The Demoniacs

In his film Demoniacs director Jean Rollin has created a violent world of rape-revenge, ghosts and pirates in what is, for him, a rare departure from his usual vampire universe. In a brutal and disturbing opening scene, a ship is deliberately driven onto rocks, and when the survivors, two young women, wash up on the shore, they are savagely raped, beaten and murdered by the ship s wreckers, who are egged on to ever greater acts of brutality by the animalistic taunts of their beautiful and overtly sexual girlfriend, Tina, played by Joëlle Coeur, (Schoolgirl Hitchhikers, Seven Women for Satan), in one of her most memorable performances. The souls of the murdered women then return to haunt their killers and to exact a terrible revenge on them.Whilst Demoniacs is, in places, an uneven film, it nevertheless features many of Rollin s key trademarks, including everything from burning ships and flying religious icons to ghosts and scenes of frenzied female masturbation by the seemingly crazed Coeur!