You may not know the name Max Pecas, but along with Jose Benazeraf and Jean Rollin, he was one of the more famous French directors of softcore erotic/exploitation films of the 60s and 70s. Two of his earliest films helped launch the film career of German sexpot Elke Sommer. De Quoi tut e Meles Daniela! (English title: Daniella by Night, 1961) was an espionage melodrama highlighted by some brief nudity of the lead actress and Douce Violence (English title: Sweet Violence, 1962) depicted jaded teenagers going wild on the Riviera in a style imitative of the New Wave films of that era. Pecas later moved on to more explicit adult fare in films like The Sensuous Teenager aka I Am a Nymphomaniac! (1971) and I Am Frigid…Why? (1972) before turning out some genuine hardcore X-rated features such as Felicia (1975) and Sweet Taste of Honey (1976), which were also released in edited R-rated versions. Despite low budgets, his films often had a classy veneer with gorgeous actresses but critics routinely derided his work despite their popularity with grindhouse audiences. Then toward the end of his career, Pecas surprised everyone with a dynamic but violent crime thriller set in the seedy underworld of Paris – Brigade des Moeurs (English title: Brigade of Death aka Death Squad, 1985) – which was closer to the gritty style of an Abel Ferrara film like Ms. 45 (1981) or Fear City (1984).
Unlike Pecas’s lush, languid softcore erotic romps, Death Squad is a lean, mean slice of urban sleaze which is tightly edited and breathlessly paced. There is a higher caliber of acting on display and the sex and violence are an integral part of the story and not just gratuitous ingredients to draw in male viewers. Still, there is no denying the fact that Death Squad is an exploitation film but it is supreme example of its kind. It plays more like a down-and-dirty Gallic version of 1971’s Dirty Harry with a cop on the vice squad who goes rogue to catch the scumbags who murdered his sister (She was the wife of a judge known for prosecuting drug kingpins).
In his film debut, Thierry de Carbonnieres plays Gerard Lattuada, a respected undercover officer who is placed on hiatus by his commanding officer (Christian Barbier) instead of assigning him to a case in which he has a personal stake in the matter. Gerard has no intention of standing on the sidelines, however, and secretly goes after a four man assassination squad, who have been terrorizing the city. Dressed in black, armed with shotguns and riding motorcycles, the death squad is first introduced murdering several transvestite hookers in a city park. [The sequence at the morgue where the victims’ naked bodies (and male genitals) are exposed for an autopsy would be a jarring introduction for any film!].
It turns out that the homicidal cyclists are led by Costa (Jean-Marc Maurel), an ambitious sicko who is trying to take over territory under the control of The Greek (Jean-Pierre Bernard), a powerful drug lord. Costa and his goons even intercept a drug deal exchange in a bar intended for a rival gang, killing everyone present and making off with the drugs and the money. The cops think it is the work of The Greek but Gerard’s private investigation into the matter reveals the true culprits and he helps escalate a gang war between Costa’s men and The Greek’s enforcers.
A secondary plot involves Gerard’s friendship with Veronica (Lillemour Jonsson), a prostitute/police informer with a young son, and his loyal girlfriend Sylvie (Gabrielle Forest), who is kidnapped by Costa in the final act of the film and threatened with torture and disfigurement.
[Spoiler alert] Although there is plenty of brutality throughout Death Squad – the bar massacre, the shotgun murder of Gerard’s sister Solange (Olivia Dutron), the fiery death of Costa’s partner Fat Louis (Phify) – the climax is a symphony of carnage. Set in an empty warehouse, The Greek and two of his men try to apprehend and kill Costa, who is more cunning and better armed with a variety of weapons. He quickly dispatches Marcel (Henri Lambert) with an icepick in the eye while Luigi (Guy Di Rigo) gets his hand amputated and a hatchet in the head. Then Gerard arrives on the scene to rescue Sylvie and kills The Greek with a machine-gun but saves a most appropriate revenge for Costa – a hand grenade to the groin…too bad we don’t get to see him explode!
