Night of the Hunted (Nuit des Traquées in its native France), begins with a man called Robert driving through the countryside during the night. He sees a woman running and stops to help her though does not see the woman’s friend who is far behind her. The woman introduces herself as Elizabeth and that there are people after her. Robert sees she is confused and scared so takes her back to her apartment in Paris. On the way there he realises she has problems remembering his name or anything else.
They spend the night at Robert's place and in the morning, he has to go to work. He tells Elizbeth to remember his face and that he will be back later. Not known to Robert and Elizabeth they have been tracked by her pursuers, one that turns out to be Dr. Francis. They break into Robert’s flat and take Elizabeth back to their clinic.
It is revealed that Dr. Francis works in a clinic relating to memory loss and that Elizabeth and all those currently in the clinic are victims of a nuclear gas leak which affected everyone in the area of the local nuclear power plant. They are all suffering due to the leak to their memories slowly been taking away and will eventually leave them all mindless.
Elizabeth bumps into the woman she initially ran away with and recalls her name but that is all she can remember. They then both plan to try run away and Elizabeth gets in contact with Robert as she remembers him. Robert makes it to the clinic and confronts Dr. Francis who tells him why they are here and that their fate is already sealed as those who have already went mindless are being taken away to be disposed of.
Robert mortified that this is happening, goes to find and rescue Elizabeth but he finds he is too late, and she does not recall him or anything of her past life. Dr. Francis appears and shoots Robert in the head but does not kill him.
Robert now has become like Elizabeth due to the head injury and both he and Elizabeth walk off side by side on railway tracks in the fog.
Night of the Hunted was directed by Jean Rollin, who I've only over the past two years been getting more into his films. A lot of his films are known to be as part of the fantastique genre, a lot of his films involve vampires.
They are all wonderful films I that I have watched so far, filmed in a way that they come off as quite mystical and out there. You could say that Jean Rollin was France's equivalent to Spain's Jess Franco, though sure some would disagree with me!
This was the first Rollin film I watched, and it is a really enjoyable film, it's slightly reminded me a little of Shivers, though that was just one scene. The outside shots of the clinic at night had a nice cold feel to them which added to the bleak atmosphere our two leads would eventually face in the disused rail tracks.
Rollin never had big budgets for any of his films but what he did have was a drive to make very good films with what he had available to him. I do wonder if he was given a bigger budget to explore his ideas in more depth what he would have done? I do recommend the book, Fascination by David Hinds on Headpress, it covers all of Jean Rollin's films and a little bit of background to each.
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