Review: "Le Concerto de la Peur"/Night of Lust 1963 Oh, WOW!

February 21, 2025

Review: "Le Concerto de la Peur"/Night of Lust 1963 Oh, WOW!

Where do I start? The aim of KRIMI! is to present you european continental crime movies and that includes, of course, French ones. The problem with the French (oh, those French!) is that they never distinguish between art movies and commercial movies. And with the sensational success of Jean-Luc Godard's "À bout de souffle"/Breathless 1960 the nouvelle vague was sweeping all over Europe. But this is art house cinema and highly intellectual. So normally something we try to avoid here (ok, Breathless is also entertaining as hell, but that is the exception, just take a look at "Weekend").

Finally, after "3 years in court",
the movie could be shown in
the US, but it was still "Banned over half the world"
And here, you can believe the
hype.

Well. The top selling point for this kind of cinema for the young and aspiring directors was that the realistic, outdoors, non-studio style that went with nouvelle vague was incredibly cheap to make. So hey, let's find some abandoned chateaus, go in the woods and use the director's private flat as set.

Hmm. what else to we need? Tough men doing tough things? Ok. Young, aspiring bohemien actors and actresses who are willing to do everything for their 5 minutes of fame? Ok. Burlesque dancers who do not mind the extra francs for a show they'd normally do, shot on location? Ok.

And if you add to this a well-written script and an intelligent director, you might go far. The mainstream audience might avoid this smut, but hey, this is business.

Original movie poster, and yes, it was
that cheaply made that it was
printed in b/w

In comes José Bénazéraf, former student of politics, hot on the trail of "disturbing" the Bourgoisie and nowhere as elegant and accepted as the lousy and boring Chabrol. He had already made good money with very cheap and very sexy nudie movies like "Le Cri de la Chair"/The Cry of the Flesh/ Heißer Strand and thought that putting in crime would be even more fun.

So we get this story: Immigré Sasha, who had fled the USSR worked for Eric, a blind jazz musician who is head of a drug-smuggling racket.

Sasha is sick of being put down due to his immigration status (see, social critique here: very important movie), which leads him to go rogue and try to put up his own business by cutting out some piece of the cake from Eric. Expecting that Fred might not like that, he kidnapps his brother Fred and (actually really) severly mangles him and keeps him for "half of the market".

Sasha finds out who cooks the drugs and tries to persuade the crooked laboratory worker. But he does not want to switch sides and so Sasha puts a killer on him.

Sasha has a VERY young and VERY
disillusionized girl to keep him warm in
the cold, cold Paris winters.

For his protection, said laboratory worker keeps a female collegue close to him so that the killer cannot attack him. The girl is pissed off as she is just a safety measure and is not getting entertained or laid and tells him to FO into the night. Of course he gets killed.

"Boss, she's clean, I already checked her
while she was passed-out in the car!"

As she can identify the man who had been following her (and now she knows that he was killer), she is kidnapped by Eric's henchmen who first chlorophorme her and then severly and explicitely grope the passed-out body.

She is taken to an abandoned chateau (told you!), where Eric is hiding with Waldo, his deputy mobster (played by Jess Franco's "Sadisterotica" Michel Lemoine). After having gotten hold of the killer, they brutally manhandle him to find out where Sasha hides (and where Eric's brother Fred is kept). Meanwhile Wanda, who might own the chateau (and is Fred's girlfriend), has to take care of the laboratory girl and does not like that at all (competition, you know) and leaves her to the groper. Waldo interferes and saves the girl. While bringing food, Wanda is attacked by the laboratory girl and after a L-O-N-G negligé cat-fight, actually killed. Labgirl takes her gun, but blind Eric hears her step pattern and confronts her. She cannot kill him and so he falls in love with her.

Girl (l.) and Wanda, just about to
fight it out...

But he has already negotiated a deal with Sasha: Killer & Girl for brother, having sealed the fate of the girl as Sasha will surely kill her.

They did not come to play, here. Nope.

While playing some mean cold jazz trumpet (original score by Chat Baker!!!!) he decides that his brother is worth the sacrifice of the women he loves and sends her with Waldo and his men to the meeting point.

Waldo though, gives her a gun as they are attacked by Sasha's men who had set up a trap. Girl shoots one of Sasha's men and gets so horny that she immediately goes naked in the snow (yes, it is a snow-noir!!) for Waldo after the (very well-staged) shootout is over.

