... aka: Night of Death!
Directed by:
Raphaël Delpard
Don't let the
generic title (La nuit de la mort! = "Night of Death!") keep you
from watching this odd and highly entertaining French import; finally
available in America with English subtitles from Synapse (who released a nice-quality but bare-bones DVD in 2009). Serge (Michel
Duchezeau)
wakes up to find a letter from his young girlfriend Martine (Isabelle
Goguey) on the kitchen table. Tired of their arguing and
feeling burdensome, she's taken off to start a new job as a maid and cook
at a retirement home called the Deadlock House. The entire community is
surrounded by a tall iron fence kept locked at all times by the limping,
depressed
handyman Flavien (Michel Flavius). Arriving a day earlier than she
was scheduled to, Martine meets her new boss, the glamorous though extremely bitchy Hélène Robert (Betty
Beckers), who admires initiative but hates excessive zeal and explains
that as part of accepting the job, new hires are not allowed to take phone
calls or leave the grounds for their first two months. That's about how
long fellow housekeeper Nicole (Charlotte
De Turckheim)
has been working there and she's looking forward to a day away from the
madhouse to reunite with her boyfriend. It's too had she won't live to see
him.
The small group of elderly boarders living there (seven in total not
including Hélène) appear to be either extremely eccentric or completely
senile. Jules (a terrific Michel Debrane), usually seen with a ball of yarn
and needles in hand because he's "knitting revolution," is obsessed with
war and Nazis and keeps proclaiming that the very old and children (the
"useless" and "forgotten") are going to eventually revolt again everyone
else. Léon (Jean Ludow) - who's not paralyzed - rolls around in a
wheelchair simply to annoy people and is constantly playing pranks and picking fights. Pascal (Georges Lucas) just wants someone to cuddle
with and the ladies just jabber on and on about the good old days. Yes,
they're all a bit batty, but the younger handyman may be the battiest of
all. Flavien constantly hides out in the boiler room house and sulks, sometimes whips the
misbehaving old folks with a lash, seems obsessed with his own ugliness
and constantly asks the young ladies hired to work there the rhetorical question
"Would you marry a man like me?" Aside
from being highly secretive and never divulging their age, everyone has
something else unusual in common: they all claim to be strictly vegetarian
and monitor their calorie intake very carefully. So just how do they get
iron in their diet? While Martine enjoys her last night of freedom away
from Deadlock House, we find out.
Nicole, who's thoroughly hated by everyone there, is fast asleep when all
the old people quietly file into her bedroom. They pick her up, carry her
upstairs, rip off her nightgown, lay her out on a table, cut her throat
with a meat cleaver and then slice her open and begin feasting on her
(raw) internal organs and blood. Each get just a small piece periodically - one body has to last them two months - and they do this to stay among the living.
Hélène, a bitter former beauty queen, singer and pianist who's actually
114 years old - started their little group many years earlier, so she gets
the most potent piece: the heart. Unbeknownst to poor Martine, she's being
prepped for slaughter herself with special calorie-rich drinks to keep her
insides clean and healthy whilst fattening her up a bit (which will
instantly bring to mind Mia Farrow getting her Tanis root shakes from
elderly Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby). Oh yes, and there's also a
psycho stalking the area known as "The Golden Needle Killer," who's been
spearing young women through the heads and necks and then raping their
corpses. It may be Flavien, but
then again, maybe not.
Though not without faults (the eternal life through cannibalism aspect
isn't elaborated upon at all) and not terribly original either, Night
of Death! still has lots of great stuff to offer. It's nicely scored
and photographed, strongly builds up the sense of intrigue and suspense
during the first hour, has some juicy gore (hands reaching inside a torso
fishing for organs and such) and mostly excellent performances. Beckers is
particularly good in her role and proves to be a great singer as well
during several musical interludes. On-target casting and some superbly lit
and cleverly off-centered shots effectively transform the otherwise
normal-looking elderly actors into creepy and sinister figures. The fact
they're all given little humorous quirks adds a blackly humorous angle to
the film and most of the dialogue is surprisingly well-written. Goguey, in
one of her only known roles, is not only very pretty but also extremely appealing in the lead
role. Thanks to her likable natural charisma and the scripting, her
character seems better fleshed-out than usual for the genre, which helps
us feel invested in the material.
All that said, it's a shame this falters a bit at the very end. Though it
throws a few twists our way, there's so much going on in the last 15 or so minutes
that is becomes rather messy. Why the wily old timers, who've been successfully doing what
they do for a very long time, would suddenly get so sloppy (leaving the
heroine in a room alone with an axe conveniently on hand when they had
ample opportunity to kill her [she was knocked unconscious]) doesn't
really ring true either. Things lead up to a resolution that I personally felt torn
about. Though it's genuinely surprising and I didn't see it coming, it also feels
cheaply grafted on solely to provide a last-second jolt. Eh, whatever.
Screw it. Watch this one, anyway. It's quite good.
Director Delpard also made the genre film Clash (1984), which is
impossible to find here in America. Associate and executive producer Claude
Pierson had previously directed the De Sade adaptation JUSTINE DE SADE (1972).
★★★
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