vanessa Morgan points out in her 2023 essay, “Blood, Desire and Rebellion,” his dandy nature is intentional: 

“Rollin’s approach to filmmaking has parallels with dandyism, a cultural movement which often challenged societal norms by adopting unconventional and avant-garde styles, and which favoured aesthetic pursuits and self-expression over natural allure and utilitarian concerns.”

In other words, men, inviting their own slaughter, sure, but it has the unfortunate effect of also making Elizabeth (Franca Maï) look kind of foolish for falling for him. Once she gets a taste of blood, though, her affections quickly change. There’s no arguing that she is beautiful like that, with his blood on her mouth.

The new 4k restoration of fascination can be purchashed from indicator. thanks to mondo digital for all images