Schoolgirl Hitchhikers: Salvation's DVD of Jean Rollin's Jeunes Filles Impudiques

Salvation's DVD of Jean Rollin's Jeunes Filles Impudiques (Released on Salvation's Jezebel Label as Schoolgirl Hitchhikers) is one of the most disappointing discs I have ever seen. Here we have the most pristine and colorful print, ever offered up for one of Rollin's rarest films, authored to DVD in the most lazy and shoddy way imaginable. Before the bad news though, let me first say that this is still the best that Jeunes Filles Impudiques has ever looked. Comparing it to the older circulating cut version, most readily available on the Grindhouse Experience Box-set, the improvement is quite remarkable as my following screenshots show:

GRINDHOUSE EXPERIENCE PRINT:


SALVATION-JEZEBEL'S PRINT:


GRINDHOUSE EXPERIENCE PRINT:


SALVATION-JEZEBEL'S PRINT:


GRINDHOUSE EXPERIENCE PRINT:


SALVATION-JEZEBEL'S PRINT:


Sadly though, Salvation's wonderful uncut print of Jeunes Filles Impudiques has been hampered by an atrocious DVD that is among the worst I have seen since the early days of the format. Given a not-so-generous selection of just three chapters, Salvation's non-anamorphic disc is plagued by problems throughout from an annoying blurring of the image everytime someone moves (perhaps caused by a botched PAL to NTSC conversion) to a sporadically jittery frame to an overly digitized look throughout. There are other issues as well, some of which can be seen in the frames below, but I won't go into listing them all here. Needless to say, Salvation's DVD of Jeunes Filles Impudiques had the opportunity to be a grand-slam but instead it's a foul-ball all the way. The whole package just has a real lazy feel about it.

Major problems with the authoring aside I do applaud Salvation for releasing the film at all and, again, it is an improvement on what we have had before. On a personal note, I also appreciate having a quote from my original review of the film on the back of the disc.
Extras are slim and included a previously seen interview with Jean from 2008, a why-bother slide-show and a handful of trailers. Jeunes Filles Impudiques is a wonderful little film from Rollin but it is doubtful it will be released anytime again soon, so Salvation's disc will probably remain, regrettably, the best bet in town. Here are some additional screenshots I managed to capture from the DVD, which wasn't an easy feat as so much of the disc is plagued by the issues I listed above.