THE DEATH OF A BARE BREASTED COUNTESS

Jennifer Anderson, or Tiffany Tarantula as she named herself during the period when she reincarnated her band The Nuns after relocating from California to New York, died of breast and liver cancer age 54 on the 16th December 2011. She died, so I understand, alone and without treatment preferring instead to rely on herbal remedies and at the same time cut herself off from the world. A truly sad end for anyone and especially someone as beautiful and charismatic as Jennifer, yet given that Jennifer's mental state was in many ways as fragile as her health I was not totally surprised when I heard this for she was very much, for good or bad, her own person.

I first met Jennifer online after a colleague who was dating a New York girl at the time mentioned that I'd really like this goth girl band he'd seen perform at New York's Limelight club, the band were The Nuns, and he was right I loved their brand of trashy, gothy, bad girl, SM pop and decided there and then that Redemption Films had to make contact. At that time, I think 2000 or 2001, the nucleus of the Satanic Sluts as a concept was gelling in my mind and I was also looking at forming a record label, Triple Silence, so The Nuns just seemed perfect. 

Jennifer in turn was extraordinarily fast in taking on a topic or an idea so that if one suggested something and she liked the idea then she was on it immediately, so when I had decided to take the plunge and release The Nuns album she agreed straight away. Then she was suddenly commissioning photoshoots, booking a top producer for a new song, White Slave',  and, most alarmingly of all, booking herself into hospital to have her breasts enlarged.

I should also say at this point that Jennifer had become fixated with me and talked constantly in her emails and on the phone, partly in fun and partly with a real sense of passion, of me. She had also read in an interview that I liked women with pale skin and large white blue-vained breasts which I do and therefore set about having hers suitably enhanced. At this time I hadn't seen Jennifer in the flesh but I knew that she was at least six foot tall, with long white blond hair and an almost amazonian figure so I knew that any surgery was a pretty extreme course of action and started trying very hard to distant myself from Jennifer in the sense that I really had no interest in her as a potential girlfriend. It was on this weird basis that our relationship developed over the years and which meant that some of our encounters were often a bit strange, sometimes strained and occasionally bizarre.

I first met Jennifer in the flesh when I arranged for the Nuns to come over to London to perform at the private members club, Home House, for their Halloween party. The Nuns at this time consisted of Jennifer and her long term colleague guitarist Jeff Olener plus the 6' 2" beauty, Kris, a wild girl and erstwhile model, who wore very little and gyrated around stage like a fetishised, sado-masochistic nazi vampire. On this occasion there was one more 'nun' on stage, the lovely and petite Emily Booth who at that time worked for Redemption and had as a big favour agreed to be a novice nun, and wearing as little as was decent, gyrated around on the cramped stage with her big sisters and put on a great show.

The next day I took Jennifer with me to visit a friend who lived in the countryside as she very much wanted to see 'olde' England. My friend had a big house, a couple of cute children, a lovely wife and some dogs and as it happened a piano and at some time during the day Jennifer started playing on it, I don't remember what piece it was but it was classical and very beautiful and to my untutored ear she played it very well. I mention this because this was a side of Jennifer that I had never seen before or saw again. Here for a moment was the Jennifer that could have been, the conventional, abet glamorous, wife in her nice home living another life, a life that Jennifer seemed to aspire to but would never have.

A few years later Jennifer came back to London with the Nuns again, this time to perform at the Marquee Club, and again for Halloween. She was also booked to play at Madame Jo Jo's where my club Black Mass was launching the first issue of the revamped and redesigned satanic magazine Rule Satannia. This time Jennifer not only brought Jeff and Kris over but also the gorgeous Satanic Slut Darenzia, plus by this time, 2004, with the Satanic Sluts out in force there were numerous other standee 'nuns' willing to join in on stage.

