The shiver of the vampires (Le frisson des vampires) is a most unorthodox vampire film; by turns, it is magical, eccentric, poetical, erotic, philosophical and, whenever the vampire cousins are onscreen together, surprisingly funny. It is also unique among vampire films for offering some sort of backstory of warring paganism and Christianity that explains why a vampire would feel revulsion for the sight of a crucifix. Of all Rollin's films, Shiver is also the most visually inventive, furnished with bizarre bric-a-brac and with each of the castle's rooms denoted by a different color, possibly in homage to Roger Corman's The masque of the red death. The film teems with startling images included almost for their own sake, such as Sandra Julien visiting a cemetery in her bridal gown and moving amongst the headstones like a ghost, or the contrast between her white gown and the widow's weeds worn by Isabelle (Nicole Nancel). The vampire Isolde (Dominique) is also a striking character, always manifest at the stroke of midnight to emerge in a startling variety of ways: rising from a well, coming down the chimney like Santa Claus, or, in one of Rollin's most celebrated scenes, popping out of the works of a grandfather clock.

Requiem for a vampire (Requiem pour un vampire) was Jean Rollin's favorite of all his films. Because he dredged the scenario from his subconscious, and because it was rushed into its written form so quickly (Rollin claimed that he wrote the entire script in only two days), he felt it was his purest work. True to Rollin's roots in serials and the Bizarre, the film opens with an action scene already in progress: two women in full clown makeup (Marie-Pierre Castel, Mirielle d'Argent), firing guns at a retaliating car behind them, as a handsome associate mans the steering wheel. This being a Rollin film, we quickly dispense with the man and get on with the general absence of story and the vital accumulation of fetish. Eluding their pursuers, our two clowns continue their never-explained flight on foot, journeying to a cemetery, then a chateau inhabited by "the last of the vampires."

In the most personal of Jean Rollin's moody, erotic horror films, a man tries to solve the riddle of a vague childhood memory, which leads him in pursuit of a beautiful vampire, and the revelation of a horrible family curse.

A man driving home late one night nearly hits a beautiful, scantily-clad woman who is running wild in the streets; he takes her back to his apartment, they make love, and he discovers that she has already forgotten where they met. She is rapidly losing her memory, a woman without a past. The amnesiac woman is traced back to a scientific fortress melodramatically known as "The black tower," where people suffering memory and identity loss due to accidental nuclear contamination are being held and treated. Although Rollin made the film with absolute freedom within his budget, he was forced to race through with absurd time restraints. As a result, Night of the hunted (La Nuit des traques) is a compromised film, to be sure, but it is a unique and exceptional chapter in Rollin's filmography. It has a distinctly Cronenbergian feel, that reaches back to Cronenberg's early experimental short films Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970).

A psychiatrist (Bernard Letrou) ventures to a remote castle to convince a brood of four vampire sisters that they are misguided, brainwashed by superstitious villagers, and not truly creatures of the Supernatural. The villagers (including director Jean Rollin) confuse and abuse the sisters, before finally storming the castle. The cast descends on a hospital run by a young doctor (Jean-Loup Philippe), charged by the Queen of the Vampires (Jacqueline Sieger) to discover a cure for vampirism. The bewildering action culminates in a "blood wedding" presided over by Sieger, in her regal hot pants, on the legendary stage of the now-defunct théâtre du Grand Guignol. The shoot was anything but professional. Everyone on the crew was making their first film. All copies of the script managed to get lost within two days, which quickly forced production into improvisation mode. Rollin opted to let the film become what it wanted to become. It was in the spirit of the times to experiment. The resulting film, The rape of the vampire (Le Viol du Vampire), is a glorious puzzlement, like nothing else in the horror genre.

Two orphan vampires (Les Deux Orphelines Vampires) follows Henriette and Louise (Isabelle Teboul and Alexandra Pic), two blind girls of unknown origin, raised in an orphanage by two adoring nuns. Little do the nuns know, each night as the sun goes down, their "little angels" acquire night vision (they "see blue"), as well as an appetite for blood and teenage mischief.

In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich ship owner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her, the Flying Dutchman, who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him. Herz's successful staging of The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin Komische Oper in 1962 at the invitation of Walter Felsenstein, and subsequent productions at the Opernhaus Leipzig and Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, prompted an invitation to make a cinematic adaptation. The only East German film to include elements of horror and vampire genres, The Flying Dutchman was the first complete Wagner opera ever made on film. The script clearly separated the real from the imaginary; in the original 35mm format, this was reflected visually by changing the image size, from Academy ratio for reality, to wide-screen for fantasy. The film was produced with a groundbreaking 4-channel magnetic soundtrack.

One of the great horror anthology films, and Bava's personal favorite of his works, Black sabbath solidified the director's reputation as Europe's maestro of the macabre. In "The telephone," a woman is haunted by menacing phone calls from a former lover. "The Wurdulak" stars Boris Karloff as a vampire hunter whose family is stalked by the wandering spirit of an undead ghoul. "A drop of water" involves a nurse who steals a ring from a corpse-not realizing the curse that is carried with it. This Kino Classics edition showcases Bava's original European cut of the film (I tre volti della paura, or Three faces of fear), before it was re-edited and re-scored for American release.

An official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Michael O'Shea's debut feature THE TRANSFIGURATION follows troubled teen Milo who hides behind his fascination with vampire lore. When he meets the equally alienated Sophie, the two form a bond that begins to challenge Milo's dark obsession, blurring his fantasy into reality. A chilling portrait of violence, THE TRANSFIGURATION is an atmospheric thriller set against the grit of New York City.