Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres (1979) - film review

The gendarmes of St Tropez face their biggest challenge yet: aliens from another planet!  Having seen a flying saucer parked in a field, Cruchot tries in vain to alert his adjutant Gerbier of the threat.  But too late: the aliens, who can change their appearance to resemble any human being, have already infiltrated the gendarmerie...

The most popular of the six Gendarmes films, Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres was the biggest box office hit in France in 1979, attracting an impressive 6.2 million spectators.  Although the Gendarme formula is beginning to look a little tired, by extending the range of the series into science-fiction parody the production team found a new lease of life.

If you don’t take the film too seriously (in fact it would be very difficult to take the film at all seriously), Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres is a hugely entertaining comic romp.  The film provides a comic tour de force for Louis de Funès and Michel Galabru, who have by now developed a brilliant double act – Galabru the straight man to de Funès’ brand of over-the-top comedy. De Funès certainly gets some of his funniest material in this film – dressing up as a nun, slapping sunbathers to find out whether they are aliens or not (the aliens are apparently made of metal), not to mention sticking a sharp object up his colonel’s rear end.  And much more.

Whether by accident or by design, the film is a brilliant send-up of the entire B-movie scri-fi genre, complete with easily-destructible aliens and a fibre glass spaceship on which every expense was obviously spared.  Any resemblance to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which went on release the year before this film went into production) is of course purely accidental...

© James Travers 2001

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This happens to be the most awesome movie of my time. I’ve probably watched it a thousand times because, from the moment it starts, I only shut my mouth and stop laughing at the end.
Kiki Bilepo (Lusaka, Zambia) 

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