Pecas never made a film quite like Death Squad and I prefer its hard-edged, no-nonsense approach to what the French call ‘polars’ or ‘films policier’ than his more famous softcore sex romps, which can be sublimely silly if you are in the right mood or downright offensive if you are fed up with the male gaze fantasies of certain sexploitation filmmakers. A perfect example is Pecas’s I Am a Nymphomaniac in which the heroine (Sandra Julien) is a repressed young woman who accidentally falls down an elevator shaft and, after recovering, becomes an insatiable sex maniac. Absurd, yes, but Pecas was selling fantasy, not realism. Films like this and the director’s I Am Frigid…Why? might be first class voyeur material but they are more ideally suited to a Penthouse Magazine pictorial where the lack of dramatic tension and character development doesn’t lull you into a somnambulistic state.
Death Squad, on the other hand, is dark, sordid and always feels grounded in the harsh realities experienced by a vice cop on a daily basis. This is the dark underside of Paris and all of the debauchery on display feels authentic from photographers peddling child pornography to after-hours clubs hooking up customers with prostitutes to heroin addicts shooting up. The French censors gave the movie an X rating for violence and content prior to its release but what is interesting is that the milieu is more convincing than the gruesome violence, which feels unconvincing and highly stylized. But that is fine with me because I don’t want to see realistic and gory Tom Savini-like make-up effects when people are shot in the face or mutilated with knives.
When Death Squad opened in France, it attracted little attention and quickly disappeared from theaters. It also never received a theatrical release in the U.S. which is a shame because it could have become a profitable hit on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit. Part of the film’s success is due to Thierry de Carbonnieres’s tough but charismatic performance as Gerard; he’s athletic, handsome, a charmer when he needs to be but also merciless to his enemies. If the film had been successful, it could have led to a successful franchise for de Carbonniere but after this the actor had a spotty film career, mostly appearing in supporting roles in French films such as Alain Corneau’s Le Mome (1986) and The Double Life of Veronique (1991), directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski.
The other actor who makes a strong impression in Death Squad is Jean-Marc Maurel as the loathsome sadist Costa. He brings a barely controlled hysteria to the role that often goes over the top in scenes where he is gleefully killing or torturing someone, particularly women. He is probably the most obnoxious screen psychopath since Andy Robinson’s unhinged murderer in Dirty Harry. (In case you’re wondering, Death Squad is not just misogynistic but misanthropic, homophobic, and everything else that is aggressively non-PC about an exploitation film but that is part of its outrageous appeal). You can also spot former porn star Brigitte Lahaie (a recurring presence in the films of Jean Rollin) in the minor role of an ill-fated undercover policewoman.
Pecas would only make two more films after Death Squad, both of them raucous sex comedies set in the trendy resort town of Saint-Tropez. This was a genre he had dabbled in before in the mid-1970s, turning out mindless T&A sex farces like Hot Dogs on Ibiza (1970). But it was lushly filmed erotic encounters like Her and She and Him (1970) and House of 1000 Pleasures aka Private Club (1974) that established Pecas as a master of the form. Allegedly it was his early work that inspired U.S. film distributor Radley Metzger to start directing his own style of softcore adult features which are now cult favorites such as Camille 2000 (1969) and The Lickerish Quartet (1970). In fact, Metzger’s distribution company Audubon Films got its start importing and sometimes editing and adding new footage (shot by Metzger) to European sexploitation features like Pecas’s La Baie du Desir (1964) which became The Erotic Touch of Soft Skin, the two aforementioned Elke Sommer movies and Her and She and Him.
In an interview with film critic Richard Corliss, Metzger would later acknowledge his admiration for Pecas, stating, “He’s got, oddly enough, the best cinematographer in France, Jean Lefebvre. The only person he seems to want to work for is Max. Even with a small budget, Max gets a beautiful picture on screen. Her and She and Him is exquisite – with just three or four lights. He always has a rich, rich looking picture.”
Death Squad was released on Blu-ray in April 2024 by Mondo Macabro in a 4k transfer in French with English subtitles. The extra features include interviews on the film and the director by Thierry de Carbonnieres, actress Olivia Dutron and cinematographer Jean-Claude Couty.
Other links of interest:
https://jahsonic.com/MaxPecas.html
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/tag/max-pecas/
https://pulpinternational.com/pulp/keyword/max-pecas/
Cinema Sojourns 