Shadowman (1974) User Reviews (3)

Messy, Lame and Crazy

[claudio_carvalho · 5/10 · 24 February 2014]

The butler of the writer Maxime de Borrego (Roberto Bruni) goes to the store of an old lady and tells that his boss probably knows the location of the Templars treasure, expecting to receive a reward. The old lady is actually the ruthless criminal The Man without a Face (Jacques Champreux), the master of disguise that wears a red mask. He tortures and kills Maxime without getting any answer about the location of the treasure.

Maxime's nephew, the sailor Paul de Borrego (Ugo Pagliai), returns from a trip and teams up with his girlfriend, her best friend, with Inspector Sorbier (Gert Froebe) and his team trying to arrest the evil criminal. But The Man without a Face uses a sort of human zombies created his insane doctor and his gorgeous assistant (Gayle Hunnicutt) that wears a mask and outfits similar to the Catwoman to lure the police and achieve his intent.

"Nuits rouges" is a messy, lame and crazy low-budget movie directed by Georges Franju. The Man without a Face is visibly inspired in Fantomas, but the adventure is too silly and the acting is very poor. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Noites Vermelhas" ("Red Nights")

Back to Feuillade

[dbdumonteil · 2 October 2006]

After several uneven productions -including a Zola adaptation : "la Faute de l'Abbé Mouret"- ,Georges Franju (whose best works remain his shorts and his two first feature-films "La Tete Contre les Murs" and "les Yeux sans Visage" plus maybe "Therese Desqueyroux" )said goodbye to cinema with a return to Feuillade .A first homage was released in 1963 with his remake of "Judex" which was not bad.

"Les Nuits Rouges" is more "Judex" ,but the problem lies in the fact that it's a digest of a TV miniseries.The far-fetched plot (and I mean far-fetched) is also handicapped by amateurish acting (an international cast including Gert "Goldfinger" Froebe as a Police Inspector and poor acting by Chaplin,Champreux and Préjean.Gayle Hunnicutt ,cast as a seventies Musidora,complete with mask and tights ,is pretty photogenic on the roofs but that's all we can say of her performance.The Shadowman is none other than Fantomas,Souvestre-Allain's hero whose adventures were also transferred to the screen by Feuillade.

Actually,those adventures could have succeeded well in Old Paris,the Paris from the beginning of the XX th century,in the Fortifications and in the Bas-Fonds .In Paris 1974,they seem obsolete,uninteresting and dull.Enough is enough.

NB:Jacques Champreux,who wrote the screenplay ,was Feuillade's grandson;he also wrote (and starred in) "Les Compagnons De Baal" ,the 1969 miniseries.

Judex flies again.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 3/10 · 29 April 2018]

After a long delay in seeing it,I was pleased to find 1963's Judex to be a very stylish affair,with directing auteur Georges Franju continuing to build on the visual motifs from Eyes Without A Face. Reading in the detailed booklet included in the Masters of Cinema set that this is his last film,I got set to see Franju's final credit.

View on the film:

Planned as a TV movie but quickly turned around to a cinema release, (the low budget makes it appear a number of "standing" sets were used)director Georges Franju leaves Silent movie-style fade- ins/fade-outs as the lone continuation of a his visual motifs,to instead go and explore a new style of film making: Kitsch. Not helped by the rather heavy script from Jacques Champreux, Franju gives would-be wacky set-pieces a tired feel with restrained camera moves instead of the lively, fluid shots that they deserve. Sounding more relaxed with the music, the score by Franju has a jiving playfulness that is missing from the returning appearance of Judex.