Béru et ces dames (1968)
Directed by Guy Lefranc

Film Review

Two years after Sale temps pour les mouches (1966), Gérard Barray was happy to reprise the role of Frédéric Dard's famous fictional detective San-Antonio in this lively comedy-thriller, adapted from another of Dard's novels.  Better known for his swashbuckling roles, in such films as Les Trois Mousquetaires (1961) and Le Chevalier de Pardaillan (1962), Barray always looks somewhat incongruous in a contemporary setting, and it is with consummate ease that he is out-shone by his co-star Jean Richard, the perfect choice for San-Antonio's bumbling sidekick Bérurier.  A year after this film. Richard would begin his twenty-year-long stint in his most famous role, that of Jules Maigret on French television.

Throw in lots of pretty girls with short skirts, knee-length boots and Emma Peel hairstyles, together with an Avengers-style credits sequence, and what you get is a cheeky piece of late 1960s kitsch that tries a little too hard to be a serious action thriller.  Director Guy Lefranc appears to be somewhat out of his element (he was far better suited for modest comedies than extravaganzas of this kind), but he does a reasonable job of balancing the laughs and the thrills, and a few of the action scenes are quite impressive.  At least his film does far more justice to Dard's creation than Frederic Auburtin's hideously inept San Antonio (2004).

Film Synopsis

Inspector Bérurier, the righthand man of police superintendent San Antonio, has just inherited a brothel.  But when he turns up to claim his inheritance the establishment is hit by a series of mysterious killings.  Before she dies, the manageress of the brothel puts San Antonio and Bérurier on the trail of a pharmaceuticals laboratory which is serving as the centre of a major drugs trafficking operation.  Before San Antonio can act to intercept the next consignment of morphine, the gangsters outwit them and snatch the drugs haul from right under their noses.