Le Tueur

Fabio Testi is a professional killer who's been caught. He gets himself transferred to a psychiatric hospital then engineers an escape with the help of his brother, Jacques Richard. It's up to homicide commissioner Jean Gabin to catch him, with director Bernard Blier trying to impose less old-fashioned methods on the old detective who only has five months to retirement and knows how to use his old-fashioned methods.

It's an ugly movie, made deliberately ugly by the way DP Claude Renoir shoots it; there''s smoke and fog, and the backgrounds are full of rubble and rubbish, and everything seems to have a brown edge to it -- although the use of Eastmancolor, which has probably faded over the last half century doesn't make anything look better. It's a police procedural, but it's not the clean sort, with cops who look like they're on the take, and Blier more concerned with things looking good with the public than in stopping Testi, who racks up a considerable body count over the course of the movie. It looks like the French equivalent of DIRTY HARRY.