A true enigma in French exploitation cinema and a key exponent in JeanRollin’s expansive family of forward thinking French creatives, Pierre Raph delivered four soundtrack commissions to the ABC film company between 1971 and 1974 commencing with Requiem Pour Un Vampire and ending with the bizarre Les Démoniaques. The lost score for the film Le Rose De Fer from 1972 presented a new challenge for both director and composer marking Rollin’s departure from his vampire movie comfort zone to this surreal melodramatic ghost sex story and resulting in perhaps the duo’s most unique collaboration. Combining bizarre vocalisations, stripped down minimal piano and subtle Parisian funk themes (echoing the likes of Alain Goraguer’s La Planete Sauvage and Karl Heinz Schäfer’s Les Gants Blancs Du Diable) Le Rose De Fer arguably hears Raph at his most accomplished, adhering to a solid consistent theme tune and using a varied range of disciplines to convey it via the films precarious schizoid screenplay. For fans of Rollin regulars Acanthus, Philippe d’Aram and Francois Tusques this release is essential, but as a stand alone piece Le Rose De Fer is totally unique and, like the film itself, succeeds as the tortoise champion taking first place on many long-term Rollinades lists while his trademark vamps dodge the sunlight.