Running Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Format: 1.76:1 Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Languages: French
Subtitles: English
Region: 1
MSRP: $24.99

Own It!
Night of the Hunted (1980)

Robert is driving down the highway when he spots a nearly naked woman stumble out of the woods. Robert picks her up and finds out that she is an extreme amnesiac who can barely remember her own name. He takes her home and has sex with her, then leaves for work. Only in France.

While he's gone, a mysterious doctor and his assistant abduct the woman, Elizabeth, and take her to a high rise building where she is imprisoned with a bunch of other people. Everybody in this strange sanitarium suffers from memory loss and motor degeneration, though the women remember how to take their clothes off. They do that a lot. Some of the inmates are also violently inclined. Slowly Elizabeth forms a plan to escape, though she is rapidly forgetting who the "Robert" is she's trying to get to.

This 1980 movie by Jean Rollin is apparently quite different from his usual films, but not having seen them, I can't comment on that. I can say that this movie is slow going, and most of the gore scenes are gratuitous. The explanation for why these people are the way they are manages to foresee the X-Files, though, without giving to much away, what happened must have happened in the supermodel part of town. I wasn't quite sure if the ending was supposed to be touching, or the George Romero parody it plays as. Horror fans who like lots of nudity will probably be happy.

The video is a mixed bag. Most of the movie looks great, with sharp detail and good colors, but some scenes look awful, suggesting that this presentation was cobbled together from more than one source. There is a lot of dirt and print damage throughout the film.

The sound is mono, and sounds fine all things considered.

Included is a French theatrical trailer that seems intent on editing together every gunshot in the movie into one clip. The trailer is played after the feature ends, and is accessible from the menu as well. There is also a small collection of stills and a couple of posters.

Scott Hamilton, 6/7/00