Dark, decadent, morbid, passionate - and 34 years later still the strangest memory regarding my very own personal history of watching movies since I was five years old. Despite the fact that this French/Italian production from the early seventies delivers incredibly strong performances by Helmut Berger at the peak of his career, the always excellent Francoise Fabian and the fabulous Paul Meurisse, that it shows you wonderfully filmed locations, and comes up with a solid script including a couple of interesting though perverted characters, the movie itself disappeared totally out of sight. Maybe you need to know Europe or even European or Italian movies to get along with it - I'm not sure about that. But I cannot understand why Les Voraces" (German title Die Gefraessigen") fell into a black hole of total obscurity like hardly any other movie I've ever watched before and since.
To be honest, I saw it once. This must be more than 30 years ago. It was a strangely compelling experience that left stills and traces of dialogue in my mind for the rest of my life. We're used to get and take those little bits and pieces of modern day poetry and art from movies like "Casablanca", "The Godfather" or "The Third Man ". But "Les Voraces", which in my opinion is an excellent but also decadent, hard boiled and erotic Italian film is at least the opposite of those classics I mentioned. It is forgotten and neglected for reasons I can't understand. In fact I am still the first and only one here, who gives it some of the credits it deserves. "Les Voraces" was never available on video tape and it is not available on DVD. In case you'll get a chance to watch it, don't hesitate and take your chance. Because if you're in love with the so called "cult movies" from that surely interesting period, you won't regret it!
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