Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

VividSimon Simply Perfect

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Michael_Elliott The Night of the Hunted (1980) * (out of 4) While driving through the country one night, a man picks up a woman (Brigitte Lahaie) who can't remember who she is or where she came from. It turns out the woman belongs to an asylum where others are suffering from memory loss but why? The better question would be who cares? I'm usually a fan of director Jean Rollin but this thing here is just a complete disaster. I first watched this movie probably a decade ago and decided to give it another shot, thinking that perhaps I had been too hard on it, but no, this here is a complete mess from start to finish with very few redeeming qualities. I guess the best thing that can be said about this movie is that at least Rollin keeps offering up French beauties and making them take their clothes off. The lovely Lahaie is actually fairly good in her role of the amnesiac but sadly the screenplay simply gives her nothing to do except walk around and acting dumb. I say acting dumb because there's not a single second where I believed anything that was going on in the story. Rollin has never been strong at making a fast paced film. As with many others, this here goes by very slowly but it's almost deadly here simply because you don't care about the story or what's really going on. Fans of Rollin might find something haunting here but to me this was just a complete misfire.

tbyrne4 This interesting film from Jean Rollin is somewhat of a departure from his usual vampire films. There is no supernatural element to be found in this one. Here the terror is more of the David Cronenberg variety. Plot begins with a man encountering a young female amnesiac wandering along a country road one night. It turns out she has escaped from a lunatic asylum which is inside a very futuristic-looking skyscraper (one of the film's best touches). All of the other patients are also amnesiacs. They are unable to remember anything but the last 15 to 20 minutes. Inside the asylum they are basically just left to wander aimlessly. There's quite a bit of violence and sex with patients attacking each other, having hot sex, etc.. I really enjoyed this one. I am surprised it is considered one of Rollin's weaker films. I tried watching "The Iron Rose" right before this and found it such a crashing bore that I couldn't finish it. But I really like "Night of the Hunted". I can only imagine people think this one of Rollin's weaker films because it lacks the Gothic element of some of his other films. The futuristic architecture is a neat touch. Also, Brigitte Lahaie is gorgeous and she has a certain deer in the headlights look that is perfect for this. Unfortunately, Rollin totally botches the ending. It could easily have been haunting but what he goes for (in my opinion) does not work. It ends up being unintentionally funny. Oh well. Besides that it was good.

unbrokenmetal This Rollin movie takes us into a surreal world, the cold architecture of satellite cities, with touches of 70s sci-fi from Rollerball to Rainer Erler, but nevertheless with Rollin's usual sex and gore obsessions. Several actresses had previous experience in the hardcore genre and provide gratuitous nudity, while any gore-hound will remember the suicide scene when the woman kills herself by stabbing a pair of scissors through her eyes into the brain. No, this is not a movie for the faint-hearted, but by no means a simple exploitation flick either.Let us take a closer look at the story. Robert, a young man, drives through the night, when suddenly Elisabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) appears in front of his car. She seems confused and remembers nothing except her name and that she was trying to escape - but from where and from whom? Robert takes Elisabeth to his home, but a doctor followed them and he takes Elisabeth back to the place she ran away from - a lunatic asylum in a skyscraper. Robert has doubts that this a normal psychiatric hospital, it rather looks like a prison with the heavily armed guards. Does the doctor have a secret to hide? This is a surprisingly quiet movie, literally. Music is often absent from the soundtrack. This stylistic means fits the situation of the mentally ill who complain about their loss of memory or lack of ability to use their limbs. Many scenes are painfully slow moving, but if you liked other movies by Rollin, you won't mind. That is setting a mood of intensity and concentration that you get into or you don't. The human touches are well done, especially the scene when Elisabeth feeds another inmate who cannot hold a spoon with her hands. Furthermore, I want to point out the memorable performance of red-haired Dominique Journet (in her first screen appearance!) as Véronique, Elisabeth's friend who tried to escape with her. When she loses the ability to speak and wanders around with empty eyes - behind which lies a scream -, such are moments of absolute horror, but in a very sophisticated way. The motif of two girls trying to survive together in a strange, hostile world, by the way, is one of the most typical for Rollin, see "Les Deux Orphelines Vampires" for example. And just like that later film, "La Nuit des Traquees" is a good movie for its low budget!

tsasa198 Early on in the movie a man named Robert (Vincent Gardere) picks up a stranger on the side of the road. Yes, she is blond and beautiful and I'm sure that helped her get a ride. And as it turns out our good Samaritan Robert has hit the jackpot as once her gets her home (he takes her there because she has no memory and doesn't know where she lives) he scores some of the quickest a** in the history of cinema. Oh, did I mention this is a French film? I guess I really didn't have to, as us Americans, prudes that we are, are far too restrained to ever open a film like that. And me, being in the camp that you can never have too many French films, nor can you have too much sex on screen, had a blast watching "The Night of the Hunted." It does take place in something of an alternate reality where everybody carries guns and nobody wears underwear (and who wouldn't want to live in this reality), but that works to its advantage. For better or for worse the sex does feel downright pornified and if there is a female character you will see her breasts.But perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself. The plot, post-aforementioned sex scene, involves Elizabeth being brought back to a diabolical mental ward where she shares a living space with others who share her Memento-like syndrome. Her memory has deteriorated to the point where she often times forgets what happened just a few minutes prior. She wanders around the minimalist set that looks stolen from an Off Off Broadway production (and the music is no more elaborate) while men and women hit on her. The janitor, realizing the upside to this situation, sets off to turn their disadvantage into his own sexual advantage. That, of course, goes terribly wrong for him, and Elizabeth, realizing there is something terribly wrong with the entire world she is living in, sets off on a quest to escape. After enlisting the help of Robert, her and her friend Veronique dash through the halls of the mental hospital from hell.The film is filled with sex and violence, but it is not there just to entice the masses. The doctor who presides over this pit of despair has sucked the life out of most of his patients/prisoners. Sex and violence becomes an outlet for these people, something that makes them feel alive. I will admit though, I was left scratching my head over what this film was trying to say. Near the end they began to lean heavily on Nazi imagery and I wonder if it wasn't trying to indict doctors and science in general through the Third Reich. Nazi's made fantastic scientific discoveries, but most would say that it came at the price of humanity. The doctor here was also aiming for a great discovery, but the byproduct of that was having to discard bodies into incinerators. This all sounds like a very unsentimental view of humanity, and it is, but it is very effective at searing its images into your brain. The film is weird, but not off putting. French filmmakers have always felt comfortable using surrealism and here is no exception. It may not be a masterpiece, but for fans of unique cinema it is a can't miss. ***1/4