[Festered]

Though not horror, this film has enough elements of the fantasy, sci-fi, noir, surrealism and thriller genres to warrant discussion here.

Alphaville, une 'etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965) is not so much an individual film as a continuation of a popular French detective film series started in the early 1950s. It's an interesting sub-genre in it's own right- the kiss kiss, bang bangs as they were called. What distinguished this film from the other Lemmy Cautions was director Jean Luc Godard, who had an overt fondness for the detective.

The plot(what little you may understand) involves everyman private detective Lemmy doing battle with an evil professor who runs a cold, emotionless planet. Starring one of the first American actors to migrate to Europe in order to get work, Eddie Constantine, with his well-chiseled hard-as-nails persona, is the standout of the cast. A notable cast, I might add, which includes Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Howard Vernon.

The settings are bleak(I've always envisioned a future like this- not glossy, but looking pretty much as it does now) and the imagery is second to none. Godard's directing style can be downright maddening to the uninitiated, so you may have to watch this more than once. This film's influences can be seen in Kubrick, Scott and Lynch's films. It has been parodied often- including a Cranberries video(some may be too young to remember)- and there are multitudes of references to horror films(the professor's real name is Nosferatu).

Other notable entries in the KKBB genre include The 10th Victim, Deadlier than the Male and Modesty Blaise.