THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED

(A.k.a. LA NUIT DES TRAQUEES)

If you were going to commit suicide, how would you do it? Take sleeping pills? Jump in front of a train? Hang yourself? Or perhaps locate the nearest pair of scissors and ram them deep into your eye sockets? If you find yourself identifying more closely with this latter suggestion, you may well have a better understanding of the following film than me …

It opens with Robert (Alain Duclos) driving through the rain at night. Elisabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) emerges from the nearby woods and strays into the road in a white nightgown. Robert stops and ushers her into his car. As he speeds away, he fails to see naked redhead Veronique (Dominique Journet) scrambling out of the woodlands, screaming for Elisabeth to wait for her.

Also failing to realise he's been followed, Robert takes Elisabeth back to his flat to dry off. He tries quizzing her about where she had come from, and whom she was running from, but she cannot remember. So he does what anyone with a sexy amnesiac in their flat would do: fucks her brains out.

Afterwards, Robert tells Elisabeth to stay put while he goes to work. Noticing her panic, he leaves her his office telephone number in case of emergency. Moments after he's gone, however, Dr Francis (Bernard Papineau) and his butch assistant Solange (Rachel Mhas) break into the flat.

Elisabeth pleads with the doctor not to drag her back to from where she came (despite the fact she can't remember where that was), but he warns her that soon she will not even recall Robert - it is not safe for her on the "outside". Reluctantly, Elisabeth follows them to their car.

Their destination is an upper floor in a high-rise tower block, filled with plain white corridors and rooms. Elisabeth is ushered into a room where she's told she'll be cohabiting with her old roommate Catherine (Catherine Greiner).

Catherine also suffers from memory loss, so the two have no recollection of their friendship (to be fair, Catherine's even forgotten that she's forgotten how to eat properly). They combat this by inventing a history between themselves - Catherine used to copy Elisabeth's work at school, and so on.

After soup, the girls are allowed to wander lost around an empty open foyer for a while. The room is filled with a dozen or so fellow amnesiacs, all of who are rambling incoherently. That evening as the girls prepare for bed, Elisabeth suggests an escape attempt to Catherine. But Catherine insists that it cannot be done.

The following day, Elisabeth ventures to the foyer alone and meets Veronique, who she instantly recognises. Which is odd. She goes back to the redhead's room and, after remembering they were trying to breakout, they hatch a plan to try again. Unfortunately, by the time Elisabeth finds her way back to her own room, Catherine has shoved a pair of scissors through her eyes - convinced that Elisabeth has deserted her.

So Elisabeth and Veronique set about their getaway as Dr Francis raises the alarm, during which the threadbare plot is stretched out by scenes of sex that invariably end in violence: an orderly rapes a patient, only to have his brains bashed out by an onlooker; a nurse seduces a patient in a sauna and gets strangled for her troubles.

And just when you think Robert has nothing to do with any of this, Elisabeth finds his telephone number in her pocket (she's changed clothes several times but somehow manages to keep the number on her) and rings him for help - regardless of the fact she has no idea who he is anymore.

Slow and plodding, Jean Rollin's self-important examination of memories and their intrinsic in function in maintaining sanity is further hampered by cheap ugly photography and a uniquely annoying score.

Lahaie has little to do other than look baffled for the most part, and aside from conceding that this represents her at possibly her physical peak it's heard to recommend her performance at all.

The weak plot is presumably based around the fact that Rollin had access to an empty floor of a tower block for a week or two and had to come up with an idea based around the location quickly. It's certainly not enough to substantiate 90 minutes of ponderous, pretentious drivel.

Yes, there is minor gore (utilising minimal FX work) and a few extended scenes of softcore sex to boost the running time. But other than the fine breasts shared between Lahaie and Journet, none of it is capable of holding the attention.

Ultimately, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is Rollin at his most cut-rate: it's a cheap, rubbish and overwrought production that feels like a misguided student play. The paranoid denouement is laughable in this day and age, but interestingly typical of its time (1980).

Redemption's screener disc offered the film only, so I've no idea what extras will be available on the retail disc.

Picture quality on the screener disc was decent enough, though not exactly top grade. The film was bookended by rather speckly French titles, but the main visual presentation was a reasonably sharp and clear non-enhanced 1.85:1 offering.

The French mono audio was fine, as were the smallish burned-in English subtitles.

Rollin's films are frequently laborious efforts, but at least his Gothic sensibilities made his earlier films pleasant to look at. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is more modern, more contemplative and more boring than most. I thought it was a comedy at first.

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by Redemption Films
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
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