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Histoires extraordinaires à faire peur ou à faire rire...

1949 [FRENCH]

Action / Horror / Mystery

1
IMDb Rating 5.8/10 10 265 265

Plot summary

A group of policemen look over three murder cases including a cutthroat that prays on young women, a madman that hid his deformed landlord's corpse in the floor, and a wine aficionado who buries his friend alive.

Director

Jean Faurez Photo
Jean Faurez

Top cast

Jacques Dufilho Photo
Jacques Dufilho as Le conscrit ivre
Roger Blin Photo
Roger Blin as Guillaume
Fernand Ledoux Photo
Fernand Ledoux as Montrésor
Jean-François Lalet Photo
Jean-François Lalet as Lafarge
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
812.38 MB
956*720
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds ...
1.47 GB
1424*1072
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by dbdumonteil

Poe made in France

Two decades before "Histoires Extraordinaires " (spirit of the dead)the anthology by Malle/Vadim/Fellini,Jean Faurez made his own Poe adaptation.One should note that only two of the four segments are by E.A.Poe.The others were written by Thomas de Quincey.The segments are linked,in an artificial way ,by a scene in a police station where gendarmes are initiating a rookie ,using the hard way: they tell him grim tales ,after a lugubrious song on the cast and credits .Segment one: It takes place in a girls boarding-school ;a serial killer is at large;guess where he is going to look for his next preys? it's non-scary and even the unexpected end fails totally to convince.Segment two:"the tell tale heart" ;there is so much voice over you can hardly hear the actors talk.The classic tale which is given a flashback treatment cannot hold a candle to Jules Dassin's version;stick with that one.Segment three:"the Amantadillo cask" ;things go a little better (it can't be worse) with this sketch which features two earnest thespians ,Jules Berry and Fernand Ledoux.It was Ledoux's sweet revenge after Carné's "Les Visiteurs du Soir "where he was tempted by the devil (Berry) and wound up in Hell.These great actors do not need voice over to be convincing.Segment four ;the second Quincey tale ,which looks like more a poor man's Agatha Christie 's murder mystery than a fantasy and horror story,except for the final trick which deals with a Château-Margaux Bordeaux wine case .Except for segment three,not very exciting for the French oldies buff
Reviewed by Coventry 6 / 10

Unjustly forgotten and underrated anthology

If the French title and the concept of an omnibus with Edgar Allan Poe stories, sounds familiar, you are probably thinking of the much better known and far more prestigious "Histoires Extraordinaires" from the year 1968 and directed by the trio of Euro-cinema deities Frederico Fellini, Louis Malle, and Roger Vadim. This particular oldie got made two decades earlier and had a lot less budget to spent on famous casts and fancy filming techniques. And yet - in all honesty - it isn't so much worse than the acclaimed (but overrated) 1968 film.I love anthologies - every horror fanatic does - and have a weakness for imaginative and unusual wraparound stories. The wraparound story in "Histoires Extraordinaires" is unexciting - and even a tad bit dull - and revolves around four police officers looking back on the most bizarre murder cases they encountered. There are four segments, of which two are adapted from Edgar Allan Poe stories (numbers two and three) and the two others are based on works of Thomas De Quincey; - the writer in whose books Dario Argento found inspiration for his "Three Mothers" trilogy. The De Quincey chapters are good, but I prefer the Poe ones. I always do. No matter how many versions and rehashes I watch of "The Tell-Tale Heart", I never grow tired of that one. "A Cask of Amontillado" is a much lesser-known Poe tale, but a very good one and it has a climax similar to "The Black Cat"The first segment is merely an appetizer and revolves on a serial killer at large in an area where two female students are alone in a house with their landlady. The killer enters the house, but he's so confident and full of himself that he allows for one of the girls to escape and search for help. Tale #2 is honestly one of the better interpretations of "The Tell-Tale Heart" that I have seen already, as it marvelously captures the madness of the murderer, exactly - I reckon - like Poe intended it as well. The version of "A Cask of Amontillado" is fantastic gothic horror stuff, since it features a jester, an endless network of moist catacombs, and the longest immurement in history. The final tale, "Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts", unfolds more like a whodunit/murder mystery and the outcome is too easy to predict. The segment does build up towards a grim and eccentric climax, however, during which the culprit gets exposed and simultaneously killed by shock/fright!
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