Jean Michel Rollin Le Gentil (born November 3, 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his films in the fantastique genre. Rollin is credited as having made the first French vampire film (Le Viol du vampire, 1968) as well as the first French gore film (Les Raisins de la mort, 1978). He is also one of the early pioneers of French X-rated cinema.
His father was an actor who had the st...
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Jean Michel Rollin Le Gentil (born November 3, 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his films in the fantastique genre. Rollin is credited as having made the first French vampire film (Le Viol du vampire, 1968) as well as the first French gore film (Les Raisins de la mort, 1978). He is also one of the early pioneers of French X-rated cinema.
His father was an actor who had the stage name Claude Martin. Rollin's brother Olivier is also an actor and had appeared in a number of his films under the pseudonym "Olivier Martin". His mother Denise Rollin-Le Gentil was a lover of Georges Bataille.
Influenced by traditional French and German expressionist cinema, classic American horror, early serials, comics, fantastic literature and surrealist art, Rollin's fantastique films have been rightfully compared to a sort of visual poetry, juxtaposing the macabre with the sensual and the beautiful with the bizarre. His poetic images...
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