The Night Caller

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Audience Member eine krimiperle aus den 70ern Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Audience Member A violent action movie with Belmondo! I could watch this stuff all day. He amazingly did all his stunts, and broke a hand on one of the rooftop chases. A stray subplot about revenge on a different criminal (!) gets worked in nicely also. The action set pieces are very well-staged and the spacing is excellent. The danger Belmondo puts himself in is stated clearly but without losing tension. With shootouts, you are never confused as to where each person is. Lotta fun. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member A good thriller where Jean-Paul Belmondo must track down a serial killer who is harassing women via phone & murdering them. I like Belmondo's Commissaire Jean Letellier; he's not really a dirty cop but he does play by his own rules while garnering information for his investigation like rather having a suspect bleed to death before calling an ambulance until he gets what he needs to know. Beware of shorter prints of this like the US or UK that only run 90s minutes; you should find a print that runs 2 hours Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member The first few images of this film, combined with a musical score that sends shivers up your spine like never before, leave no room for any doubt: we’re in for a 5-star movie again. Peur sur la ville is great in every respect: it’s packed with lightning-paced action scenes so full of stunts that even Belmondo must have pulled his socks up (the chases and shootouts are totally insane – the conclusion of the action scenes in the subway with the criminal falling out in front of a streetcar coming from the other direction is a major climax – and the chase of Minos on the rooftops must have been incredibly dangerous to film, even for stunt people). Furthermore, it’s got a very tight plot: every scene follows the previous one in a logical way, without wasting time – the side plot of Belmondo trying to catch the gangster who killed his colleague has several functions: it strategically diverts some of our attention away from the main plot, it gives the movie even more pace, and it gives us an insight into Belmondo’s vigilante character: like some kind of Dirty Harry, he’s out for revenge and there’s nothing that can stop him – this is the sort of guy Minos, the psycho killer, will be faced with eventually. The tension in Peur sur la ville is also building up because of the killer’s tendency to play games with the police, leaving messages all the time without revealing his identity so they will keep running around in circles. This is a grim reality, French Connection style action movie from the seventies, with the subtleties and delicately humorous elements of French movies and the over-the-top grotesque absurdities of Italian movies. The ominous musical score takes one right back to the films by Umberto Lenzi, who also tended to use insane elements like psychos with physical handicaps (in Lenzi’s Roma a mano armata a hunchback, in Peur sur la ville a glass eye). It’s no surprise this is a Franco-Italian coproduction, and not just because of the presence of Italian actors like Adalberto Maria Merli and the beautiful Lea Massari. Minos’ approach as such is over the top anyway: he kills his female victims for their immorality, which is sometimes portrayed in quite an unrealistic way (I mean, what porn actress would hang up life-size nude pictures of herself in her own house, with a young child present?). It’s clear Verneuil has gone out of his way to give us something unusual this time. What more words of praise can one speak? Perhaps I could still refer to the nice buddy cop rapport between Belmondo and Charles Denner (another characteristic French actor who always makes a nice contribution to a film, in my opinion – alas he died way too soon). I could also touch upon the splendid images of Paris in the seventies: it’s filmed so realistically you get the idea you can sense and touch the place sitting in front of your screen. Eh bien, even the praises of an excellent movie cannot be sung eternally, so I’ll stop doing so. Bravo Verneuil, you’ve done it again, mon ami! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member il me manque la dernière 1/2 heure mais sinon c'était pas mal du tout ! Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Audience Member Film magnifique avec un Bebel au top , des répliques qui font mouche !! Un policier haletant , et aussi un film de Henri Verneuil c'est à voir quelqu'il soit !! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Night Caller

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