Exclusive Early Word on New Book Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin

Debi Moore |

Mar 21, 2017

When publisher Spectacular Optical got in touch to see if Dread Central would like to announce Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin, of course we jumped at the chance. The upcoming collection of essays on the career of Jean Rollin was written entirely by female film critics and historians, and below you’ll find the early details.

You can expect more info next month so stay tuned!

About Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin:
Canadian micro-publisher Spectacular Optical is pleased to announce a new book focused on the career of French fantasy and horror filmmaker Jean Rollin, Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin, penned by female critics, scholars, and film historians. Set to be released in the summer of 2017, this collection of essays covers the wide range of Rollin’s career from 1968’s Le Viol du Vampire through his 2010 swansong, Le Masque de la Méduse, touching upon his horror, fantasy, crime, and sex films—including many lesser seen titles. The book closely examines Rollin’s core themes: his focus on overwhelmingly female protagonists; his use of horror genre and exploitation tropes; his reinterpretations of the fairy tale and fantastique; the influence of crime serials, Gothic literature, and the occult; and much more.

Lost Girls is the third book in Spectacular Optical’s ongoing series of limited run film and pop culture books, which includes Kid Power! (2014) and Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015) and will precede the previously announced Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror in Film and Television, which will be released in fall of 2017.

Curated and edited by Samm Deighan (Diabolique), contributors to Lost Girls include some of the most important critical voices to emerge over the last decade of genre journalism: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Senses of Cinema), Kat Ellinger (Diabolique), Virginie Selavy (Electric Sheep), Alison Nastasi (Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s), Marcelline Block (Art Decades), Rebecca Booth (Diabolique), Michelle Alexander (Cinemadrome), Lisa Cunningham (The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland), Heather Drain (Dangerous Minds), Erin Miskell (That’s Not Current), Gianna D’emilio (Diabolique), and more to be confirmed.

More details, including cover art, full table of contents, and information about the book’s forthcoming crowdfunding campaign will be announced in April 2017. In the meantime, here are a few stills from some of Rollin’s classic films.