Vampiros do Sexo

White slave trade was a trendy subject at the time.It's Edouard Molinaro's second film and like the first one "le Dos au Mur" ,and the follow-up ("Un Témoin Dans la Ville" )it's a thriller.It would be 1960 before Molinaro made a truly worthy film noir:"La Mort de Belle" from Simenon.

Robert Hossein portrays a man whose fiancée mysteriously disappeared.There's a house where girls are invited:they promise them anything:to become a top model,to travel around the world,all that in a chic atmosphere ,a perfect lure .

Best performance comes from Jane Marken,as Mrs Cassini,a woman who pretends to help the hero whereas...The actress could epitomize evil as few of her peers could do ("Manèges" by Yves Allégret).

Average.

A sensitive theme, a lot of action scenes, a dark affair versus pure love and a young Robert Hossein as a sort of Prince Charming.

After decades, only a decent film defined by good intentions because the thrill, emotion and presumed tension are the only basic ingredients.

The cliches, in manicheic skin are more than present and the unrealism of few scenes are sources of smiles. But it is only a modern fairy story, predictable and interesting for the some virtues of image.

Warning about dirty love affaires, the good one versus bad guys, fight scenes - obvious too many - and some twists. Testimony about a time and about the early years of Edouard Molinaro career.

Before his hit comedies, Molinaro began his career with interesting thrillers : his first one "Le Dos Au Mur" (you will never forget the ending, promised), his second "Des Femmes Disparaissent" (you will never forget the filthy Jane Marken and Philippe Clay as a very very bad guy, promised again), his third and first masterpiece "Un Témoin Dans La Ville" (with stunning cinematography and Lino Ventura as a very very unforgettable bad guy) and "La Mort De Belle" (his second masterpiece adapted from Simenon). "Des Femmes Disparaissent" is really exciting : two gangsters with ambiguous relations dealing young pinups in body slavery. For a movie directed in 1959, some scenes shocked me. Yes, between 1958 and 1961, Edouard Molinaro directed these fine thrillers, the last one not being available on DVD. Edouard Molinaro just left us, two weeks after George Lautner. So long, messieurs...

Director Molinaro at the start of his career put out a few unmemorable thrillers and noirs, of which DES FEMMES DISPARAISSENT is an example. The film opens with a condemnation of female trafficking, but there is very little of that in the film. Instead, what you get is a not particularly bright lead (Hossein), his very pretty girlfriend (Blain) who does not do much apart from showing off her physical attributes, and two excellent villains (whose names I cannot tell from the IMDB cast list because the respective photos are missing) involved in shootouts, fisticuffs, power displays, sex, and abductions.

As indicated earlier, Hossein is not the sharpest knife, but nothing prepares you for his stupid decisions, whereby one moment he has the upper hand, next he is at his nemesis' mercy. The worst moment is when he hands the gun to Blain, tells her to shoot the villain, and he gets a stick to try to reach a gate key which the baddy had thrown away. After seeing a few of those incredibly infantile decisions, I really had to make an effort to watch the rest. I could not wait for the end, which came rather lukewarm.

Good photography contrasts with very poor, totally unrealistic, punchup sequences. The script borders on the pathetic. In real time, it is not a long film. It just seems overlong.

Not recommended.

One of the first features directed by Édouard Molinaro, in black and white, is a boring drama in the first half and a continuous shift of gun and machine gun bursts in the second half. A very young and not very convincing Robert Hossein in a dirty love affair, that has a lot of troubles because of the woman he loves, and Magali Noël (Fellini's favorite), as a woman who encourages the dangerous links between some young, unconscious and naive women, and some unscrupulous, tricky men.