Night Of The Hunted
Written by Joe D on May 19th, 2012
Crazy title, huh. maybe it’s an homage to Charles Laughton’s masterpiece Night Of The Hunter, I would think so. Anyway this film is worth checking out, so full of the cinepoetics that only Jean Rollin could create. A lot of nudity, a lot of violence, and an underlying Romanticism in the face of Ultra Nihilism. Made for very little money, shot in a few locations, but full of ideas, images, imagination. The opening is a bit like Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and the end is like nothing else. It’s sort of a modern Zombie movie sans brain eating. There is a sequence towards the end that is referencing the Holocaust, set in a train yard, a great location. Two guard/executioners consider a girl sent to them for extermination. ” This one’s still alive. I can’t do it.” “She’s as good as dead.” ” Let’s watch her and see what she does. “I am reminded in a way of the Japanese Pink Violence films. The producers said to the filmmakers, ” You can do anything as long as the film has so much nudity and violence. ” Rollin did the same, his nod to commercialism was the nudity and violence his films are full of. But I think he loved those elements as well. He truly dug his genre and he imbuded his creations with a wonderful, personal poetry. Jean Rollin it’s a shame you’re dead, I would write you a fan letter. It is amazing that you got to make these atmospheric films for so many years, a triumph of the human spirit. Bravo! And it’s on Netflix Streaming!
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I have a copy of this but have still not watched it Joe. Am inspired now to take a look maybe over next weekend. The trailer looks great and those final shots are soooo Rollin. He has this way of making his location work appear so sparse and minimal- sort of remind me of the alienating industrial wasteland of Il deserto rosso (Antonioni).
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Nigel, I really have become a fan of Rollin. His movies are a lot of fun and so unique. I also like his use of music, it’s always different but always good. He had great taste in music. There’s one film, I think it’s Shiver of The Vampire that has a 60’s garage band score that is great. The only drag about the Netflix version of Night of the Hunted is that it’s dubbed in English by a German company so the dialog doesn’t always make sense.
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My copy is French with English subtitles and I just watched the film.
It was pretty much as you described and the references to the holocaust, I did pick up on those. I wonder if this is to tie in with the overall theme concerning memory- or the absence of.
The nihilism spoke for itself, people living in a perpetual now who are not even really alive- sort of a marxian take on alienation, something along the lines of what I believe Romero was trying to convey in Dawn of the Dead, but something slightly different. This I felt was slightly closer to Il deserto rosso as it is not consumerism per se but something else. The whole world we have created.
It is telling for example that much of the film is amongst the office blocks but also urban industrial decay.
So pulling all this together I think this is all about the alienating world that is late capitalism and the product being people who are in effect lost, rootless, have no memory. The holocaust reference a warning. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Anyhow. Yes, brilliant stuff, certainly not as accessible as Fascination but to paraphrase and bastardise slightly – proof of the idea that All you need for a movie is a gun and a two girls.
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Well put my friend, I also find the Spectre of Alzheimer’s Disease especially relevant in light of the growing number of cases, here in the USA and abroad.
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Yes good point Joe. There was an excellent tragic love story bubbling under the surface. Sort of like The Notebook.
While they could make love and live for the moment they could not really build a shared memory as such. The accumulation of memories and experiences couples share as they grow together.
Still thinking of that ending. Very touching. Sort of reminded me of the ending of The Beyond in a funny kind of way but at the same time it’s antithesis- after all, in The Beyond at least they had a future to face together, no matter how bleak.
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The ending is touching in a crazy way.
In The Beyond they get trapped in a kind of weird hell. I don’t know if it’s better or worse to be with someone you care about in that zone. Creepy.