Film Review
The Gorilla's bite is worse than his bark - or so this monstrously inept
thriller would have us believe.
Le Gorille a mordu l'archevêque
is the third and by far the weakest in a series of films adapted from the
Gorille novels of Antoine-Louis Dominique. It follows
Le Gorille vous salue
bien (1958) and
La
Valse du Gorille (1959), which were both directed (with some flair)
by Bernard Borderie. For this third entry, Roger Hanin returns to the
role of the titular Gorilla but the directing baton is passed to Maurice
Labro, who looks as if he couldn't care less about the whole thing.
Apart from one or two feisty action sequences (notably a life-and-death tussle
on the outside of a moving train which ends
horrifically), Labro seems
to be directing this film with his eyes closed. And you can't blame him.
Not long before this, Maurice Labro directed a rather good action thriller,
Le Fauve est lâché
(1959), with Lino Ventura (the original - and best - Gorilla) in the lead
role. The inspired touch that Labro brought to this film is singularly
lacking in
Le Gorille a mordu l'archevêque, which staggers along
like a weary old man before collapsing under the weight of its crass ineptitude.
A ludicrous plot tries, too self-consciously, to make this a parody of its
genre, but the humour falls flat and the film ends up looking merely silly
and half-baked.
Roger Hanin's lack of acting experience doesn't help matters. His is
a staggeringly wooden performance that makes you wonder how he was ever cast
in a film again afterwards. Not long after this total misfire, Hanin
ended up being cast in a virtually identical role in two similar (nearly
as bad) thrillers by Claude Chabrol -
Le Tigre aime la
chair fraîche (1964) and
Le Tigre se parfume
à la dynamite (1965). Perversely, these two films were
a hit and both Chabrol and Hanin lived to fight another day.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Shortly after arriving in the Congo, Georges Pacefons is arrested, his plan
to assassinate the French Secretary General apparently thwarted. But
who is Pacefons working for and why do they want to kill this important functionary?
Géo Paquet, an agent of the French security services known as the
Gorilla, is assigned to investigate. By passing himself off as a hired
assassin, he manages to infiltrate a consortium headed by a certain Lehurit,
which, to protect its own interests, must act to prevent the construction
of a new railway line in Africa. Ouemêlé, an African,
sees through Paquet's deception and threatens to expose him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.