The French Sex Murders (1972)

I love this movie so much

good back-story, and good acting

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I love the Italian Gialli and "The French Sex Murders" is a title that has been on my must-see list for several years now, but I always postponed watching it because I too often read harsh and negative reviews about this goofy looking film. Now, of course, I regret having waited so long, because "The French Sex Murders" is a massively entertaining – if heavily flawed – giallo treasure with plenty of gruesome murders, a cast full of familiar faces and a nicely offbeat sense of black humor. The most curious and striking aspect about this film is that the police inspector who investigates a series of bloody prostitute murders is played by Humphrey Bogart doppelganger Robert Sacchi, and he also dresses, acts and talks exactly like the legendary film-noir actor. In some countries the film was even released with an alternate title referring to Bogart, like "The Bogeyman and the French Murders" (in Norway) and "The Brigade of Inspector Bogart" (in Spain). But anyway, the film opens with an unidentifiable body falling to its death from the Eiffel Tower. The camera zooms in on Inspector Bogart, he lights a cigarette, and begins narrative the whole story. The first murder victim is the luscious Francine, a blonde prostitute working in the Paris' luxury brothel of Madame Colette. The prime suspect is of course her last client, Antoine Gottvalles, especially because he's known as an aggressive man and regular visitor at Madame Collete's. But the murders continue even after Antoine is beheaded in a freak accident, so the Inspector has a number of suspects including a vile night club owner, a perverted American novelist who practically lives at the brothel and the sinister assistant of the acclaimed Professor Waldemar. The latter, by the way, has a morbid fascination for human eyeballs, which results in a couple of nauseating and 200% gratuitous gore sequences. As quite often the case in Italian gialli, as well as in all the films of the infamous producer Dick Randall, the plot isn't all that important. The emphasis here particularly lies on naked ladies, nasty bloodshed and a couple of truly sick and depraved plot ingredients (like the ultimate motivation of the killer). The culprit's identity is painfully easy to predict, although admittedly typecasting is also to blame for this, while several potentially intriguing characters remain vague and underdeveloped. The cast and crew list "The French Sex Murders" is definitely one that makes the mouth of every Italian cult fanatic water! Director Ferdinando Merighi is perhaps an unknown soldier, but what a bunch of acclaimed people he managed to gather! In front of the camera we have cult goddesses like Anita Ekberg (as the French Madame), Barbara Bouchet (as a feisty prostitute in red lingerie) and Rosalba Neri (I'm in love with her since "Lady Frankenstein"). Among the males we have the grim-faced Rolf Eden, Renato Romano and Jess Franco regular Howard Vernon. There is even room for a small cameo by Gordon Mitchell as an over-enthusiast night club visitor. Behind the camera, Merighi could count on the collaboration of Bruno Nicolai for the cool soundtrack, Bruno Mattei for the editing and Carlo Rambaldi – creator of E.T. – for the special effects. "The French Sex Murders" is far from great, but it's definitely a cult oddity that giallo freaks can't afford to skip.

The first frames of the movie are of someone falling from the Eiffel Tower. Police arrive at the Eiffel Tower and chase someone up it, who then falls from the Eiffel Tower. At first, I wondered if this was a copycat, or a jumper who failed to kill himself the first time, ala The Tenant. No, it's the same guy and we're just seeing the same thing twice. And in fact, towards the end of the movie, it's seen again, since the movie jumps back further in time for the bulk of the story.There's repetition in the movie with most of the kills, too. We'll see it once, then the footage is repeated with the screen tinted red, then again tinted blue, green, purple.... Odd choice.So, after we see the figure fall from the Eiffel Tower for the second time, a Bogart-looking police inspector tells us "it all began the last day of Carnival." A thief steals some jewels, then sneaks his way into a brothel, where he is known and not very welcome. He meets up with his girlfriend, leaves, and it's discovered that one of the women has been killed. The emotionally disturbed thief is a pretty good suspect, and he's caught, tried and convicted pretty quickly. But did they get the right person or not?For a movie set around a brothel, there's relatively little nudity, I thought. The women don't wear even very revealing outfits, though the ones they do wear are unusually fetching.It's a pretty good movie. It's certainly helped by the good picture and sound quality on the DVD by Mondo Macabro, and by a good collection of extras. It's interesting how a movie can wind up with different scenes in different markets - they compiled the longest version they could, which evidently had never existed in that form anywhere. There are also two cut scenes, one with alternate dialog for the French version, and the other featuring a cut scene that was in pretty rough shape.The whole movie, except for a few foreign-language scenes subtitled in English, has all English dialog. It's too bad they didn't add English subtitles or closed captions for the hearing impaired, which can be useful even for people who aren't. It might have been nice to have a full length-foreign language track, but this is nitpicking.

Not expecting too much from this probably helped me actually enjoy it quite a lot. The poor dubbing does little to help along what was probably already crap dialogue but this has a great cast and a lot of spirit. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, not least Howard Vernon and the ridiculous but endearing Bogart look alike. The girls of course are lovely, particularly, Rosalba Neri, the Bruno Nicoli music fun and if the killings are a little lacking in style at least we get them all repeated in about six different colours! A Dick Randall production, this keeps moving and is full of incident and character. Fun.

I had planned to write something explaining what I didn't like about this movie, but this is going to be more difficult than I thought. Honestly, I can't remember much about it. I watched it just three days ago and it's made almost no impression on me. That's usually the sign of a real stinker. About the only thing I remember was being incredibly bored by most of it. The novelty of having a Humphrey Bogart look-a-like as the detective wore off real quick. It would be different if he could act, but he's a one-note entertainer. The kill scenes were amateurishly handled and there was no suspense leading up to them. If you can't spot the killer five minutes into the movie, you need to see more Euro horror. The casting is a dead giveaway to the killer's identity.