Night Of The Hunted
(La nuit des traquées)
Image Entertainment
DVD 95 minutes, 1968

review by Shade Rupe

A departure from Rollin's more notorious sexy vampire films, The Night Of The Huntedplays more like a Cronenberg film at the time of Rabidor They Came From Within,with its 'medical center' being the central locale.
A concerned Robert (Vincent Gardnere) finds a road-walking Elisabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) looking rather lost and picks her up. Neither of them notices a nude redhead, Veronique (Dominique Journet), loping along behind them, crying for Elisabeth. Robert soon discovers that Elisabeth has a strange form of amnesia, where she forgets things as soon as they happen. His caring for her turns to a sexual encounter. Once he is out of his home, Dr. Francis and his female assistant kidnap her and bring her back to their sanitarium, a high-rise populated by lonely souls who have forgotten who they are.
She reintroduced to Veronique, who she barely remembers, and Catherine, who shares a mutual unknowingness with. These scenes of women who have not only forgotten themselves but each other are handled as a soft poetry, played with a light touch of the somnambulism the 'patients' exhibit themselves.
Although Image's box art plays up a shot of a dead woman with a pair of opened scissors jabbed right through her eyes, this is the goriest moment of the film. Rollin concentrates here more on the lost qualities of the women's lives, then on their dismemberment, although there is a one particular rape/murder where the red flows.
The film looks great, yet another fantastic improvement over all those previous 4th generation bootlegs, and is letterboxed at 1:66. There are a couple spots of visible print damage, but these moments are barely distracting. The film does end abruptly, with a still framing of the last shot and no final credits, leaving this reviewer wondering if there may have been just a little bit more footage that needed to be retrieved.
The disc includes a 16-still photo gallery and two advertising posters. While not exemplary of what Mr. Rollin is more notorious for, The Night Of The Hunted is a fine addition to the collector of European erotic horror. For an additional cheap thrill, watch the special effects man cut the string on the gunman at 87m 15s. Sure couldn't see that in those fuzzy bootlegs!

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