User reviews

Clara,the mistress of Charles suffers from various bizarre hallucinations about Anne,who is the wife of her lover.It seems that Anne vanished without a trace,but one time during the walk in the forest Clara finds her body in the swamp.Was Anne murdered?If so,who is responsible for her death?Among suspects are Charles or perhaps his rifle-toting young brother Albert."Hallucinations Sadiques" aka "Sadistic Hallucinations" is a pretty good French horror movie with a bit of eroticism and bizarre,often dream-like mood.The murder plot is actually well-constructed and the climax is surprising.Some characters are quite strange for example wild peasant girl working in the castle.7 bloody showers out of 10.Strange and erotic mix of reality and confusing phantasmagoria.

Charles (Daniel Gélin), a rich industrialist (I think), brings his mistress Clara home to await the return of his wife, Anne, so he can ask her for a divorce. Charles' brother Alfred, a former mercenary, is also staying at the château but Clara, who's left alone a lot, gravitates toward George, a photographer doing a book on the area, and the local doctor. Unfortunately, neither one believes her when she tells them she's starting to see Anne's body all over the place because Clara was just released from a mental hospital...

When I say this off-the-wall "erotic thriller" is reminiscent of DIABOLIQUE and PSYCHO, don't get the wrong idea -it's just that what appears to be a LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH plot goes completely off the rails halfway through the movie when the beleaguered protagonist is murdered. After that, I defy anyone to try and figure out what in the hell is going on ...not that it matters much when every gal shows her breasts, Clara's shower turns to blood, and Alfred uses his rifle barrel for rough sex with the local talent, including the "young savage girl" who lives in a nearby abandoned castle. It's crazy sh!t, for sure, but it kept me watching til the end. The very essence of "Eurotrash".

This is the kind of movie the foreign viewers make a cult of whereas the French,by and large ,do not bother ;Jean Rollin belongs to that tradition and ,so to speak ,can be looked upon as the master of the genre .

A recurrent feature of these flicks is to take a classic and vaguely imitates it ;such was the case of "la rose écorchée" (the blood rose) which was a "les yeux sans visages" rip off

"Hallucinations sadiques " takes a vague screenplay which bears more than a distant resemblance to Boileau-Narcejac's " celle qui n'était plus" (which spawned Clouzot's "les diaboliques" and countless remakes and imitations ; note that "hallucinations" is closer ,so to speak,to the novel)

The direction is extremely couldn't care less, the cast subpar ,to put it mildly :one can wonder why a highly talented actor such as Daniel Gélin who worked with Becker,Pabst, Guitry ,Duvivier ,even Hitchcock -"the man who knew too much (1956) got involved in that business ; a man as clever as him knew from the start he was starring in a bomb and chose to act like a zombie .The same goes for Michel Subor (who,coincidence ,also worked with Hitchcock in "topaz" ) who limits his part of a cop to a pointless wandering in the house

There's the well-known tale of the wife who should be here but is not ,and like Ophelia , her body floats on the river .Soft eroticism with a shotgun.

I tried very hard to like this movie it has everything I normally like in a movie 1969 to 1980, European, weird, horror etc- but as it went on and on I couldn't wait for it to end there's just a lot of nothing happening... with that said I did finish the movie and it's better than most contemporary movies but it was disappointing.... also I've gotten a lot more picky with so much available in today's world. I think maybe 20 or 30 years ago I would've loved it.