tlavideo.com

Review

Back in the 1980s, and into the mid-1990s – the glorious early days of obsessive European genre cinema fandom, when bootleg VHS videotapes and shoddily designed print fanzines preceded the slick new world of pristine DVDs and snazzy websites – there were always certain titles capable of generating substantial fan interest due to their rarity and the combination of talent involved.

The 1972 French-Italian-German co-production French Sex Murders (which has also been known under a wide variety of other monikers, principally Murder in Paris and the far more delightful The Bogeyman and the French Murders) was one of those titles – and unfortunately, it’s also one of those titles whose reputation far exceeds any actual entertainment merit offered by a viewing of the film itself. Like so many other mythologized Euro-genre “classics,” French Sex Murders far from lives up to its reputation, though it’s not without its considerable lurid charms (principally related to the aforementioned casting), and one remains grateful that the reliable exploitation archivists at Mondo Macabro have granted it a DVD release.

The “plot” (ahem…) is a convoluted compendium of various red herrings and clichés endemic to the Italian “giallo” genre of murder mystery: prostitute Barbara Bouchet (one of the most appealing 1970s Euro-genre performers, sadly too prematurely dispatched here) is murdered, and police detective Robert Sacchi (a professional Bogart doppelganger who indeed delivers an appropriately Bogey-esque parodic performance here) is on the case, interviewing everyone from brothel madam Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita!) to mad scientist Howard Vernon (a frequent Jess Franco performer), while other beautiful women like Rosalba Neri (99 Women) and Evelyn Kraft (Mighty Peking Man) flutter about in the background as little more than admitted eye-candy (one has to wonder if this entire film was cast with the age-old, deplorable casting-couch method, as a flurry of other beautiful albeit trashy-looking women pop up continually for single-scene appearances throughout the film).

But French Sex Murders is also one of the rare DVD releases that can be wholeheartedly recommended more for its supplementary features than the feature presentation itself: frankly, the film is a rather clumsy, plodding giallo that offers little thrills (either narrative or sensationalistic), but the DVD is accompanied by a lengthy documentary on the career of the movie’s colorful raconteur producer Dick Randall, an American-born low-budget movie mogul who went on to have extraordinary experiences in the film industries of Hong Kong, England, and Italy, among other locales. The fascinating documentary provides enough reason for exploitation completists to acquire the disc alone, but the feature French Sex Murders also contains its share of minor charms, with the occasional narrative tedium outshined by the stellar Euro-cast.

 -- Travis Crawford