Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre (2001)

A three thousand year old mummy wreaking havoc in the famous Louvre Museum in Paris was the subject of a popular French TV series for youngsters from the '60s, starring legendary chanteuse Juliette Gréco. Now, young director – who undoubtedly grew up with the show – Jean-Paul Salomé, who would go on to make the equally nostalgic ARSENE LUPIN with Continental matinée idol du jour Romain Duris, has turned this pivotal childhood experience into an expensive and undeniably good-looking multiplex blockbuster. The elaborate CGI alone must have eaten up a considerable chunk of the budget.Erstwhile centerpiece Gréco even does a brief walk-on for those in the know during an atmospheric cemetery scene where she makes fleeting eye contact with replacement Sophie Marceau, a talented thespian best known to US audiences for her purely decorative turn in Mel Gibson's supremely silly BRAVEHEART. Though obviously aimed at family audiences, this fairly old-fashioned adventure yarn will please moms and dads rather than their offspring who have become accustomed to far more gruesome sights than the extremely mild horrors on display here.For the uninitiated, this intentionally naive mix of scares and chuckles should prove something of a disconcerting experience. For example, in spite of its 1935 Egypt prologue, complete with a tomb desecration whose perpetrators wind up swiftly dispatched, the movie draws less inspiration from old Universal or Hammer mummy chillers than from a long line of possession flicks ranging from the modest WITCHBOARD series to the landmark EXORCIST, with Marceau as beleaguered heroine Lisa, unwilling vessel to the embalmed one's vengeful spirit, doing a PG version of Linda Blair's finest hour for the film's grand finale. More importantly for a pervert like myself, she also bares her shapely butt and (right) boob on separate occasions, just so you won't forget this is a French film after all ! Diminutive heart-throb Frédéric Diefenthal, who rose to prominence playing the clumsy policeman hero of the wildly popular TAXI movies with Samy Naceri, also registers strongly as her frequently beaten up romantic foil. Dependable old timer Michel Serrault (forever swishy Alban from the original LA CAGE AUX FOLLES) gets all the best lines as a retired cop turned security expert and even a halfway decent farcical romance with bumbling Egyptologist Julie Christie, the latter handling her French dialog in disarming Laurel & Hardy fashion.Once viewers can get past the fact that this movie's not intended to scare the living daylights out of them – though the image of the diabolical Belphégor in full ceremonial burial dress hovering through the museum corridors has an eerie Jean Rollin poetry to it – they can fully enjoy this handsomely mounted horror comedy for its ingratiating performances, amiably ludicrous set pieces and stunningly shot Paris settings with all tourist traps present and accounted for. A genuinely haunting score by then fledgling composer Bruno Coulais, who of course went on to write the music for the immensely successful LES CHORISTES, provides the icing on the cake.

This was a pretty dull movie, actually. I think the problem with a French horror film, is that the French must be easy to scare or something, because this movie wasn't just that frightening. The special effects with the mummy's ghost looked like they didn't even belong in the film, as though someone put them in during post-production to spice them up, because the actors barely react to them.The plot just kind of meanders, which is the opposite of real storytelling. I guess this was based on a French TV series, where they had to distill it down to a two-hour movie.The plot is that a mummy is brought out of storage in the Louvre, which apparently has such weak security that this girl and her boyfriend can break into it multiple times. (So THAT'S how people keep stealing the Mona Lisa!) The boyfriend and the police officer from the 1960's version of this film get together and try to exorcise the demon.So I'm not sure if this mummy was supposed to be a bad guy or not. He kills two guards during the course of the movie, but he just wants to get to the afterlife.

According to me french movies doesn't gets much PR around the world for some reason. However this movie is a proof of that France can make good movies and do. The first time I saw this movie was just a coincidence more or less... One evening I read the Swedish TV guide to see if it was something on worth watching. I didn't think so, however I turned the TV on anyway and zapped around a bit. I finally got to the channel showing this movie and somehow it caught my eye and I start watching, even if I discovered that I unfortunately have missed the first 10 minutes of the movie. I am really glad that I did watch it after all anyway!About the movie: Much of the story (plot summary) is already available to read on IMDb about this movie, so I don't think one can consider this as a spoiler but to make sure you might think twice before continue reading.The story starts 1935 in Egypt when a french expedition led by Egyptologist Pierre Desfontaines (Pierre Aussedat) discovers a tomb with a 3000 years old sarcophagus in it containing a mummy. Amongst other artifacts, they decide to bring back the sarcophagus and the mummy, to the Louvre museum in Paris. During the boat trip to Marseilles however all but one crew member strangely dies including Pierre Desfontaines himself. 65 years later during a restoration of the Louvre museum in Paris the mummy is found in a forgotten storage room. The museum curator Bertrand Faussier (Jean-François Balmer) brings in Egyptologist Glenda Spencer (Julie Christie), to examine the artifacts and trying to establish who the mummy really where and its name.Lisa (Sophie Marceau) is an ordinary girl living across the street from the museum, together with her grandma Geneviève (Patachou). One evening they get an electrical problem and call for electrician Martin (Frédéric Diefenthal) who has helped them before when in trouble. When fixing the problem in the basement, Lisas cat runs off and they have to follow it and end-up in the museum after closing time. Will they be discovered by the guards? Lisa and Martin gets separated and Lisa accidentally discovers the mummy in the basement. Things happen and after that evening neither Lisa nor anybody else understand why Lisa begins to visit the museum every night. At the same time strange things starts to happen at the museum, alarms going off now and then and people gets murdered and rumors amongst the guards begins to spread that there is a phantom called Belphégor on the loose. The chase to get this phantom begins but soon they will be aware of that getting Belphégor will not be as easy as they from the beginning thought. And when they finally do, they don't know what to believe, believe it!Sophie Marceau is a masterpiece when playing the role of Lisa and Frédéric Diefenthal is equally good playing the role of the electrician and later on her boyfriend as well. It's wonderful to see Julie Christie in this french film playing Egyptologist not to mention the french Patachou playing Lisa's grandma.