Jennifer had also had her breasts enlarged again, this time to truly enormous proportions, on top of this she had had her breasts tattooed so that they resembled nothing less than two highly decorative gothic orbs. In fact when I first arrived at the Marquee and went back stage to say hello to Jennifer I was greeted with "Nigel, darlink do you like my new breasts?". At Black Mass these 'new' breasts were out on display everywhere with Jennifer taking to the stage in nothing but a veil and covered in blood in what was to be one of The Nuns best ever shows. It also happened on the same night that a real black mass had been performed, one of the Satanic Sluts had almost died, the police and ambulance crews had been called with the film of the near death  'incident'  confiscated as evidence. No wonder that by the time Jennifer flounced off stage that Madame Jo Jo's had banned the Black Mass club for good.

That was the last time I saw Jennifer though we kept in touch and worked on the DVD release of her MTV and Osbournes inspired project New York Vampires in which Jennifer filmed herself, Jeff and Kris and numerous drunken and half naked goth girls behaving badly in and around New York. The DVD project also allowed us to include footage of The Nuns performance at the Marquee and Black Mass and for Jennifer to catalogue all the press clippings and paraphernalia that had characterised The Nuns chequered existence over the last twenty five years. The result was a DVD that is as shambolic as its subject but which is in a way a fitting record of Jennifer's and The Nuns history. 

Then, a few months after the DVDs release, news came through that Kris, Jennifer's drug-addled sidekick for many years had been murdered in a sleazy hotel and although Kris had never been an active part of the Nuns musically her death seemed to herald the demise of The Nuns as an active creative force. After that Jennifer dabbled in various projects like her recent stage play  "The Rock Star Ghost"  which was performed by her in April 2011 and described in the flyers thus: "A plane crash ends the high life of Nigel, the loveable, yet befuddled British rock star. When he returns as a ghost, he sees the error of his ways, forms a deeper bond with his daughter, and finds hope and faith in the everlasting"...

Yet for all the outrage and scandal of The Nuns Jennifer seemed destined to flirt with glimpses of success on the fringes of the Goth and fetish scene, forever seeing recognition in the distance. She dreamed, like so many, of being a star yet fantasied of a life in the English countryside. Though even this life was pushed into the realms of dreams as she talked of lords and castles and of rich aristocrats who would whisk her off to a life of enchantment and luxury. In the end she died aged just 54 and leaves the world a much duller place because for all of her nonsense and fantasies Jennifer was a real eccentric and in her own way a true star, indeed only a true star or a vampire could walk through the streets of New York and London clad in thigh length boots,a cape and nothing else.

Jennifer, if you're reading this then I hope there's a quiet corner up there with a piano for you to play...

Rest in Peace.

x

THE VAMPIRE’S LAST GASP

When I head the news late on Wednesday evening, the 15th December, that film director and writer Jean Rollin had died due to complications brought on by pneumonia I felt a mixture of disbelief, something I often feel when I hear that someone I care for has died, and inevitability that the ill health that had plagued Jean throughout the nearly twenty years that I had known him had finally caught up with him. Ten minutes later it was all smiles again as I was informed that Jean hadn’t in fact died but that a museum curator with the same name had, and that Jean was alive and well. I decided to call Jean in the morning knowing that he would be amused by these untimely reports of his death. Sadly the initial reports proved to be true and Jean Rollin and his unique take on the vampire myth had gone forever. 

I first met Jean around the time I formed Redemption Films, 1992/1993, when having seen a selection of fabulous photographs from his films in the book Vampire Cinema by David Pirie I was amazed to discover his films just weren’t available on video anywhere in the world. I remember as well the sense of disbelief with which those who had seen Rollin’s work greeted the news that I was planning on releasing Rollin’s films commercially. 

They felt that it was wrong, that people wouldn’t understand Rollin’s films, that they might laugh at them or mock Rollin and his vision. What these people really meant was that they enjoyed Rollin’s obscurity and basked in a kind of elitist glory that only they and their selected associates had access to Rollin’s strange and unique world. Rollin on the other hand was delighted that his films were finally to be released commercially.

