Search SFE    Search EoF

  Omit cross-reference entries  

Kamikaze

Entry updated 17 October 2022. Tagged: Film.

1. Variant title of the film Kamikaze 1989 (1982).

2. French film (1986). Les Films du Loup/ARP/Gaumont. Directed by Didier Grousset. Written by Luc Besson, Grousset. Cast includes Richard Bohringer, Harry Cleven, Michel Galabru, Dominique Lavanant, Riton Liebman and Kim Massee. 89 minutes. Colour.

An amusingly black film with a serious point, Kamikaze tells of a brilliant unemployed Scientist, obsessed with television, who invents a Ray Gun which, when pointed at the screen, can kill anyone appearing live on it. When slimy presenters on French afternoon television start getting blasted in mid-announcement, a rumpled flic (Bohringer), with the help of a roomful of boffins, sets out to hunt the killer. This French film is something of a throwback to the international 1970s cycle of sf-tinged Paranoia movies. Like The Parallax View (1974) and Winter Kills (1979), or the home-grown Ecoute Voir (1979), Kamikaze mixes bizarre assassination hardware and computerized complications with the traditional down-at-heel strengths of the policier as it follows its two central characters down their own labyrinths. Galabru is outstanding as the murderer, starting out as a sympathetic loser but becoming a psychopath who whites his face and dresses up as a Mishima-style samurai. [KN]

links

previous versions of this entry



x
This website uses cookies.  More information here. Accept Cookies