To many people in France, the name "Belphégor" represents one of the best and most famous novels in the horror fiction genre. Written by Arthur Bernède, "Belphégor" was an intriguing story, mix of horror, suspense and mystery, where a detective attempted to unveil the mystery behind a ghostly presence that haunted the Louvre Museum. Bernède was a man fascinated by cinema, so many of his novels were devised to be adapted to screen as soon as possible. Naturally, "Belphégor" became a silent film in 1927, however, the story reached cult status in 1965 when Bernède's novel became the basis for one of the most popular French TV series of the 60s. To many people in France, "Belphégor" is truly a revered tale of horror and mystery, but sadly, this new incarnation of Bernède's novel ends up as an average entry in French cinema."Belphégor - Le Fantôme Du Louvre", begins as an old collection of Egyptian artifacts is found in the vaults of the Museum during the works of restoration. Strangely, the artifacts are not cataloged, so they start to be checked by the Museum's team of Egyptologists. As the main Mummy of the discovery is checked, its spirit awakes, and escapes through the museum's electrical system, becoming a haunting presence in the Museum. At the same time, Lisa (Sophie Marceau), a woman who lives across the street, enters accidentally inside the Museum as the restoration work makes a hole in her basement. Soon she finds herself possessed by the free spirit of Belphégor, who now will use her body for his own evil purposes.The movie was written by a very talented team of writers (Danièle Thompson, Jérôme Tonnerre and director Jean-Paul Salomé himself), however, the final result is really disappointing considering the talents of those involved in it. "Belphégor - Le Fantôme Du Louvre" moves seriously away from Bernède's novel with the inclusion of a heavier focus in the supernatural elements, and a considerable lack in the mystery and suspense of the story (basically the elements that made the TV series popular). It's not difficult to understand why the French fans got angry as the film has little to no resemblance to the story's earlier incarnations, and seems to had used Bernède's novel only as a blueprint for a typical blockbuster action film.Director Jean-Paul Salomé confirms this intention by making this movie an action-adventure film with an obvious Hollywood style. Salomé makes the bold decision of attempting what director Stephen Sommers did with "The Mummy" (transforming a classic horror film into an action film), but sadly he fails, leaving "Belphégor" unfocused and almost without a trace of its original incarnation. Despite this huge problem, Salomé shows an effective and technically good direction, and at times his use of the camera and the work with his actors really make the film work. His follow-up to "Belphégor", a new version of the adventures of Maurice Leblanc's character "Arsène Lupin", is a better demonstration of Salomé's talents as an action film director.The film's saving grace is definitely the talented cast of the movie, as the group of actors really try to do their best job despite the script's many problems, making the film at least enjoyable. The beautiful Sophie Marceau leads the cast as Lisa, still delivering a good performance as always. Fréderic Diefenthal is her love interest, Martin, a young man decided to save Lisa from Belphégor's possession. Diefenthal is effective, and makes a good counterpart to Marceau, but the real treasures are Julie Christie and Michel Serrault, who in their supporting roles steal every scene they are in, and prove their great talent for the subtle comedy their two characters domain. It's a joy to see the two experienced actors giving their best despite the film's obvious problems.As written above, the script is the movie's biggest problem, not because it deviates from the source novel (that's hardly a sin), but because the approach the story takes seem unfocused and without direction, almost as if the writers weren't sure if to make the movie a mystery film or an action-adventure one. Clearly the purpose was to modernize an old favorite by making it attractive to the younger crowd, but it seems that in the process the writers lost the essence of Bernède's novel delivering a void soulless product. Hoever, this is not to say that the film is awful, the problem is that it just doesn't attempt to be something better, ending with just an average adventure film missing the enormous potential of the story.While this is not exactly an example of the best Modern French dark fantasy films (Pitof's "Vidocq" or Salomé's own "Arsène Lupin" are better), it's by no means a bad movie. However, I would only recommend it to die hard fans of the genre, or to fans of the actors involved, as this is simply, another mediocre and typical entry in the action-adventure genre. 5/10