Up to that point I hadn’t met him and when he came to London, aged I guess about 53 or 54, he seemed older and frailer than I thought he would be, and certainly not what I expected. Not that I had an image in my mind of what Jean should be like, but the reality was quiet, not particularly friendly and to my mind a bit straight but nevertheless he was OK and he was Jean Rollin! From that point I met him in Paris, with my then girl friend Eileen Daly, at Cannes, in London and so on, and slowly got to know him. 

I can’t say that ours was the easiest of relationships, it wasn’t and at times it was almost war. Jean always needed money and I never had any and from that premise we somehow forged a relationship that saw, painfully and often through litigation, Redemption slowly acquire the copyright and ownership of most of Jean’s films and in doing I got to know Jean as man and eventually as a good acquaintance which occasionally tipped into friendship. 

I liked seeing Jean happy, and hated it when necessity on his part or our part, brought in lawyers and threats, and what made Jean happy was pretty women. I can’t remember why but sometime around 2004 or 2005  we had a Bulgarian girl helping out in the office whose main accomplishments seemed to be her beauty, her figure and the fact that she wore very little in the way of clothing. She also got on remarkably well with Jean on the phone. So as we had decided to film some interviews with Jean and were also in discussions to acquire another package of his films we decided to bring Jean over to London . 

This was also one of those happy periods when Redemption had some money in the bank and we were able to put Jean up at the very stylish and posh Charlotte Street Hotel whose English breakfasts Jean loved. As he was in London for a few days I decided to entrust Jean’s well being to our delightful Bulgarian and, shoving a load of expenses money into her paw, sent her off to meet Jean in her best non-clothes, clothes. Her mission to accompany Jean and show him the sights of London and to generally look after him. Later I took him to dinner to meet up with the highly exotic Dr Patricia McCormack, who had previously interviewed Jean in Paris for us and our then publication Rule Satannia, and I can honestly say that in all the time I have known Jean I had never seen him look as happy as he did during that visit. 

Yet aside from brief moments of happiness Jean to my mind was a tortured soul and a true artist, driven by the need to work, to be pursuing, and creating his artistic vision, regardless of what others thought of the results. For Rollin the sadness was that, like so many film makers and artists, he never had enough money and that, aside for a brief period in the seventies, he spent his time pursuing his dream rather than creating it. 

Yet he never stopped working, writing vampire book after vampire book, writing his autobiography and in his last years making two more films, Night of the Clocks and Masque of Medusa, which features a rare appearance by his charming wife Simone. Night of the Clocks was intended to be his swansong, and when I first read his original script it was like reading his epitaph. Centred as it was on a an old chateau where a young women finds fragments of films and strange objects and slowly they build up into telling the story of the previous occupier, a film director. These objects  and film fragments were his ghost, his memory, his life. The film as originally written was beautiful and its a shame to my mind that the budget restraints imposed on the actual film never allowed it to be the goodbye it could have been.

Yet still Jean worked on and following a successful heart operation he really seemed to have a new lease of life, making yet another film, The Masque of Medusa, which has real moments of Rollin magic within it. 

The one film Jean and I talked about making though was George Bataille’s Story of the Eye, Bataille’s transgressive, shocking, savage and overtly sexual assault on Catholism. Discussing it Jean’s eyes would light up and at the time (about 2006/7) he had befriended and worked with the French feminist philosopher and pornographic star Ovidie, and I often wondered if he intended for her to be in his version of the Eye? But like so many of his later projects it wasn’t to be.

What was to be though was Jean’s amazing body of work, and his vision of the vampire, of women, of the twin, of death, of colour, flesh, love and ultimately of Jean Rollin himself. A director and artist who was perhaps his own worst enemy, and who, had he stepped back occasionally and taken some advice might have achieved the commercial success and recognition he so longed for. As it is he died loved by his fans but unknown to the wider world and if ever there was a man who deserves to become famous in death its Jean, for to leave his work languishing in obscurity, would be to leave it to the few to paw over all over again and he would hate that.

Here’s hoping that the angels are serving you a good breakfast in whatever dream you’re in now.

Jean Rollin 1938 - 2010     

Rest in peace.