Todes-Brigade

With lots of sex and violence, obviously influenced by Lucio Fulci, especially New York Ripper and Contraband, this is a precursor to the later films of the French extreme wave. It's not very well done, the pacing is terrible, it seems the French don't know how to pull off a decent action film. It's a mishmash of styles patched together in a haphazard manner, there is even an outdoor garden scene with meticulous framing that will remind you of the films of Eric Rohmer.

There is blood and extreme violence but the gore effects are not as good as those in Italian b movies. As long as you don't set your expectations too high it can provide the goods. It's also got a Greek guy as the main villain.

Death Brigade is a tough cop film in the style of Dirty Harry. The hero is Gerard, a Parisian vice cop. At the beginning three transsexual prostitutes are gunned down by killers on motorcycles. In addition, Gerard is also dealing with the murder of a policewoman by a pimp, and a gangster nicknamed The Greek. All of these cases will become intertwined by the end of the film, as Gerard has to go full vigilante and execute summary justice on the villains.

Death Brigade is a sleazy film with full frontal male and female nudity, bloody shotgun murders, and scenes of brutal torture. The film is not overly good, but it certainly does deliver. On the downside, the story seems to have been made up as the film was being made. Although there is a clue (a victim's compass) that connects the cases together, Gerard finds this clue only after, somehow, deducing that the cases are connected. Speaking of Gerard, he is played by a bland actor named Thierry de Carbonnieres (a far cry from Clint Eastwood).

The film shows its era. The ending shootout is staged in that 1980's low budget standby, an abandoned factory. In addition, the main villain is a sadistic homosexual who dresses like a club patron from William Friedkin's Cruising (a stereotype that might not have worn well for some viewers).

Death Brigade is a more explicit film than the usual low(er) budgeted vigilante cop movie that were popular in the VHS days. It's not any better made though. The action scenes are only competent. The film is fine to veg out on (I was mildly entertained), but viewers should not expect much more than that.

Finally seeing this film was a revelation for me, and I will keep my review brief so as not to detract from other buffs' discovery of its contents. Suffice it to say that this is one of the most successful attempts to combine over-the-top violent elements within a softcore sex film while actually making a real movie.

I have seen nearly all of Pecas's groundbreaking pictures from the '60s and early '70s and salute him as a pioneer of that borderline movie that was both art film and sex film (imported on the art theater circuit such as our famous Heights Art Theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio). Attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1986 I even had the opportunity to watch his action movie Deux enfoirés à Saint-Tropez, playing at a local cinema.

But none of these prepared me for BRIGADE. On the surface a routine gritty cop thriller, its integration of ultra-violence into the proceedings is unprecedented.

The only film that came to mind was Lee Frost's notorious A CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER, but that movie is hardcore porn, while Pecas stays strictly within softcore guidelines. Similarly, the deviant '80s cinema of Phil Prince is hardcore porn also injecting violence. Nowadays pornographers avoid injecting violence into sex films due to fear of censorship.

Film opens with a familiar night scene of street hookers, de rigeur in countless French and Italian urban action pics, but soon we're in the morgue gazing at the corpses of several fully nude trannies. I began to wonder, given the evolution of TV from its squeaky clean 1950s shows to today's array of grisly police procedurals, if such a visual would ever be shown here (though American HORROR STORY seems poised to cross over the line soon).

Hero Jean-Marc Maurel's adventures on the vice squad solving a routine crime case are marked by scenes of violent dread that I found far more disturbing than the typical gorefest, because they were realistically staged and very well acted, rather than relying upon outlandish makeup or other special effects. In particular, there are two scenes of heroines being tortured that might even disturb Lee Frost at his most indulgent.

I look forward to a theatrical revival of this forgotten opus (Anthology Film Archives here in a Manhattan would be a perfect venue). Not a great film, but clearly worth hunting down as a one-of-a-kind movie.