from a 
robbery they've just committed, two pigtailed girls (Castel and Dargent) are forced to flee through the countryside after their car breaks down and their getaway driver dies from gunshot wounds. After losing their clown costumes, the pair winds up at a desolate castle presided over by a cult of vampires. Bloodsucking, copulations, and dreamy encounters in graveyards ensue as the chief vampire enacts a plan to make them a crucial part of the sect.
Jean Rollin's most mainstream effort at the time of its release, Requiem for a Vampire nevertheless displays his obsessions as clearly as his most experimental work. Devoid of any spoken dialogue for much of its running time, the film introduces the idea of two young female protagonists which would later appear in such films as The Demoniacs and, most blatantly, Two Orphan Vampires. Castel and her twin sister, Catherine, had already appeared together in The Nude Vampire as a prototype for this idea, but here is where it really materializes. Originally conceived and occasionally screened under the title of Vierges et Vampires (Virgins and Vampires), the film has remained most strongly associated with the Requiem title due most likely to its slow, somber pace and palpable sense of enchanted, erotic dread. Unfortunately, this impression was pretty much blasted to pieces when Harry Novak trimmed it down for a dubbed U.S. grindhouse release as Caged Virgins, though it did sport a great poster.
Essentially a variation on the "plot" from Shiver of the Vampires, this film further removes the tethers of standard narrative as the girls undergo a serious of sensual, hallucinatory encounters, the most notorious of which features a vampire bat affixed to a bare crotch. The free-form pacing 
eventually disintegrates into a nocturnal horrific montage as the 
girls find themselves succumbing completely to the will of the creatures of the night. Steadily paced and obviously personal, this "naive" film (to use Rollin's term) resembles an elegant jazz session played out in a twilight dreamworld. All of the actors function as visual elements, not recognizable human characters, though the leads make a memorable pair. While American horror fans unaccustomed to these recurring visual images and bizarre symbolism may find the entire brew off putting, followers of European film will be rejoicing at yet another fragile little masterpiece from Monsieur Rollin.
The image on every commercial home video edition of this title has been accurately letterboxed at 1.66:1 since the dawn of the DVD era; the craggy edges of stones in the castle walls, the delicate sheen of fabric and cloaks sliding over bare skin, and the warm glow of sunlight over a country field have always impressed even when the transfers have missed the mark. All versions include the original French soundtrack with optional English subtitles, with the Blu-rays and 
some of their DVD counterparts also offering the US dubbed track (it frankly doesn't matter, given the rarity of spoken words in the film). 
British horror magazine The Dark Side issued a heavily-cut version of the film as part of an otherwise solid DVD double-bill disc, which also featured Rollin's Fascination and the documentary "Virgins and Vampires," made by the team who went on to form cult DVD label Mondo Macabro. The first American release on DVD from Image in 1999 (following a blurry subtitled VHS from Video Search of Miami and a brief VHS from Something Weird of the Caged Virgins cut) was problematic in a different way as many players caused it to display rampant combing issues and constant color shimmering. The U.S. Redemption reisssue in 2009 was struck from the same master and only looked marginally better. A loaded triple-disc DVD box set of Requiem was issued by Dutch company Encore Filmed Entertainment in October 2005; the film itself is presented as a digitally-remastered anamorphic widescreen print, and along with a host of DVD extras, the package is rounded out by an exclusive 64-page book. Following on from a similarly impressive edition of Rollin's The Demoniacs, this was the second release in an series of jammed Jean Rollin DVD releases. That set includes interviews with Louise Dhour and Paul Bisciglia, an excerpt of Rollin reading one of his books, three alternate 
softer versions of scenes from the film, a photo gallery, and a video intro by Rollin.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray from 2012 features a different, later, and shorter Rollin intro, along with the French and English trailers as well as the wild Caged Virgins one. The Dhor interview is carried over here along with Tim Lucas' set of insightful liner notes written for the second wave of Rollin Blu-ray releases. A German Blu-ray/DVD mediabook from Wicked Vision in 2017 is a different 2K-sourced scan of the camera negative with some significant variations in color timing at some points including the opening pursuit (which now looks more like dusk and has a heavy amount of noise reduction) and a lot less vibrancy than the Kino. Extras include a 24-page booklet by Pelle Felsch and Oliver Nöding, a Rollin video intro, a "The Shiver for a Requiem" featurette (with Natalie Perrey, Jean-Noël Delamarre, and Daniel Bird), "The Last Book" interview with Paul Bisciglia, the German, French, English and U.S. trailers, alternate scenes, and a photo gallery.
In 2024, Indicator revisited this very popular title as an entry in its impressive slate of separate UHD and Blu-ray Rollin catalog titles, this time with a new 4K restoration (with HDR10-compatible Dolby Vision on the UHD giving it the obvious edge). The film can be played in its full-length French or English versions with their respective title sequences, and improved English-translated or English SDH subtitles for the 1.0 LPCM mono soundtracks. This one handles the problem 
of how to handle the very gritty, grainy opening 10 minutes or so by simply leaving it alone, as you can see by the first two frame grab comparisons below. (Image seen in the body of this review are from the UHD as well.) As with some of the 
other Rollin 4Ks, the significant increase in resolution not only allows you to appreciate the costumes and production design but also accentuates a lot of very visible graffiti carved into the castle walls. The film can also be played with a new commentary by this writer and Troy Howarth, so no comments about that, as well as Rollin's selected scenes commentary (21m5s) from the Encore edition. Ported over here but newly edited are Rollin's intro (4m45s) on his couch with the usual masked guy, his vintage full interview here called "In a Silent Way" (7m46s), the "Shiver for a Requiem" featurette as "Les frissons d'un requiem" (39m5s), "The Last Book" (8m44s), and the Encore's Louise Dhor interview as "Queen of the Underworld" (8m22s) and the Paul Bisciglia one as "A Pastoral Dalliance" (3m12s). New here is "The Poetry of Strangeness" (7m15s) with Virginie Sélavy, a solid overview of the film's genesis and its stage in the evolution of Rollin's craft as he continued fusing together his surrealist and pulp horror proclivities. Also included are the three alternate clothed sequences, three trailers (French, English, and the U.S. Caged Virgins one), and separate galleries for original promotional material and behind-the-scenes photographs. The package also comes with an 80-page book featuring a new essay by Maria J Pérez Cuervo ("The Last Vampire") about the folkloric figure at the center of the story, a pressbook reproduction, a 2005 Rollin article about the making of the film, a 1996 interview with Rollin about his '70s work by Peter Blumenstock, an English translation of "The Last Book," and Jeff Billington's "Virgins, Concubines and Cuzzins," an affectionate study of Harry Novak's ballyhoo handling of Rollin's work in the U.S.
INDICATOR (UHD)
WICKED VISION (Blu-ray)
KINO LORBER (Blu-ray)
