French Quarter

Unusual flashback film with lead characters playing dual roles. Virginia Mayo gives one of her best latter-day performances. An underrated film and a greatly underrated actress. Tongue-in-cheek melodrama mixes "Pretty Baby" plot with "French Lieutenant's Woman" structure, but actually predates both.

This exploitation movie with fantasy elements deserves points for going off the beaten path, but in all honesty it's pretty awful. The start, in 1978 New Orleans, is decent, but when the "action" moves to an unspecified past the film loses all sense of direction and purpose. The "past" scenes are also shot with an annoying "soft focus" lens, as if we wouldn't be able to tell that they are set in the past otherwise. Some wonderful jazz music, some nudity, and an appealing performance by the beautiful Alisha Fontaine barely keep this one watchable. * out of 4.

This is one of those hard-to-find drive in movies of the 70s which is worth seeking out. The basic story concerns a young woman (Fontaine) who comes to the French Quarter, badly in need of work and ends up dreaming that she is back in another century, or is she in fact an 19th century woman dreaming that she is in the future? The other characters around Fontaine are played by the same actors from the contemporary story. The sets, costumes and ambiance are incredibly detailed (it was shot on location). It features a lot of sex and nudity but at the same time, there is far more plot than usual. In fact, it may take more than one viewing to fully notice, understand and appreciate the nuances. It must have surprised drive-in audiences of the 70s who were probably expecting something far more basic. The actors are reasonably good and the dual storyline is well handled. Some of the scenes may have bordered on an X-rating back when it first came out. Star Bruce Davison did quite well for himself and is still active in Hollywood but most of the rest of the cast did little else after this film. It occasionally shows on late night cable and is worth the wait. An added plus is the jazz score as well as the very offbeat narration.

I recently had the opportunity to acquire an old tape copy of this film. I did not remember much about it as almost 20 years must have passed since I saw it; but, although I clearly recollected it as a low budget production, I also remembered it as one of the better films based on the concept of reincarnation, which provided a heady mix of the atmosphere of old New Orleans, Voodoism and Creole culture, together with quite a spicy and interesting story line. In addition I particularly remembered the sound track - something I seldom do as I am a predominantly visual person - which featured some excellent jazz music in keeping with the locale. I was therefore happy to accept this chance, and was not disappointed when I watched the film again after all these years. Certainly I became aware of many faults which I may not have even noticed when I first saw it, but on balance I felt it made much more rewarding viewing than many of the comparable dramas released today. I did not expect too much as I believe this was originally regarded as a B movie, predominantly intended for midnight showings in regular cinemas or perhaps for showing at drive-in theatres. However, for the ultimate test of how I rated this film, I can report that I certainly intend to convert my tape to a VCD disk where some of the inevitable video noise on my very old and rather battered tape can be filtered out. I can also say that, should this film be chosen for digital remastering and release as a DVD, I will certainly be in the market to purchase a copy. When a chance arises I would recommend any lovers of period pieces to watch this film.

I guess it would only be fair to say that French Quarter is a fairly atypical sexploitation film from b-movie producers Crown International Pictures. It's pretty unusual in that it's oddly ambitious for such an obviously drive-in oriented movie. The plot structure is the reason for this where we have two parallel narratives, one set in the contemporary 70's and an earlier thread set in the early 1910's. Both take place in the Storyville red light area of New Orleans, otherwise known as the French Quarter of the title. The modern segment features strip clubs settings, while the historical part is set in a bordello. All of the characters feature in both stories as different yet similar people. They all seem to have been reincarnated by voodoo…or something.

So what we have is an erotic melodrama with supernatural plot elements. It's fairly original I guess and it should be given some definite credit for being so, especially given that most low budget drive-in features are more genre specific and less adventurous artistically. That said, I can't honestly say that it's necessarily a great movie. Its story wasn't really all that interesting and it did drag somewhat in places. So I would have to file this one under 'admirable yet lacking'.