Color, 1973, 80 mins. 14 secs.
Directed by Jean Rollin
Starring Françoise Pascal, Hugues Quester, Nathalie Perrey
Indicator (UHD & Blu-ray) (US/UK R0 4K/HD), Wicked Vision (Blu-ray & DVD) (Germany R0 HD/PAL), Kino Lorber (Blu-ray & DVD) (US R0 HD/NTSC), Redemption (US R1 NTSC), X-Rated Kult (Germany R2 PAL) / WS (1.66:1) (16:9)

A fascinating transition film in the career of director Jean Rollin, La rose de fer (or The Iron Rose) arrived after a quartet of colorful, surreal, and highly unrealistic vampire films. Instead of sexualized, comic-inspired tableaux, Rollin switched gears to generate a methodical, eerie film poem about a romance among the damned, a conceit which continued to haunt all of his films to come. The plot is simplicity itself; a young woman (Pascal) and man (Quester) meet at a very strange party, where he catches her eye by reciting a morbid poem. The next day they decide to go bicycling together and wind up at a creepy, desolate cemetery, where he encourages her to break in so they can make out in one of the tombs. Unfortunately as night approaches, they find themselves unable to escape...

Though it eschews any obvious monsters, The Iron Rose is still usually classified as a horror film due to its overwhelming Gothic atmosphere and the morbid nature of its imagery. Imagine the trapped-in-a-cemetery scene from Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet spun out as an entire film with a little more eroticism, and you'll get the idea. The film's greatest assets are its eerie score by Pierre Raph and the presence of two surprisingly mainstream performers in the leads; Pascal became a reputable TV and international cinema actress, while Quester went on to diverse roles in high-profile art films including Three Colors: Blue and, most unforgettably, as Joe Dallesandro's deranged boyfriend in Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime moi non plus. Frequent Rollin actress Mireille Dargent also pops up briefly as yet another of Rollin's beloved female clowns.

Rollin's first major financial failure upon its initial release, The Iron Rose became nearly impossible to see for decades. When Phil Hardy's influential horror encyclopedia jump-started worldwide interest in Rollin's films, the tantalizing description of this elusive title encouraged eager cultists to seek it out, mostly in vain. Eventually an English-subtitled release turned up in Germany from X-Rated Kult, in a colorful but problematic anamorphic transfer with artificial sharpness, a distracting sackcloth-style texture over the entire image, and woeful motion blurring throughout. Though taken from what appear to be the same pristine film elements (with identical framing), Redemption's DVD release fixed these problems and was much more attractive throughout despite still being interlaced. The optional English subtitles appear to be a different, more streamlined translation than the PAL release as well. While the German disc only contained a trailer, the Redemption releases piles on some additional extras, most importantly Rollin's 1965 short film, Les pays loins (also available on the three-disc French DVD release of The Demoniacs). It's an appropriate companion piece as it follows a young couple during an odd night out on the town, drifting through various nocturnal haunts (most memorably a jazz club). The short is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen; the framing looks a bit tight, but it's workable. Unfortunately the video freezes for the last two minutes, so you'll have to piece it all together through the audio and subtitles (or just watch the import if you can afford it!). Also included is a stills gallery for both the main and short features, additional Redemption trailers, and a promo for the Redemption-related book, Blood & Dishonour. Incidentally, this release marked Redemption's opening salvo as an independent into the American DVD market, which explains the peculiar flag-waving imagery of the cover art and opening company logo.

A subsequent Redemption revisit came in 2012 with their distribution deal with Kino Lorber, resulting in a Blu-ray release featuring a transfer that easily surpassed its standard def ancestors. It's richer, more colorful, and cleaner, with more accurate black levels. This one features the French track (with the superior English subtitles) as well as an English dub; the short film is dropped and replaced with a different set of extras, namely a short Rollin video intro (presumably recorded shortly before his death), a 22-minute interview with Pascal, a shorter 8-minute interview with Natalie Perrey, an alternate English main titles sequence, and trailers for the first five Rollin Blu-ray titles in the series (including this one). In 2018, German label Wicked Vision added this film to its ongoing series of Jean Rollin English-friendly mediabook releases. Featuring both English and French audio options as well as English and German subtitles, it looked superior in motion compared to its predecessors with more of a sense of depth and a more pleasing color scheme with less on a gold tinge. The set comes with a 24-page booklet by Pelle Felsch and David Renske, a Rollin intro, partial audio commentary with Pelle Felsch, Lars Dreyer-Winkelmann and Daniel Perée, a "Nights in the Cemetery" featurette with Rollin, German and French trailers, the English main titles (in rougher quality as The Crystal Rose), and a photo gallery.

That brings us to the 2025 separate UHD and Blu-ray editions from Indicator in the U.S. and U.K., featuring the expected new 4K restoration from the original negative with HDR-compatible Dolby Vision ensuring the UHD is very likely the final word in this film's presentation. Those two earlier Blu-rays were among the stronger ones of the Rollins out there, but this one clearly improves in many respects including a more robust and accurate rendition of the wine and yellow colors of the couple's clothing and far finer detail. The original French track and the English dub are presented in LPCM 1.0 mono with optional English-translated or SDH subtitles for what little dialogue there is; the film can be played with either its French or English-language credits as well. A new audio commentary by Tim Lucas does an effective job of parsing out possible literary and cinematic influences ranging from Jules Verne to George Franju, the backgrounds of the handful of actors, possible interpretations for its symbolism and a thoughtful reading on the ending, and the crucial concluding difference from Rollin's earlier published treatment. Also included are the archival 1998 Rollin intro (1m14s) with upgraded graphics and film clips, a quick 2010 Rollin discussion of the film entitled "Cemetery Gates" (3m39s), a "Les Nuits du cimetiere" featurette (15m51s) by Daniel Gouyette cutting together the Perrey interview with comments by Jean-Noël Delamarre and Alain Petit, and archival interviews with Pascal: the 22m3s one from 2012 and "The Woman Is Free" (23m49s) featuring some great clips and samples of her pop music work as she reminisces about her overall career in various media and this film in particular (including reiterating the tension between the director and leading man). In the new "Children of the Grave" (30m42s), Stephen Thrower sketches out the essentials of Rollin's directing career leading up to this film, notes some ideas present in his short work that trickle through here, and the poetic approach here that bears little relation to traditional narrative cinema and yields tactile pleasures of its own. A fixture of numerous past Rollin releases, his pivotal 1958 short The Yellow Loves (Les Amours jaunes) (10m38s), inspired by the poetry of Tristan Corbière, is included here in a fine new HD presentation with optional Tim Lucas commentary. Also included are four trailers (two French and two English) featuring the current title and options adding the subtitle The Night of the Cemetery, plus four separate galleries for promotional material, production photos, the dialogue continuity script, and the original prose treatment. The set also comes with a limited 80-page book featuring an essay by Nick Pinkerton, an archival Rollin intro, a reprint of the original 1972 scenario as The Night of the Cemetery, an archival interview with Pascal, Rollin on The Yellow Loves, and an introduction to Tristan Corbière's poetry.

INDICATOR (Blu-ray)

WICKED VISION (Blu-ray)

KINO LORBER (Blu-ray)

Updated review on May 12, 2025