Les week-ends maléfiques du Comte Zaroff

If you are a fan of the story "The Most Dangerous Game", you might not care for this ridiculous, sexed-up, Euro-idiot version of it, but if like me you just can't resist a movie where the protagonist at one point says to a potential female victim, "Shall we have some champagne, or shall I pour it over your naked body and drink it off you as if you were crystal?", this might just appeal to you. The character in this movie is a decadent nobleman who spends his weekends hunting an unusual kind of animal--not the most dangerous game perhaps, but the most sexy and naked female game he can find. Obviously, this movie is pretty politically incorrect. In its defense though, it's also pretty damn ridiculous, which renders it considerably less offensive than the OTHER decadent-nobleman-hunting-naked-women/"Most Dangerous Game" rip-off I've seen, "Beyond Erotica" (a better made, but definitely more offensive film).

The protagonist is played by Michael Lemoine, one of those strange European film Svengali who despite a lack of good looks or talent managed to seduce a number of incredibly beautiful actresses both on-screen and off. He was married to Janine Reynaud at one point, for instance (and reputedly pimped her out to wealthy producers to finance the movies the two of them made with Jess Franco). Lemoine's leading lady/champagne glass in this movie is Joelle Coeur, a brunette French beauty who kind of resembled the British Koo Stark or the German Olivia Pascal, and had the same kind of regrettably short career.

Obviously, this is not a great movie, or even close to to the best adaptation of this classic story, but it was obviously never meant to be either. It does succeed in being what it is-- a big fat slice of cheesiest kind of Eurotica.

The original 1932 masterpiece THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest P. Schoedsack, and starring the great Leslie Banks as one of the most memorable villains ever in cinema) is an all-time favorite of mine. Being a huge fan of (especially European) Exploitation and Trash-flicks from the 70s, my admiration for the original film will certainly not lessen my enjoyment of the numerous sleazy rip-offs. And this ultra-sleazy French take on the story, LES WEEK-ENDS MALÉFIQUES DU COMTE ZAROFF (aka. SEVEN WOMEN FOR Satan) of 1976, for which Michel Lemoine served as director, writer and star is a sleazy one indeed. As a matter of fact, this highly sadistic little slice of sleaze has an incredibly confused and nonsensical plot, and mostly doesn't make the slightest sense. However, the film should nonetheless be entertaining enough for my fellow Eurosmut-fans to enjoy, as it is a good example for the sleaziness and sheer insanity of many European B-Movie-makers in the era.

Michel Lemoine plays a descendant of the original Count Zaroff; unlike his diabolical, but ingenious ancestor, this Zaroff is a totally bonkers nut-job who brings gorgeous young women to his medieval French castle, where he gives them champagne and fondles their naked bodies before suddenly flipping out and murdering them in bizarre manners. Zaroff's butler is played by the great Howard Vernon, the super-prolific Euro-Exploitation regular best known for starring in many of Jess Franco's films.

Michel Lemoine, to whom this film owes its existence, looks extremely demented. Judging by his mere looks, he would be perfect to play an insane killer; the man's acting skills, however, are not exactly breathtaking, which makes the thing unintentionally comical at times. Howard Vernon is always somewhat creepy, and always good to see for Exploitation-buffs like yours truly. Lemoine and Vernon had worked together on some movies before, including Jess Franco's NECRONOMICON (1968) and the hilariously inept German Sleaze-Horror flick DAS SCHLOSS DER BLUTIGEN BEGIERDE (CASTLE OF THE BLOODY LUST, 1968). The women in the film are entirely gorgeous, and they all get naked at any given occasion before most of them meet violent deaths. This is Eurosleaze at its sleaziest and most politically incorrect, the film is more or less a continuum of sex and violence (the victims being predominantly hot women).

As most French Horror films, LES WEEKENDS MALÉFIQUES DU COMTE ZAROFF is very well-photographed on atmospheric original locations. The psychedelic score is also very good, even though it is very obvious that parts of it were inspired by Morricone's brilliant score to THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. The incredibly cheesy dialogue serves mainly as an explanation for the sleaze that follows. I saw the English dubbed version, and lines like "Would you like some champagne to help you dream pleasantly; or would you rather that I pour it on your body and sip it slowly as if your substance were of crystal" are hilariously inept. Overall, this film is one to see for the sleaze and violence and for the involuntary fun-factor. However, it certainly has its lengths, and tends to get tedious in-between in spite of a running time of only 85 minutes; don't expect anything eerie, let alone suspenseful, and be entertained.

Wow - this is one of those early 1970's European sleazy sex flicks warped in a "horror" film - there IS plenty of gore and also lots of nudity but the true joy of this dubbed version we saw was the unbelievably unintentionally hysterical dialogue. After the "Count" has run over one of his chippies with his car "Rebecca, you are broken. My poor little rag doll." Man oh man. The lead actor also "wrote and directed" and you can tell he really thought he could fool people that this was "Euro Cinema Art For Adults" but it mainly looks like an excuse for him to have nude scenes with various busty French chicks and oh yes, there;s this silly mundane plot to move along - actually at the end when there's supposed to be this "shocking: moment" - it is so lame, a high school play could put together a better skeleton - anyway, this film is good for a laugh with friends if you like to watch the European sleaze horror genre but a lot of it is awful and of course, sexist - hello - it's France in 1974 - what are you expecting - Julia???

Michel Lemoine's glassy-eyed face is well known to Eurocult fans, as he spent years appearing in almost all genres, including several striking, if little-known titles, like "Sex on the Beach" and "Death on the Fourposter". As a director, he made several softcore erotic features (including the noteworthy Les Desaxées) before drifting into hardcore. But he had an irresistible urge to dabble in the fantasy genre, although it was generally frowned upon in France -- and this title is the result. His directorial stylings imitate those of his mentors -- Franco, Benazeraf and Rollin -- naive, dreamlike, disorienting -- but he lacks the idiosyncratic, iconic style of his betters, making many of his sequences risible in their pretentions. In fact, Peter Tombs claims in his notes for the DVD that the intention was generally parodic (or at least something of an homage). To most eyes it will play as a rather crass, but sumptuously enjoyable, wallow in exploitation tropes, lacking narrative logic or thematic consistency, but delivering the naked and the absurd in spades, along the lines of Polselli or Brismee.

Directed and also starred by Michel Lemoine, this movie is not The Most Dangerous Game. The plot is still the same : an insane man enjoy the sadistic pleasure of hunting human beings. But in this one, there is a lot of bad acting by the ensemble cast, silly dialogues, not very comprehensible situations,lots of nudity and enjoyable murders. And this movie get a prize at the Fantasy Film Festival of Stiges in Spain in 1977. If you get the "chance" to see it, I don't want to recommended to anybody but still an experience to watch naked girls touching herself and dancing for absolutely no reason through the whole film.