What must be quite a personal film for Rollin. The hero has forgotten much of his childhood apart from the vision of a castle and a girl, and he goes on a quest to discover where this fragment of memory comes from. Such gothic images recur in Rollin films, but disappointingly there is little here that tries to delve into why they hold such a fascination for him. Instead, there's a sense that the hero's controlling mother is a barrier towards romantic (and Romantic) fulfillment – she at one point arranges her son to be kidnapped so that an evil doctor can administer shock therapy to rid him of his delusions.
The hero slips through the cluches of the secret vampire hunting society his mother is a part of, and is reunited with his long lost love at the end of the film. It appears to be a 'careful what you wish for' scenario, in that embracing these nightmare visions means rejecting the everyday world, your family, and life itself. But the film suggests that the couple aren't just transformed into bloodthirsty monsters. Rather they are stepping into a fairytale world. In climbing aboard their shared coffin and setting out to sea, the hero talks about living on an island of sand and luring rich sailors to their shores, as if they are becoming creatures of myth and legend. It's a retreat into childhood adventure rather than death. It's alluring rather than frightening, but then again Rollin has always been on the side of the vampires.
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