BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Perception_de_Ambiguity At a wedding on Saturday a boy woos a girl by reciting a poem. On Sunday they meet at a foggy train yard. Afterwards the two lovers (they basically skipped the dating part) decide to go picnicking on a cemetery because (Boy:) "we wont find a quieter place anywhere". They have sex in a tomb and when they are ready to leave the night has put its dark cloak over the place and they can't find their way out.Somehow 'La rose de fer' aka 'The Iron Rose' took me back to my childhood when the dead seemed a lot more present than they are now. Now there basically are no dead people anymore, people are either alive or they simply don't exist. Incidentally that's also the stance the boy shares with me, which doesn't stop him from becoming increasingly more uneasy about having to spend the night surrounded by death. The girl on the other hand, being a lot more respectful of the dead, started off being uneasy but at one point something in her snaps and she doesn't want to find a way out anymore, she even starts to identify with the dead more than with the living. The film itself from start to finish very much shares the state-of-mind the girl falls into at the mid-point of the film. Looking at the sinister beauty of the cemetery that holds her captive and the iron rose she finds she apparently figures that death is the way of everything, it far outlasts life and it even has beauty going for it. That's also where the train yard falls into place. Old locomotives, beautiful, long-lasting objects made of iron. From the point of view of a human being stone and iron are practically eternal.The unquestionable star of the show is the apparently HUGE, old, unkempt cemetery with a forest-like autumn vegetation. It's full of blemished stone, rusty railings, big iron crosses and withered trees, sinister and beautiful indeed. What lends the scenario of the film a lot of authenticity is the careless way in which the characters treat the things on the graveyard. If you shoot a film on an old cemetery you can't just smash some old statues and railings and crosses, can you? But that's exactly what the characters do and it does look like the real thing.Before 'The Iron Rose' gets to that location however we have a pre-credit sequence which shows the girl on Jean Rollin's favorite beach. The titular iron rose is washed ashore which the girl picks up and caresses before she throws it back into the ocean. I didn't really get much out of that sequence on my first viewing because the connections between the beach and the cemetery are made much later into the film. But the connections are made very clearly. The girl later finds an identical iron rose on the cemetery and at one point she fantasizes about being on the same beach (this time with a bunch of iron crosses standing around) when she's actually still on the cemetery.To me the most poignant but wonderfully subtle connection is made in a little scene in which the boy suddenly stops walking and says relieved to the girl: "Can you hear? It's the road. We are close (to the edge of the cemetery)." When the camera cuts to the girl who seems to be in her own world the faint static sound of the traffic switches into the similar static sound of waves on the beach. It's pretty easy to miss but if you still were unsure about what the film is about then this should have driven the point home. What else is a beach if not a border between two distinctively different worlds? For a fish in the ocean land is like a different world that Fishy may only go to when he dies and he drifts ashore. Alternatively Fishy could be captured by fishers which bring him to land for people to eat. In any case Fishy can only dream about land for as long as he is confined to the parameters of life.The bulk of 'The Iron Rose' uses very little music but the beginning of the theme song sounds suspiciously similar to Britney Spears' "Criminal". No kidding. Nice tune (both of them, actually), but the highlight is an odd experimental piece towards the end that, as far as I could tell, has an organ drone accompanied by moaning, coughing, humming, a crying baby and I don't know what else. I wouldn't have minded hearing this haunting piece more often in the film. As for the darkness of the night the light looks believably enough like moonlight except that it comes from somewhere else in almost every shot and it comes from anywhere BUT from the sky. So while 'The Iron Rose' certainly doesn't newly define night shooting it still looks pretty good and atmospherically the visuals work too.This gem is different in many ways to the other Rollin films I've seen. The obvious one is that there are no vampires or any other kind of monsters or villains. There isn't even any blood to speak of and nudity is rather subdued. There isn't a whole lot of dialogue but the one that's there doesn't only profit from having two adequately capable actors delivering them but also doesn't sound like it was written by a 10-year old. Narratively it's unusually coherent and even the tone is surprisingly consistent with only a few unnecessary moments that have silly characters making appearances. It is actually quite cerebral in how it covers its chosen themes which is about the last thing I expected from Rollin. All this adds up to a film that is shockingly good in its own very peculiar, hard-to-describe way. In fact so good I watched it twice in a row, something that happens to me once a year at the most.

