La Cité de la peur (1994) - film review

Odile Deray, press secretary responsible for promoting the low budget horror film “Red is Dead”, hires a security agent, Serge Karamazov, to protect the film’s star, Simon Jérémi, during the Cannes Film Festival.  The film becomes a sensation when, during each of its showings, the projectionist is murdered in exactly the same way as in the film – by a hooded stranger with a hammer and sickle.  The debonair Commissaire Bialès is assigned to the case, but Odile quickly discovers that he may be the killer...

La Cité de la peur marks the big screen début for one of France’s most popular comedy teams, Les Nuls, who achieved celebrity through their regular appearances on the French TV channel, Canal+ in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Their anarchic, often surreal brand of comedy may not be to everyone’s taste, but they retain a prominent place in French culture and La Cité de la peur has all that it takes to be a cult film.

Beginning with a spoof horror sequence (which is hilarious, brilliantly wrong-footing the spectator), the film rapidly becomes a parody of the American mystery horror film, with abundant references to many films of the genre from the 1980s.  Although far from subtle, the comedy is very effective, and even when the jokes are in very bad taste it is hard not to laugh out loud and enjoy everything that gets thrown in our face.  An actor who throws up whenever he is happy and a bodyguard with serious diarrhoeic problems illustrate the level of humour the film descends to for laughs, but a well-paced script and some ebullient performances make up for it in the end.

© James Travers 2005

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