Robert Hossein

The Second Twin

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Robert Hossein as Pierre

Who killed Oliver Lacat (Jean-Claude Rolland)? The Second Twin is a strange film that manages to fold suspect, investigator and lawyer all into one person, Pierre Montaud (Robert Hossein). Meanwhile, director Christian-Jaque’s 1966 whodunit serves up distinctive visuals as it plays with suspects, as if this were an expressionist film from the 1930s, but in searingly vivid colour. Why it’s called The Second Twin I don’t know. The original French title is La Seconde Vérité, which translates as The Second Truth, something the alternate English title, The Other Truth, gets nearer to. Is there a second twin? I don’t remember seeing one, or even a suggestion of one, but then cards are being … Read more

Le Vampire de Düsseldorf aka The Vampire of Dusseldorf

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Peter carries an unconscious Anna

A weirdly lugubrious serial-killer movie, 1965’s Le Vampire de Düsseldorf tells the story of Peter Kürten, a real-life killer who operated in the Düsseldorf area in the late 1920s before being caught, tried and executed in 1931. Look him up in Wikipedia, if have the stomach for it, and you’ll realise that director/writer/star Robert Hossein has left most of the gruesomeness out of the picture. Kürten tended to kill his female victims with a pair of scissors. Hossein leaves that in. The rest of it, the sexual kick Kürten got from watching women in their death throes, he only suggests. Better that way. Hossein finesses Kürten’s timeline a touch, to make him align … Read more