★ 6 / 10
Passable Eurosleaze
Milk_Tray_Guy
French attempt at a giallo, directed by Claude Mulot (his final film - he drowned whilst swimming four months after the film's release, aged just 44).The IMDb…
French attempt at a giallo, directed by Claude Mulot (his final film - he drowned whilst swimming four months after the film's release, aged just 44).The IMDb plot summary simply reads 'Erotic models are stalked by a maniac.' The fact that that just about sums it up says how thin the plot is. To try to flesh it out a bit... Jean Rollin regular Brigitte Lahaie's modelling agency boss slips a night watchman a few bob to let her photographer take some saucy snaps in a local cemetery. As the night watchman watches the photoshoot from his hut he becomes increasingly angry (presumably he hadn't realised what kind of photoshoot it would be) - to the point where the next day he murders an innocent woman who bears a passing resemblance to one of the models. Immediately afterwards, in a fit of guilt, he throws himself under the wheels of an HGV. From then on various people involved in the photoshoot start getting bumped-off by an unidentified, black glove-wearing assailant armed with a knife.With such a flimsy story, the runtime is understandably short (just 81 mins). Lahaie was the best-known name in the cast at the time, and is easily the name still most familiar to Eurosleaze fans; but the lead of the film is the eye-wateringly beautiful Florence Guérin as Catherine, one of the models. She was just 20 yrs old but had been acting for six years, and - according to Lahaie in a recent interview - had decided she was destined to be a megastar, treating everyone else accordingly. Guérin is still working but never achieved that stardom - perhaps the diva attitude is part of the reason. Shame.It suffers from things many gialli suffer from; the people don't talk - or react - like real people, some of the plot contrivances are implausible (to say the least), and when the reveal comes it is genuinely laughably ridiculous! But also in true giallo fashion, there are plenty of red herrings, a lot of full nudity - and, perhaps most importantly, the blood looks like bright red paint!This French attempt is not a bad stab (forgive the pun), and there are certainly Italian gialli I'd rate lower. 6/10.
★ 6 / 10
Who needs logic when you have Brigitte Lahaie and Florence Guérin?
Coventry
A Giallo from a non-expert country (France) and released during an era when the subgenre was long dead & buried already, is that even worth watching? Short…
A Giallo from a non-expert country (France) and released during an era when the subgenre was long dead & buried already, is that even worth watching? Short answer: God, yes! If only for the presence - and frequent nude sequences - of two stunningly gorgeous women. Blond Brigitte Lahaie is definitely in my personal top five of most beautiful women ever, and brunette Florence Guérin is probably not far behind. With these two parading around, and a couple of other beauties like Natasha Delange and the nameless woman who gets brutally strangled at the beginning of the film, I tend to be a lot milder for weaknesses in the script or lack of tension. Yeah, I'm that shallow.
Still, even in terms of plotting, suspense, and grisly murders, "Le Couteau Sous La Gorge" isn't too bad at all! Admittedly, the whole thing is incoherent and everything that is happening feels random and like it was improvised on the spot. If, at the end of the film, the killer must explain the why and how he/she accomplished all the murders, there's something wrong. It didn't bother me, though.
The opening fifteen minutes are powerful. Florence Guérin runs half-naked (the lower half) and in panic through the city streets and into a police station. She claims to have been gang-raped but none of the cops takes her seriously, which initially comes across as quite shocking. It turns out the young woman - Catherine - is a mythomaniac who regularly makes up stories like this. She's also a successful nude model, and together with her roommate Florence and tough businesswoman Valerie (Brigitte Lahaie) she does an eccentric photoshoot in a cemetery at midnight. The caretaker of the cemetery can't cope with the scandal, goes berserk, and violently strangles an innocent young woman. One month later, after a trip abroad, Catherine receives obscene phone calls from an actual stalker, but given her condition, nobody believes her.
In good old Giallo tradition, there are sadist kills and plenty of potential culprits. Catherine has a drug-addicted ex-boyfriend, their regular photographer (who's named J. B. after the whiskey he's drinking) is an aggressive sexist, the girls' weird landlady always walks around with hedge clippers, or the cemetery caretaker might not be dead after all. Take your pick!
Lahaie and Guérin also both starred in "Faceless", which is director Jess Franco's third best film out of a total of two hundred.
4.7/10
424
•••
Mid 80's Brigitte Lahaie... yes please! Thanks!