Killing Car (1993)

Killing Car (La femme dangereuse) is a late Jean Rollin film and it’s quite different in many respects from his earlier vampire and zombie movies.

In 1993 Jean Rollin had some money in his pocket. He had about enough to buy himself a cup of coffee and a couple of croissants but he decided to do without the coffee and croissants and use the money to make a movie instead. This is what being a film-maker is all about. If you have no money but you have talent and determination you just go ahead and make the movie. Jean-Luc Godard once said that to make a movie all you need is a girl and a gun. In this case Rollin had a girl, a gun and a car.

The girl is known only as the Car Woman. She’s played by Australian-born Tiki Tsang. Sadly it’s her only film credit.

The movie opens in a junk yard where a sleazy scrap dealer is trying to sell an American car. He thinks that an Asian woman (Tiki Tsang) might be interested in the car but she has other ideas. She strips off her top, he embraces her, she shoots him.

The scrap dealer’s girlfriend isn’t happy about this and she has a gun as well. A gun battle ensues. The girlfriend enlists the help of a group of whores. Thus being a Jean Rollin film the junk yard just happens to be next door to a fun fair so there’s a running gun battle in the fun fair. I love this movie already.

The crazy beginning is vaguely reminiscent of the surreal opening sequence of Rollin’s Requiem for a Vampire (and I’m pretty certain that it was intended to remind us of his earlier movie). Logically it doesn’t make sense but we’re dealing with the logic of surrealism. And all of Rollin’s movies, even in the case of Killing Car where there’s a superficial feel of grittiness, are exercises in cinematic surrealism. In Killing Car the surrealism is subtle but it’s there.

The Car Woman kills some more people. At each murder scene she leaves behind a toy car. That’s the only clue the cops have. It’s a vital clue, it’s the key to the whole mystery, but the police are baffled as to what it means. Eventually its significance will be revealed but the Car Woman’s motivations remain slightly mysterious.

She kills remorselessly. She’s like a machine.

What’s even more baffling is that there is no obvious connection between any of the victims. Perhaps she’s a serial killer, driven by some weird kink. But she isn’t. There’s a reason for her killing. It’s obviously revenge, but this is not a straightforward revenge killing movie.

Tiki Tsang’s performance works for me. She doesn’t do a great deal and she has very little dialogue but she has screen presence and she has the look - the look of a crazy chick who kills without mercy or emotion. The fact that she displays no emotion makes her effectively chilling. Rollin knew what he was doing when he cast her.

Rollin pulls off some very fine murder set-pieces in this movie.

This is Rollin moving slightly outside of his comfort zone. There are no mysterious ruined castles. It’s all stark urban landscapes. This is something Rollin did occasionally, The Night of the Hunted being an example. But in The Night of the Hunted he made the industrial landscape seem otherworldly. Here he makes it seem gritty and realistic. The movie is a real rarity in Rollin’s filmography in that it appears to take place in everyday reality. It’s the events that occur, and the performance of Tiki Tsang, that give us the uneasy feeling that maybe these characters are not quite inhabiting our world. Or at least not psychologically inhabiting our world.

Killing Car also has, in a subtle way, the feel of a classic revenge western. Tiki Tsang could be the mysterious stranger who rides into town, except that she arrives in a 1950s American car rather than on horseback. If Clint Eastwood played the Man With No Name then Tiki Tsang plays the Woman With No Name, and her performance is a bit Clint Eastwood-like.

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the scythe used to such good effect by Brigitte Lahaie in Fascination then Killing Car will answer your question in a scene clearly intended to evoke his 1979 masterpiece.

The old Redemption DVD offers an OK transfer. It’s full-frame which is probably correct - the original negatives are lost but the framing in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio looks right. There are no extras to speak of. The movie was shot in 16mm (actually on Super 16 film) and it looks grimy and grainy and scuzzy but again this feels right and was probably how Rollin wanted the move to look.

Killing Car is an oddity but it’s a surprisingly effective change of pace for the director. It still has the characteristic Rollin moodiness. Killing Car is highly recommended.