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The precedent is Clouzot's Les Espions, or, closer to the spirit, Fuller's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street. The Knights Templar lineage continues in modern Paris, the secret passage behind the scholastic bookshelf is promptly revealed. Murder of the usurer (Roberto Bruni), the police commissioner (Gert Fröbe) is on the case, the victim's "submarine archeologist" nephew (Ugo Pagliai) is something of a sleuth himself. Feuillade, naturellement, whose grandson (Jacques Champreux) plays the master criminal who doffs his old-crone wig for red mask with staring eyes. (A view of his silver-toned hideout finds rows of henchmen in matching catsuits at work on typewriters.) The hero counts on "poet detective" (Patrick Préjean) and British fuddy-duddy (Henry Soskin), the villainous side has slinky assassin (Gayle Hunnicutt) and deranged lobotomizer (Clément Harari). "Oh, terrible business, that man who steals brains." Georges Franju's last hurrah for pulp fantasy, practically a Max Ernst canvas with mementos from Les Yeux sans Visage and Judex and Pleins Feux sur l'assassin. A whiskey bottle can become a smoke bomb, the deadpan approach is epitomized by the old neighbor who comes to the rescue, grouchy because he's missing his television show. Disguises, blow darts, a camera hidden in the lapel flower of the dandy in the arcade parlor. "Cet homme sans visage est partout!" Sloping rooftops in a moonlit studio, cf. Polanski's Frantic, Hunnicutt's blank sneer abstracted through frosted glass. A matter not of a normal world threatened by a bizarre one, but of a bizarre world interrupted by a normal one. The mannequin in the taxi, zombified minions by the horde, the incognito malefactor limping away like Franju's baleful wink. "I have no intention of deciphering these scribbles." Franco and Rollin take up the baton. With Josephine Chaplin, Raymond Bussières, Pierre Collet, Yvon Sarray, and Enzo Fisichella.
--- Fernando F. Croce |