In follow-up, Fascination had begun as a proposed sex film until Rollin suggested to his co-producer that they make instead a horror film combining violence and elements of fantasy. Assuring the money men that he would assume the burden of any budgetary overruns, Rollin was given the green light to write his own script. Limiting his locations for the most part to a single setting (as he had in his first films), Rollin spun the tale of Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a brash young thief on the run from accomplices he has betrayed who takes refuge inside a seemingly deserted chateau in the French countryside. Killing time until nightfall, Marc encounters the residence's sole occupants: the lady-in-waiting (French porn star Brigitte Lahaie in her first straight role), and companion (Franca Mai) of an absent noblewoman. Armed with a revolver, Marc seems to have the upper hand until his hostages reveal themselves as all too up for the play of power and he begins to suspect that he is the one being held against his will.
Taking its title from the name of a French magazine, Fascination is a bit of a farmer's daughter story and recalls a number of earlier tales in which a cagey male finds himself at odds in a house full of designing women, from Réné Clement's Joy House (1964) to Don Siegel's The Beguiled (1971), with a hint of D. H. Lawrence's The Fox thrown in for good measure. Alliances are liquid within the walls of this chateau, with Eva (Lahaie) and Elizabeth (Mai) at first giggling and cooing over their new acquisition until Eva condescends to a sexual encounter with the stranger; Elizabeth's jealousy grows, stemming from unexpected feelings for Marc rather than Eva. When Elizabeth and Marc couple off at last, Eva turns in a fit of pique to his accomplices, who lie in wait outside the chateau. With the offer of their former partner's gold and her own body, Eva lures the criminals to a stable, dispatching every one of them with a scythe, and returning to the chateau with considerably more than a taste for blood. Though his cast is small and his setting contained, Rollin keeps the proceedings buoyant by never tipping his hand toward where the narrative is pointed. With Marc a standard issue cad whose comeuppance is as good as guaranteed (the film has the predetermined feel of one of EC Comics' "Jolting Tales of Tension"), it is Eva and Elizabeth who truly fascinate. (Rollin often twinned his female characters by dint of similar names - in Shiver of the Vampires, he filled the frame with Isle, Isolde and Isabelle and talk of the worship of Isis.) Possessed of an uneven acting ability but an undeniable screen presence, Brigitte Lahaie (whom Philip Kauffman would cast as Uma Thurman's doppelgänger in Henry and June a few years later) impresses from the outset with her uninhibited ferality. Lahaie's bit with the scythe (as she pads about nude under a cloak, no less) was immortalized in the posters and promotional art but it is the more demure Franca Mai who emerges as the precious find of Fascination. Introduced sipping ox blood as a remedy for anemia, Elizabeth evinces a quality of evil-in-innocence that lends to the fade-out a frisson on par with that of the "Wurdulak" episode of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura, 1963).
Fascination first found its way to American home video consumers in 1996 via an authorized VHS dupe courtesy of Video Search of Miami (which included specific introductions by Rollin himself). Digital rights for the films were acquired after the advent of DVD by the American arm of the United Kingdom's Redemption Films - Redemption USA - who released this and several other titles through Image Entertainment. The Redemption/Image disc, sourced from positive film materials, reflected a quantum leap forward in times of resolution and color even though degradation of the materials was evident in scratches, stains and splices. Redemption's new deal with Kino Lorber marks another step up in quality for Fascination (and several other titles included in an initial retrospective rollout of Rollin's work), remastered as it has been in high definition from the 35mm negative. Though painted from a considerably more muted palette than Rollin's previous films, Fascination looks impressive and magisterial on this new DVD, which is framed at 1.66:1 (a more generous aspect ratio than the 1999 disc) and anamorphically-enhanced. Extras include two extended sex scenes (which, though hardly graphic, upped the soft core quotient) featuring Brigitte Lahaie, an original theatrical trailer, and a 24-minute episode of the 1999 British TV series Eurotika!, which offers an entertaining and informative thumbnail primer on Rollin's career. A 20-page booklet contains mini reviews of the first Redemption-Kino Lorber Rollin releases and a career overview by noted film critic Tim Lucas.
For more information about Fascination, visit Kino Lorber. To order Fascination, go to TCM Shopping.
by Richard Harland Smith
