The Night of the Hunted (1980)

Who payed the critics

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Blistering performances.

One can always depend on French cult filmmaker Jean Rollin to come up with something bizarre and different -- and this quirky excursion into sci-fi territory certainly fits that particular outre bill quite nicely. The gorgeous Brigitte Lahaie delivers a fine and affecting performance as Elysabeth, a young woman who has been stricken with a peculiar mental disorder that's causing her to slowly, but surely lose both her identity and memories. Elysabeth finds herself trapped in an oppressive high-rise clinic building with a bunch of other people suffering from the same malady.Rollin relates the intriguing premise at a deliberate pace, ably crafts a compelling enigmatic mood, wrings a good deal of pathos from the offbeat premise (the final image in particular is simply heartbreaking), makes good use of cold urban structures and landscapes, astutely captures the existential horror of being reduced to a mindless vegetable state, and, naturally, doesn't skimp on either the yummy female nudity or arousing soft-core sex. The sound acting by the capable cast holds everything together: Ravishing redhead Dominique Journet as the forlorn Veronique, Vincent Gardere as the smitten Robert, Bernard Papineau as the chilly Dr. Francis, Rachel Mhas as equally aloof assistant Solange, and Cathy Stewart as the needy Catherine. Kudos are also in order for Philippe Brejean's droning electronic score and Jean-Claude Couty's stark, yet still stunning cinematography. An interesting curio.

Night of the Hunted is ostensibly something of a departure for French horror auteur Jean Rollin. Its story is on the face of it unusual for the director. Its about a mysterious clinic in a high-rise building where patients have a mental disorder where their memories and identities are disintegrating due to an environmental accident. The setting is in the middle of a city and the visuals are ones of sterile urban alienation as opposed to the Gothic surrealism more typically associated with Rollin. Yet, within this veneer is a film that anyone even remotely familiar with the director's work can identify quite easily as one of his films. It has the typical Rollin characters - alluring yet strangely asexual young women in the central roles and extremely dull men in the periphery. The dialogue is as poor as always. The story is as flimsy and senseless as its possible to be. There is an abundance of nudity. It has the strange melancholic, romantic atmosphere which always makes his movies so odd for horror films. And it also displays Rollin's eye for the surreal. The ending in particular on the grassy viaduct over the city being a perfect example of this. In other words, Night of the Hunted, despite surface differences contains all the strengths and weaknesses that all Rollin films have.The story and setting itself very much recalls the work of David Cronenberg. But the similarities are entirely superficial. As Rollin is pretty much diametrically opposite in approach to Cronenberg as a filmmaker. Where the latter is highly scientific in his approach, Rollin is a pure romantic. In fairness, the story here could have done with a bit of developing to make it entirely satisfying but then you could probably say that about all the other films in the directors oeuvre to some extent. There is a quite nice score which certainly adds to the atmosphere well; while Brigitte Lahaie is a good presence and by some distance the only memorable actor in the entire film.If you have any hope of enjoying this film you need to be able to buy into the weird haunting world typical of this director. You need to have some appreciation of his visual ideas too. Otherwise I expect you may dislike this rather a lot. I wouldn't say this is a particularly accessible Rollin film; I'm not really sure there is such a thing.

This Rollin movie takes us into a surreal world, the cold architecture of satellite cities, with touches of 70s sci-fi from Rollerball to Rainer Erler, but nevertheless with Rollin's usual sex and gore obsessions. Several actresses had previous experience in the hardcore genre and provide gratuitous nudity, while any gore-hound will remember the suicide scene when the woman kills herself by stabbing a pair of scissors through her eyes into the brain. No, this is not a movie for the faint-hearted, but by no means a simple exploitation flick either.Let us take a closer look at the story. Robert, a young man, drives through the night, when suddenly Elisabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) appears in front of his car. She seems confused and remembers nothing except her name and that she was trying to escape - but from where and from whom? Robert takes Elisabeth to his home, but a doctor followed them and he takes Elisabeth back to the place she ran away from - a lunatic asylum in a skyscraper. Robert has doubts that this a normal psychiatric hospital, it rather looks like a prison with the heavily armed guards. Does the doctor have a secret to hide? This is a surprisingly quiet movie, literally. Music is often absent from the soundtrack. This stylistic means fits the situation of the mentally ill who complain about their loss of memory or lack of ability to use their limbs. Many scenes are painfully slow moving, but if you liked other movies by Rollin, you won't mind. That is setting a mood of intensity and concentration that you get into or you don't. The human touches are well done, especially the scene when Elisabeth feeds another inmate who cannot hold a spoon with her hands. Furthermore, I want to point out the memorable performance of red-haired Dominique Journet (in her first screen appearance!) as Véronique, Elisabeth's friend who tried to escape with her. When she loses the ability to speak and wanders around with empty eyes - behind which lies a scream -, such are moments of absolute horror, but in a very sophisticated way. The motif of two girls trying to survive together in a strange, hostile world, by the way, is one of the most typical for Rollin, see "Les Deux Orphelines Vampires" for example. And just like that later film, "La Nuit des Traquees" is a good movie for its low budget!

Not a lot of action in this film because in many of the scenes there are zombie-like characters who are suffering from complete loss of memory. It appears that their brains have been grossly affected by a recent nuclear spill. To avoid panic among the general public, the patients are confined as prisoners in a high-rise city building. Patients who are past the point of recovery either commit suicide (scissors in the eyes), or are put to sleep with an injection and disposed of in a furnace, or shot in the back if attempts are made to escape, or strangled by one of the mad inmates. It's so over the top, humour takes over from horror! The story is spiced up with a couple of sex scenes and there is full frontal male and female nudity. Elizabeth and Veronique (who spend a lot of time in flimsy night-gowns) make a daring attempt (after stealing a revolver) to get a message to the outside world. Subsequently a young man breaks into the well-guarded building to save them. The plot is full of weaknesses and the editing lacks the professional touch. The music is quite good and suggests danger at every turn in the labyrinth of corridors. Despite the exagerated nonsense portrayed in the film I watched it to the end. I think my brain too had been affected by the weird goings-on!