Fear Over The City

Fear Over the City (Peur Sur La Ville) (1975)

Runtime: 121 minutes

Directed by: Henri Verneuil

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Denner, Adalberto Maria Merli, Rosy Varte, Roland Dubillard

From: Cerito Films/Mondial Televisione Film

Here's an obscure film (in the United States) that thankfully is worth seeing and is easy to find on a certain streaming website... see what I mean below: 

This is another example of me having to explain something to a worldwide audience as a film opinion is different in the United States. In the United States, those that know or remember Jean-Paul Belmondo would pretty much only be talking about his Godard films or Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid. From sites like Rupert Pupkin Speaks and other sources (including Letterboxd) I know that later in his career he did his share of popular action movies. While some did get released in the United States under different titles-including this one-they did not light the U.S. box office on fire. Over here the posters for his films did not bill him by only his last name, in other words.

Within the past year or so I've heard about this movie more than once and as it's not too difficult to find online, I realized this was the time for me to check this out. The plot: a Parisian cop named Letellier and his partner Moissac investigate a serial killer whose hangup is “promiscuous women”; yeah, it's one of those things. This person even have a flair for the dramatic: they are known as Minos, after a character in Dante's Inferno; it was an apt comparison. Furthermore, the duo are also concerned about a bank robber that escaped the year before, partly because an innocent bystander was killed as he got away.

At times the movie does strain credulity a little bit. But otherwise I can't really complain about what proved to be a very good thriller with some action elements. The killer does some pretty creepy things and that makes you hate him all the more. The villain's identity is never a secret; the movie is about the heroes trying to figure it out through detective work... and such “70's cop” things as them shooting a subject in self-defense and refusing to call an ambulance for him until he spills the beans. This is an Italian-French co-production, so I guess it isn't surprising that there are elements of both a poliziotteschi and giallo, or that Morricone did the score.

None other than Jackie Chan has praised Belmondo; that is because he did his own stunts. The action you do see in this movie is quite entertaining. There is a chase scene involving running on the rooftops of Paris that is a lot of fun but the highlight is about halfway through where you get another chase and for reasons I won't spoil it is pretty unique along with being exciting and Jean-Paul performing some risky stunts. In short, if you enjoy films like Dirty Harry and/or the genres I mentioned above, this is well worth seeing... and the movie is easy to find online, both subbed and dubbed.