Night Of The Hunted (1980)

Coming at the end of Jean Rollin's best period, this is a different outing for France's favourite surreal auteur. A man comes across a lady in the middle of the road one night and discovers that not only is she amnesiac but it is a degenereative conditon. After bedding her (hey it's a Rollin movie and she is Brigitte Lahaie) he goes off to work and a man and women arrive on the scene and take Elisabeth (for it is she) back to where she came from, a mysterious tower block in palace, where all the residents have similar problems, and some have degenerated a lot more. She manages to nearly escape again and call the man from the night before who comes to rescue her, but he is unprepared for the truth.

It's a slow moving film, much like all of Rollin's work but there is little scop for Rollin's remarkable imagery. There are a few sex scenes which, although it can be argued as being part of the plot (touch and sensual feeling are all that these people have left), can be a bit of a bore to sit through. However, bizarrely, the film doesn't seem to last as long as it does, a sure sign of grabbing the viewers attention (although the missus said she thought it lasted about 5 hours!) As ever I won't spoil the twist but I will say that it seemed to me about the impersonalway of modern buildings and how the authorities use tower blocks as sterile pens to fence in the hordes and keep them out of harms way. Or something along those lines. Not Rollin's best, but a haunting statement of the nuclear family and uncaring treatment of the impersonal authorities.