Sure, the French may be grossly stereotyped by us gross Americans as an America-hating, cheese-nibbling, wine-slurping, beret-wearing, Eiffel-towering arrogant bunch of Surrender Monkeys with a vaguely snide-sounding language that they're terribly proud of (and want to keep nice and pure like a kid wants to keep his green beans out of his mashed potatoes and gravy, thank you very much), but damn, if these people don't make some great horror movies.
Frankly (pun intended), some of the nastiest, most extreme horror movies that have come out of Europe in recent memory have been French. In these flicks, the blood flows like fine French wine as legions of hapless Gallic movie stars are sliced, diced, steamed, stabbed, roasted, toasted, and served up to the delight of international horror fans everywhere like great French cooking. I've only managed to get my grubby paws on a few of these beauties, namely Haute Tension (High Tension in the U.S.), Frontières, and two Americanized transplants of the gore-soaked Alexandre Aja (director of Haute Tension) style: the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors. Apparently there is a star-studded universe of terrifyingly extreme French cinema just waiting out there... except when you look closer, the thousand gleaming points of light turn out not to be galaxies, constellations, or stars, but the bloodlust-maddened eyes of all the insane crazies that reside in French horror movie heaven, and all of them are looking at you as their next meal. Yes, YOU!
Here's the run-down of what we can expect to roar out of France at us:
Humains (Humans), a tale of an archeology expedition gone wrong when some researchers uncover evidence of the existence of a strange hominid creature. Apparently, the Missing Link is no longer missing, and judging by how Humains is labeled as a horror film instead of a nature documentary, it's gonna make sure that at least some of these nice young French people go missing in its stead. However, early reports on this one are saying that it will be lighter on the red stuff than previous French horrors, which I'm fine with. This is actually the foreign horror film that I'm looking forward to the most; I LOOOOVE films with hominid creatures in them (as evidenced by my unholy passion for all things related to Neil Marshall's Descent), and this looks like it'll be barrels of fun.
La Horde (The Horde), a French flick that blends cops-and-robbers with... ZOMBIES! And from what I've heard, these won't be the "moves slower than frozen molasses giving the stars ample time to move their asses" kind of zombie, these will be the insane, amped-up "moves so fast that the main characters won't have time to crap their drawers" type of zombie. Personally, while I think that zombie films are getting a little old (even considering the renaissance of good zombie films we've had recently, there's just so darn many of them that it feels like the sub-genre needs a break), I loved Zack Snyder's running zombies in the Dawn of the Dead remake, so this may hopefully be another interesting break from the Romero mold that's been on the cinematic depiction of the undead for so long.
Lady Blood, a sequel to the 1990 French horror Baby Blood (which I saw not too long ago under the alternate title of The Evil Within). The Evil Within was a very bizarre, often dream-like and surreal horror film about a woman who is impregnated by a strange creature that then grows inside her and telepathically talks to her, urging her to kill men so that she can feed on their blood (and thus nourish the growing creature). The "mother" and her "child" go on a road trip across France, slaying as they go, and along the way they develop a symbiotic and strangely tender relationship that's as weird as anything else in the movie. Given how it ended, I'm not sure how they're going to pull off a sequel to the original film, but Lady Blood looks like something to keep an eye on. Reports are that Lady Blood (or at least its trailer) is gory as all get-out, so that's a plus (and totally in line with the original film's buckets of blood).
And for the record, here's some creepy French films that have already landed in America on DVD. I haven't seen any of these yet, but boy, do I want to.
À l'intérieur (AKA Inside), a grim French film featuring a pregnant woman versus a strange, deranged, yet determined crazy known as "La Femme". Apparently this is one of the Goriest Films of All Time. The Dimension Extreme cover art for the American DVD is really sucky, though; I much prefer the restrained and actually quite elegant French poster artwork.
Dans ma Peau (AKA In My Skin), a film about a woman who, after suffering an accident, begins to cut off pieces of her own skin in a bizarre and fascinated ritualistic way. I've actually heard this is not as gory as one might expect, given the subject matter, but it looks interesting so I'll try and find it to give it a spin in my DVD player.
Martyrs. I've heard that this is one of the goriest, most disturbing films ever. Being the curious cat that I am, I'll probably end up seeing this one just to see if it's as scary as I've heard. Suffice to say that it has a lot of torture in it, including (implied?) torture of kids, as well as a really weird cult.
In short, that's all I can think of at the moment. Wow. Those French. Honestly, if there's something in their national psyche that compels them to make bloody, balls-to-the-wall cinema harder and better (or at least more sensationally) than anyone else right now... well, if they're wrong, I don't want 'em to be right. Maybe it's because their language, nice as it is, simply doesn't sound as harsh and terrifying as the tongues of their northern Germanic neighbors, so they don't have a lot of black metal growlers. (Seriously, when you think of horrifying-sounding black metal singers that sound like Satan's cousin gargling battery acid and ground glass, you don't think of the French, you think of the Scandinavians... or maybe the Germans. But never the French.) Or maybe it's because their national subconscious has been thwarted in taking over the Continent ever since Napoleon got his ass handed to him by those beef-eating English bastards. Maybe all that pent-up French national aggression is getting subliminally channeled into wonderfully nasty horror films. Maybe. And maybe it's for the best.
Keep on bleedin', France!
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