GRAND GUIGNOL

By writing horrible stories, horrible stories happen… A small theater company has taken shelter in a dance hall to rehearse the horror plays developed by Baptiste (Guy Marchand): we have Monsieur Albert, an ambiguous dog (Jean-Claude Brialy), Adélaïde, a failed and lonely tragic actress, Coco, the suburban vamp and Sarah, Baptiste’s wife (Marie Dubois) who has had enough of the morbid and depressing fantasies of her writer of a husband. They are all going to live the paperboard, technicolor and magical frenzies of Baptiste, they will fight, love and destroy each other, and their relationships will soon enough create a strange blend with the fantasies happening in the play that they are rehearsing…
“Everyone (in the movie) lives their life in a painful way while acting horrible scenes on stage. They create some kinds of dampener, these kinds of valves for themselves. And these valves, they let them go on stage in a cruel and monstrous way. Take for example Galabru (a novelty seller); he is sweet and funny and then suddenly turns into a monster. It is some kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when it comes to feelings.” (Jean Marboeuf) Once again, the director Jean Marboeuf (“Vaudeville”) asserts his love for the absurd and sweet human feelings in “Grand Guignol”. “The special effects of the movies are not intended to the salacious and sadistic audience that we can see in drive-ins. They serve the surrealism of a story attaching itself to the edge of the soul which, all things considered, is not that far from what George Romero did in ‘Day of the Dead’” (Christophe Lemaire).