Acoso en la noche

In this film Jean Rollin traded in his usual surrealist-Gothic, crumbling-castle-by-the-seaside setting for a cold, modern Paris office building. Still this film has the same strange atmosphere of haunting romanticism and the interesting visuals that characterize the director's best work. The plot is uncharacteristically coherent--a man falls in love with a woman who has escaped from a high-rise clinic where she is being kept along with a number of other patients whose memories, identities, and very minds are being eaten away as the result of an environmental accident. On a superficial level, the movie seems like a cross between David Cronenberg's "Shivers" and George Romero's "The Crazies", but it's a Rollin film all the way focusing more on the tragic romance than the conspiracy angle. There's too much dialog and much of it is pretty inane, but some of it is actually pretty moving. It makes you think of the plight of Alzheimer's patients (albeit young, attractive, and frequently naked ones). The only real let-down is the acting. Brigitte Lahaie is a great actress for a former porn star, but that's kind of like being a great basketball player for a quadriplegic. The male lead is a stiff and the guy playing the doctor is pretty unconvincing. Still,if you like Rollin films in general, this one is worth checking out at least.

Rollin's images are usually pure enough in just being themselves, that it's all a matter of how much concentrated emptiness he can shape around them; in other words he does story poorly, so when he manages to concentrate just a few strands around a sense of place his films can soothe with a dreamlike resonance.

The story here is about distraught amnesiacs kept under lock in a mysterious apartment complex. So we get a lot of somnambulist wanderings along empty corridors, a lot of stanzas about the ineffabilities of touch and connection in clinical environments; always on the verge between paralysis and sleep, bursts of emotional clarity - usually in the nude - drowned by despair.

The imports are distinctly Cartesian; so the mind matters, thought matters because ergo we are, memory, the self. Losing these is tantamount to a spiritual death.

So a lot of outdated ruminations on a philosophical level, not to say anything of Rollin's tendency to eventually rationalize the mystifying in a way that, looking back, we can contend ourselves that it all somehow made sense; here nonsense about a nuclear spill and the mind deteriorating on a cellular level.

But the sense of place is occasionally just powerful enough, the emptiness mirrored outside in desolate urban landscapes, that it merits one viewing for fans. You can relax with this, but perhaps a bit too much.

'Night Of The Hunted' has been slammed in the other comments posted here to date, which I find hard to understand. While the movie isn't one of Jean Rollin's best it is far from worthless. The stunning Brigitte Lahaie, star of Rollin's vampire classic 'Fascination', plays a beautiful amnesiac befriended by a passing motorist. She is in a state of panic and trying to escape somebody, but we don't know who, and neither does she. She is subsequently recaptured by a man who claims to be a doctor and is returned to a mysterious apartment block cum hospital. In there are other similarly afflicted patients, or are they prisoners? The movie is slow and puzzling and will probably appeal more to fans of J.G. Ballard or Kobo Abe than those of conventional SF or horror movies. The Cronenberg comparisons it has been given aren't exactly on the money but give some idea that this isn't your average b-grade thriller, and it is even odd for Rollin, not exactly a conventional film maker at the best of times. I say ignore 'Night Of The Hunted's flaws and you'll be in for a fascinating, if not completely satisfying, experience.

I went into "Night of the Hunted" not knowing what to expect at all. I was really impressed.

It is essentially a mystery/thriller where this girl who can't remember anything gets 'rescued' by a guy who happens to be driving past. The two become fast friends and lovers and together, they try to figure out what is going on with her. Through some vague flashbacks and grim memories, they eventually get to the bottom of it and the ending is pretty cool.

I really liked the setting of this one: a desolate, post-modern Paris is the backdrop with lots of gray skies and tall buildings. Very metropolitan. Groovy soundtrack and lots of nudity.

Surprising it was made in 1980; seems somewhat ahead of it's time.

8 out of 10, kids.

The ever gorgeous Brigitte Lahaie wanders aimlessly through this Kafka-esque plot about an amnesiac trying to escape from a strange clinic where the staff tortures and sexually abuses patients as part of some undefined rehabilitation process. Could have been interesting had the ideas been better developed, but director Rollin concentrates more on getting Ms. Lahaie and the other female cast members out of their clothes rather than trivial matters such as story and characterization. The sterile atmosphere makes for some bland visuals and without Rollin's trademark gothic settings, there is little to entice the eye, apart from said lovelies.