Wealthy industrialist Georges Radamante (Maurice Lemaitre) has dreams of immortality. Not through his own achievements, but by finding a way to share the biochemistry of the mute, orphaned vampire woman (Catherine Cartier) who has been raised by hooded needle-stickers in isolation, deprived of exposure to human faces. Radamante's son Pierre (Olivier Martin, Rollin's real-life brother) innocently complicates matters while trying to infiltrate his father's private club. It is love at first sight and Pierre determines to liberate his beloved, a goal which attracts the companionship of other vampires, who plan a torch-carrying siege of Radamante's palatial compound.
Rollin's first color film and his first collaboration with director of photography Jean-Jacques Renon, THE NUDE VAMPIRE (La Vampire nue) is a curiously science fiction-tinged story in the then-fashionable style of Jean-Claude Forrest (Barbarella) and Metal Hurlant artists Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Philippe Druillet, who was in fact recruited to design the film's poster.
(excerpt of the essay by Tim Lucas)
