Le cave est piégé

A French-Spanish co production,"No Temas A La Ley" stars aging heartthrob Frank Villard as a former football player living in Barcelona.

After an illness,his wife has to go to Switzerland to have a rest .

As soon as the train is rolling ,troubles start to come: a girl who pretends he ran over her is slain son afterward and he is the main suspect :he has left his watch and a check in her apartment.

The rest is business as usual ;no surprise,no unexpected twist ,and no real suspense.The wrong man is helped all along the way by his secretary played by Dany Carrel who is in it for a pay raise.

Victor Merenda made three movies ,two of which are worth seeking:

"sursis pour un vivant" ,on a screenplay written by highly talented Frederic Dard ,starring Lino Ventura and Henri Vidal, was a suspenseful thriller, sometimes recalling Agatha Christie's "ten little Indians" ,the 1965 version.

"la nuit des suspectes" saw Dard adapt a Robert Thomas play with talent ;unfortunately the film was unnoticed and the movie was later remade by François Ozon as " 8 femmes ",starring Catherine Deneuve ;the ending was sweetened,but the film was a blockbuster in France.

And we're left with this French- Spanish co-production and it's by far the weakest link of Merenda's "trilogy.

A former football champion ,Jean Farand is involved in a murder and becomes a fugitive :helped by his secretary and a shady person he pays to investigate the low-life places of Madrid.

This final movie found Merenda drained of enregy :the story is derivative to a fault : Frank Villard is a listless hero ,Dario Moreno is better at dancing than at investigating.Maria Mahor as the football player's wife is insignificant .Only Dany Carrel as the determined secretary plays her game well.Still it does not save the movie .

Jean Faran (Frank Villard) has the misfortune to run over a young woman named Micaela (Maria Mahor) with his car . Once the scare is over , she invites him to her house for a few drinks. In reality, it is a set-up in order for him to indemnify her for the supposed loss of a valuable jewel . He hands her a check and leaves. The next day, he realizes that he forgot her watch and goes back to the girl's house. But his surprise is enormous when he sees the body of Micaela, murdered the night before , taken out . Faran becomes involved into criminal life and helped by his secretary (Dany Carrel) , he attempts to escape and find out the truth.

A mediocre co-production between Spain and France, which starts off well and fades as the minutes go by , being mostly filmed in atmospheric scenarios on location in Barcelona , and others places vicinity of Barcelona , Cataluña , Spain . The plot , in itself, is nothing new, but it lacks bite , spark , more credibility in the situations and, above all, it shows that it is very modest industrially. There was not much money for the production, made in shoestring budget , and therefore both the staging and the rather insipid production make the film, for the most part, tedious and even , for its final part, somewhat boring. The actresses are the following ones : Marisa Prado as the good wife , Dany Carrel as the efficient secretary and María Mahor who plays a nasty Femme fatale using her attractive to deceive the starring , they are beautiful, adding the pleasant presence of other native interpreters , unhappily dubbed , in the cases of Arturo Fernández and Fernando Sancho . Stars the wooden actor Frank Villard as Jean Faran who has the misfortune to run over with his car a young woman . Here stands out the convincing scoundrel that Fernando Sancho embodies , a previous role to be followed by his unforgettable Mexican villians in Spaghetti/Paella Western sub-genre and the tenuous intervention of Arturo Fernández who , in the same scene in which he appears, disappears . Only the black and white photograph of cameraman Federico G. Larraya is saved , since otherwise it is completely forgettable . This average film belongs to the Spanish Noir Film whose main center was in Barcelona and Madrid at times ; other great titles also located within a Barcelona production as "Distrito Quinto" (Julio Coll,1957), ¨Brigada criminal¨(1950) Ignacio F. Iquino , ¨Un vaso de Whisky¨(Julio Coll, 1958) , ¨A sangre fria¨(Juan Bosch, 1959), ¨Los cuervos¨ (Julio Coll,1961) or "A Tiro Limpio" (1963) by Francisco Pérez-Dolz ; moreover : ¨091 Policia al habla¨ by Jose Maria Forqué and one of the best ones resulted to be "Los Peces Rojos" . However , the movie does not reach the level of these previous works . Some characters respond to the classic archetypes from Film Noir : A wrong guilty , a young and ambitious woman or Femme fatale who maneuvers on her own using his beauty , some professional criminals predisposed to crime and the ordinary treason , underworld delinquents and even showing prostitutes from Barcelona Barrio Rojo.

Being masterfully photographed in Noir style by cameraman by Federico Larraya , full of ligts and shades and outside of Barcelona, showing the streets with very little traffic. The motion picture was middlingly directed by Victor Merenda , being slowly paced but imitating the American Noir . He was an assistant director of international co-productions , such as : The Biggest Bundle of Them All , Tulipan Negro , Cleopatra , Lion in Winter . He only directed three films : Pensione Edelweiss , La nuit des suspectes and this No temas a la ley (1963) . Rating : 5.5/10 , regular but passable.