La nuit des traquées (1980)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Jean Rollin

Writer:

Jean Rollin (writer)

Release Date:

20 August 1980 (France)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Redhead | Beautiful Woman | Female Nudity | Female Frontal Nudity | Female Rear Nudity

Cast

Brigitte Lahaie	...	Elysabeth
Vincent Gardère
Dominique Journet	...	Véronique
Bernard Papineau	...	Le docteur Francis
Rachel Mhas	...	Solange
Catherine Greiner	...	Catherine
Nathalie Perrey	...	La mère
Christiane Farina	...	Christiane
Élodie Delage	...	Marie (as Véronique Délaissé)
Jean Hérel	...	Jacques
Jacques Gall
Dominique Saint-Cyr
Gregoire Cherlian	...	Le gardien
Jean Cherlian	...	L'homme de main
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Alain Duclos	...	Robert
Jacques Gateau	...	Pierre
Cyril Val	...	Alain (as Alain Plumey)

Also Known As:

Night of the Hunted (USA) (video title)
The Night of the Hunted (USA) (informal literal English title)

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:18 | Netherlands:16 | France:-12 (TV rating) (2001) | France:-16 (original rating)

Company:

Impex Films

Movie Connections:

References Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Not your typical Rollin film, and because of that maybe his best?

I have certainly not seen all of Jean Rollin's films, but they mostly seem to be bloody vampire naked women fests, which if you like that sort of thing is not bad, but this is a major departure and could almost be Cronenberg minus the bio-mechanical nightmarish stuff. Except it's in French with subtitles of course. A man driving on the road at night comes across a woman that is in her slippers and bathrobe and picks her up, while in the background yet another woman lingers, wearing nothing. As they drive along it's obvious that there is something not right about the woman, in that she forgets things almost as quickly as they happen. Still though, that doesn't prevent the man from having sex with her once they return to Paris & his apartment. The man leaves for work and some strangers show up at his place and take the woman away to this 'tower block', a huge apartment building referred to as the Black Tower, where others of her kind (for whom the 'no memory' things seems to be the least of their problems) are being held for some reason. Time and events march by in the movie, which involve mostly trying to find what's going on and get out of the building for this woman, and she does manage to call Robert, the guy that picked her up in the first place, to come rescue her. The revelation as to what's going on comes in the last few moments of the movie, which has a rather strange yet touching end to it. In avoiding what seemed to be his "typical" formula, Rollin created, in this, what I feel is his most fascinating and disturbing film. I like this one a lot, check it out. 8 out of 10.