Le seuil du vide

Jean-François Davy is more renowned in his native France for his pornographic movies than for his foray into the fantastic genre.In 1971,fantasy and horror movies were completely unusual in France and the last important work the country had produced in the field takes us back to the early sixties ("les yeux sans visages",Georges Franju).

Although based on a Kurt Steiner novel,a trendy writer at the time ,now almost forgotten,"le seuil du vide" mainly borrows from Polanski ,essentially "Rosemary's baby"(1968) :the old nice lady;the door which leads to another world ;the "good" doctor calling the bad one when the heroine tries to escape;the costume ball which recalls the Castevetes "parties" and sabbath.It owes a lot to "invasion of the body snatchers" (1956)too.To Davy's credit ,we can mention a rather impressive ending.Not enough to get up in the night though.