Mikel3 Just watched an unusual French film with English sub titles. It's called 'Rose of Iron' (aka 'The Iron Rose', 'The Crystal Rose' and 'The Night of the Cemetery') from 1973. I had recorded it late at night from TCM.It's categorized as a "horror" film by the IMDb. The story involves a young couple who meet at a wedding noticing each other across the room. The woman is intrigued by a few lines from a morbid poem that the man recites aloud to the group and seemingly to her. A strange poem to read at a happy event, still they seemed to enjoy it..Evidently the poem is a work in progress. The couple meet and talk after the wedding and decide to go on a date bike riding. Later, on the date the man suggests they go into the large ancient looking cemetery to picnic and explore. We see a solemn clown walking to pay his respects at a grave in full costume. Evidently this has some meaning that so far eludes me. Soon they find two steel doors facing down into the ground going into a sort of crypt. The doors remind me of those outside homes leading into some old cellars. The man induces the women to go down with him and look around. She reluctantly agrees. Soon they decide this damp dark underground crypt is a good place to light a candle and make love. They like the privacy it offers. This is perhaps the strangest place I've ever heard of for romance, except for a scene that comes later. It's almost the opposite of the mile high club. Here they are on their first date and they're making love underground in a cemetery. When they finally come up for air so to speak. They find it's getting late, almost dark. They try to find the path out, but they're utterly lost. It seems they're surrounded by endless old graves, tombs and statues. No matter how far they walk in any direction they seem to end up where they started. When they realize they can't find a way out we learn that the woman is either insane or has very quickly gone insane from their situation. It all becomes very surreal. She starts to create her own ending for the work in progress poem her new lover had recited earlier at the wedding. She says the words aloud taking up where he had left off. I won't say any more about the film so as not to ruin anything for those planning to see it.This might have been a better film if it was about 30 minutes shorter. The concept itself of a couple who just met getting lost in a cemetery has potential. They know little about one another. The cemetery is a strange place to learn about a person. There's a chilling end to the film. It almost makes up for the endlessly dragged out scenes that come before. It's obvious that the director is obsessed with his lead actress.Françoise Pascal. We see long scenes of her ballet dancing among the graves or slowly approaching as she walks towards us from the misty distance. Scenes that could have been one fifth the length they were. One scene that took place in her mind has her dancing about nude on the beach. Obviously the director felt the need to find a way to fit a long sequence of her naked into his film. BTW, I did not know TCM showed total nudity. I guess their films really are uncut.One person at the IMDb commented that we Americans complain about films like this because we have low attention spans and need nonstop action. We don't appreciate slower paced stories like Europeans do. He may have a point to some extent. But I'm a man who loves foreign films and is familiar with them. I say this one really is too long for its own good. Still, see it if you are able to fast forward frequently. The end really is chilling.

MartinHafer "Rose of Iron" has an amazingly simple plot. How and why they stretched it out to a full-length film is beyond me but seems to be strongly inspired by Luis Buñuel's film "The Exterminating Angel". In "Angel" a bunch of guests to an upper-class dinner party inexplicably find themselves unable to leave--like a strange cosmic force is keeping them there for days. Here in "Rose of Iron", a young couple enters a cemetery for some sex (an odd place for this, I know) and when they are done they are unable to find their way out despite trying all night.Here in "Rose of Iron" it just seems to go on a bit too long--like it would have been better left as a short segment in an anthology film or ending it sooner. And, in stretching it out, the characters begin to behave in sensational and silly ways--perhaps to fill the time. For example, the pair get very angry and nearly kill each other and he almost rapes her. Also, why is there a clown in this cemetery? And why do they start having sex like crazed weasels on top of many skeletons?! It has many absurdist elements that will no doubt challenge you--but the film also has some very slow moments. Apparently some really agree and some violently disagree as the reviews for this are very divergent. I am somewhat in the middle. I liked the overall film but sure felt it could have been tightened up AND would have been better without a lot of the absurdist stuff that seemed, well, a bit dopey. Still, the film is creepy and does work if you can look past the film's defects.By the way, how is it that it is light inside the underground crypt when the man first enters it? Only a moment later does he return with a candle--yet it's exactly the same brightness level? Also, be forewarned, there is a lot of explicit nudity in the film.

Scarecrow-88 A young couple meet at a wedding party and decide to try a date. It starts out as frolicking on the grounds of an old train station as flirting commences. They decide to have a small picnic inside a cemetery and are so drawn to each other sexually, that the couple will seek out a warm spot to make love..that being an underground crypt(..yes, certainly a bit morbid, but just wait until the next place they find for a make-out session). As night is upon them, the path leading to the opening gate seems lost in the dark, and our couple can not seem to find an escape route. Their relationship begins to unravel before it has a chance to grow. The young woman, in the opening of the film, found a peculiar iron rose in the ocean of a beach. This rose she feels will guide her to a place of love and happiness. The young female lead of this picture, the longer she remains in the cemetery, grows more and more mad as her newly required male lover becomes a victim of her lunacy. Through poetic rhyme, we get a glimpse into her shattering psyche and her male counterpart will become swallowed whole by it..his fate is determined when she holds this idea that the outside world is dead and the only true life is within the grave with those who have long since died. Yep, she's bonkers. A love affair between the young female and the cemetery blossoms as we watch her orchestrate balletic movement throughout the grounds, embracing death now fully conceived as the only true way towards happiness.Now, I do realize a film such as this will certainly frustrate many, but I found it stunning. While the plot is simple, I felt Rollin's goal was to embrace the macabre atmosphere of the cemetery in every way possible. To be honest, I can't think of a better location to set a horror film than in a graveyard with those ancient tombstones, dying railings, rusty gates that screech and moan, & deteriorating crucifixes lining the grounds as masses of shrubbery and night invade and engulf. Rollin's camera lovingly captures the female actress in shots around angel statues that have seen better days, holding skulls, gently caressing her iron rose, and dancing in a state of bliss throughout the cemetery..even when she's lost to insanity, her beauty glistens. Some haunting dream-like shots of the cemetery as dawn begins to appear, the ocean with the naked female lead and her rose, etc. The most morbid and wild scene in the film, I believe, is the one where the couple make out in a burial pit of scattered skulls and bones, the male lead fell into while trying, in a state of panic, to find his way out. Rollin introduces the creepy make-out session with a counterclockwise camera spin pointedly at a dazed male lead trying to gather his wits as the female lead looks down at him. She dives in, they clutch each other, and begin to embrace as skulls and bones move about behind them..it's really a scene that goes beyond the realm of normal behavior. Various interlopers walking the grounds during the daytime(each a little wink from Rollin such as the sad clown dragging his flowers toward the grave of a loved one or a familiar vampire barely glimpsed entering a crypt)add some bonus oddness to this Gothic extravaganza. Either you love it or hate it..I doubt there'll be much middle ground.