Nuits rouges

After several uneven productions -including a Zola adaptation : "la Faute de l'Abbé Mouret"- ,Georges Franju (whose best works remain his shorts and his two first feature-films "La Tete Contre les Murs" and "les Yeux sans Visage" plus maybe "Therese Desqueyroux" )said goodbye to cinema with a return to Feuillade .A first homage was released in 1963 with his remake of "Judex" which was not bad.

"Les Nuits Rouges" is more "Judex" ,but the problem lies in the fact that it's a digest of a TV miniseries.The far-fetched plot (and I mean far-fetched) is also handicapped by amateurish acting (an international cast including Gert "Goldfinger" Froebe as a Police Inspector and poor acting by Chaplin,Champreux and Préjean.Gayle Hunnicutt ,cast as a seventies Musidora,complete with mask and tights ,is pretty photogenic on the roofs but that's all we can say of her performance.The Shadowman is none other than Fantomas,Souvestre-Allain's hero whose adventures were also transferred to the screen by Feuillade.

Actually,those adventures could have succeeded well in Old Paris,the Paris from the beginning of the XX th century,in the Fortifications and in the Bas-Fonds .In Paris 1974,they seem obsolete,uninteresting and dull.Enough is enough.

NB:Jacques Champreux,who wrote the screenplay ,was Feuillade's grandson;he also wrote (and starred in) "Les Compagnons De Baal" ,the 1969 miniseries.

The butler of the writer Maxime de Borrego (Roberto Bruni) goes to the store of an old lady and tells that his boss probably knows the location of the Templars treasure, expecting to receive a reward. The old lady is actually the ruthless criminal The Man without a Face (Jacques Champreux), the master of disguise that wears a red mask. He tortures and kills Maxime without getting any answer about the location of the treasure.

Maxime's nephew, the sailor Paul de Borrego (Ugo Pagliai), returns from a trip and teams up with his girlfriend, her best friend, with Inspector Sorbier (Gert Froebe) and his team trying to arrest the evil criminal. But The Man without a Face uses a sort of human zombies created his insane doctor and his gorgeous assistant (Gayle Hunnicutt) that wears a mask and outfits similar to the Catwoman to lure the police and achieve his intent.

"Nuits rouges" is a messy, lame and crazy low-budget movie directed by Georges Franju. The Man without a Face is visibly inspired in Fantomas, but the adventure is too silly and the acting is very poor. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Noites Vermelhas" ("Red Nights")