A snow-noir with old french cars?
Count me in!

Sasha, though, had found out about Eric's whereabouts and attacks him in the castle. At that point, Waldo and the girl return from the fight.

That is a good, good movie. Strange, static noir-angles, the feeling of complete alienation and purposelessness. Winter, snow, beautiful women. A strong WTF heroine and very explicit too. Both thumbs up and another rabbit hole to get into.

Eric is played by "Hans Verner"=Anton Mönnekes a German POW that stayed in France and started his acting career there right after being released in 1945 (!) - usually playing evil German Officers. Casting him as the head of the gang is - of course - as hypocritical as making statements about Sasha being put down as a "foreigner"... there you go.

The Lab Girl is played by Yvonne Bedat de Monlaur, a real "comtesse" who was obviously not afraid to show a lot of skin for "the art". That helped her getting roles in several Hammer movies such as "Circus of Horrors" and "Brides of Dracula".

She wrote in her autobiographical blog "https://yvonnemonlaurofficialblog.blogspot.com" the follwing about this movie:

At the time, José Benazeraf was better known as a producer. He had not yet gained the notoriety of a cult filmmaker among generations of erotomaniac film buffs.

I remember that he received me with his wife in his Parisian apartment. He must have had a real passion for Napoleon I because the eagle and the bee, famous emblems of the emperor, punctuated the decoration of the living room.

He told me about the subject of the film. Rivalries between drug traffickers. He told me about the importance of my role - Nora the lab assistant, hostage of a gang and coveted by the leader played by Hans Verner. At no time did he mention the nudity scenes with me.

I was delighted to play alongside Michel Lemoine, whom I already knew. A funny and delightful man...

It was interesting to participate in this shoot that was so different from the others. The shots were very static. This way of filming went against what one could expect from the editing of a genre film like a thriller. In the end, it gave a very personal tone to the production.

"The Fear Concerto" was a strange film, just like the director, kind, cultured and then suddenly rude. Especially during the scene where I fight with Régine Rumen. Benazeraf suddenly got up from his chair. He came to shake me like a plum tree, reproaching me for not being aggressive enough with my jailer. Since I am not of a temperament to let myself be pushed around, I began to struggle and to assault him in turn so much so that, as the rehearsals dragged on, I had the impression that I was fighting more with him than with Régine!

At other times we talked about literature between takes, me about my dear Russians, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and he about Montherlant whose work he considered his bible.

However, I was careful not to mention my poet father because none of my relatives were really aware of the script that I was shooting and I did not want them to be in any way. I still had the feeling that I was making a film between two waters that could have shocked them.

I think of that naked scene in the car during which my two kidnappers unbutton my blouse to reveal my chest. It wasn't in the script. Just as I was pretending to faint, I heard Bénazeraf add "- we need to add more sex!".I felt a bit trapped at the time and then very quickly I understood that it was in the interest of the scene. I complied.

At another time, I had a love scene with Michel Lemoine in the Verrières woods, in the middle of the night.

Benazeraf let us improvise, it was so cold. We were happy to hold each other close to each other to warm ourselves up. This embrace was not enough to protect us.

After the last take, the actors and the technical team left the set with very colds.

...

"The Fear Concerto" was released at the Midi Minuit cinema.

The room was full. I know. I was one of the spectators. It is always a satisfaction when you have made a film to come incognito to discover the first reactions of the public. "The Fear Concerto" was well received.

Wanda is played by one-timer Regine Rumen, which is a shame, as she is very, very striking (and should have been acting in Hammer movies too). She was a trained dancer and worked at the Paris Opera from the age of 17. Then she moved to TV ballets and became a star at the LIDO. After this movie, she got a small role in the 1964 French Noir "Le Bluffeur" co-starring German hardface export Felix Martin with whom she had an affair.

Paparrazi shot of Marten and Rumen

Vittorio de Sica (Bycicle Thieves) then dated her and offered her a bigger role in his upcoming movie "A New World". If you look at Sica's films you'll notice that he liked his girls more buxomesque. Either directly pressured by him or being insecure the 28 year old who was living in a luxurious flat with her mother and her 4-year old daughter, decided to have silicone injections. Being too nervous, the surgeon tranquilized her before the operation. The sluggishly performed operation failed and the surgeon did not call the ambulance until the next day when she still had not regained consciousness. He was later found guilty of manslaughter.