Review "Spotlight on the Killer", Georges Franju's foray into Krimi territory

 

Franju's third picture came right after he had finished "Les Yeux sans Visage" (1960), his most appreciated work. That had been co-produced by the Vienna-based Cosmopol-Film GmbH and there must have been talks on how to participate at the emerging Krimi-craze that had taken-off with "Fellowship of the Frog" in 1959, which had started off strongly in France too.

So here we get a Georges Franju Krimi ("Pleins feux sur l'assassin") with basically all ingredients you need: A castle, a dead count hidden somewhere, heirs gathering and killing each other. There is even the comic relief, here in the form of our protegonist's girlfriend. And you get technical gadgetry in there too.

The story: The old count only has a few hours to live. He hides himself behind a two-way-mirror (another Krimi-staple) to die. After two weeks the count is presumed dead although the corpse cannot be found and the heirs assemble for the testament. But that cannot be opened as the body has to be found first. While searching for the dead body, the heirs think about how to use the castle and decide to organize a spectacular sound and light show event around the myth of a love-killing that happened in this castle hundreds of years ago. To do that, an advanced surveillance and speaker system is installed which leads to the electrocution of the first heir. 

Now- one by one, the ten little pretenders to the castle die. Nevertheless the show must go on and on the night of the premiere events duplicate, leading to more deaths.

Franju's elegance and lyrical style is nicely implemented in the 10 little indians story and the movie feels very smooth. 

We get to see the full lightshow around the castle-legend and that is actually very impressive. That was clearly the centre of Franju's attention and a stand-out scene. Franju never was about suspense, it was always about a certain fairy-tale atmosphere and he is better with that than with developing an intriguing plot.

 Handling of the actors is quite well, not too many cringe moments here. The movie is well paced until it starts to drag a little after two thirds (Hedwig's horse riding accident). Besides that, this is a solid, sometimes lyrical french krimi, but not on par with Franju's "Les Yeux" or even as enjoyable as his remake of "Judex".

This is a very krimi-like story where no-one would have complained if it had been an official Rialto-Production. Aside from the castle being french, everything else is on spot: Story, lighting, red herrings and a trenchcoat&hat killer. The biggest lapse in logic is that they don't smell the rotting corpse in the living room behind the mirror. The biggest difference to the german Krimis is the music. It is a lush orchestral score by none else than Maurice Jarre, which adds to a dreamlike atmosphere but cannot provoke any suspense even in the very nicely shot sequence where our killer walks up the tower for his final strike...

The starring of  Marianne Koch (who already was really big in Germany at that time) suggests that french producers "Champs-Elisees-Production" clearly had the german market in sight. She would become the female lead of Harry Allan Tower's Edgar Wallace Sanders films and the Bryan Edgar Wallace nearly-there-but-not-quite-yet proto-giallo "Monster of London City".  

The production company folded right after finishing the movie, with MGM europe taking over the remains. There was no big advertising campaign and so the movie vanished in the lower regions of the box offic  both in France (att: 500.000) and Germany (300.000). 

Franju now is of course one of the sacred legends of French cinema and so this movie was restored fully by Gaumont and released on a nice Blu-Ray in France and GBUS (Arrow Video). The german (Mitternachts-Mörder - "Midnight Killer") release was only on DVD by Pidax but with an excellent german soundtrack and a nice folder. Sadly the Pidax DVD lacks the vintage on-set interview with Franju that is on the Gaumont/Arrow disk.

Is it worthwile? For Franju and Krimi completists, yes and 100% so. For all the other, more casual consumers the price tag on the Blu-Rays seems a tad high. PIDAX recently sold their DVD off at a heavily reduced price.

Sadly Franju does not do well businesswise (did he ever)?

TRAILER in HD

ADDENDUM: While watching the multimedia-experience of the killing that took place in the castle I was indeed reminded of "ALIEN", with the light and the surveillance -system tracking the imaginary murderer's way through the castle without any actor being shown. As mentioned above, this is very impressive. I just read that Ridley Scoot knew this movie and used a similar sequence in Alien. And thinking about it, there are so many parallels (the count sitting on his throne, dead, behind the mirror, the one-by-one killings, they even have some kind of pod-device to sleep in (photo above with the killer). I'm intrigued....

AKA: Der Mitternachtsmörder Fuldt lys på morderen Luz sobre o assassino Midnattsmördaren Piena luce sull'assassino Pleins feux sur l'assassin Swiatla na morderce To ainigma ton 7 klironomon Valokeila murhaajaan Убиецът се крие в сянка

Invitation card for the German premiere screening
Sept. 29th 1961