Georges Franju took another shot at a far fetched master criminal thriller after he had filmed Judex. This film was considered a failure when it came out in 1974 the critics and the general public thought the whole thing was just to ridiculous. Watching the film this week it's clear that while Franju played it fairly straight, he did load the film up with a lot of subtle tongue in cheek humor.
Nuits Rouge is definitely a tribute to Fritz Lang and the Mabuse films. Franju even cast Gert Frobe who played the clueless German police inspector in The 1000 eyes of Dr. Mabuse to play the clueless French police inspector in Nuits Rouge.
Spielberg and Lucas with the Indiana Jones films and the producers of the James Bond films could take the old movie genres and rework them to show how clever they are, but it takes a lot of guts to play a larger then life crime thriller story fairly straight.
An interesting attempt to redo an old movie serial without the Mr. Smarty Pants humor.
105 minutes.
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