''Les Trottoirs de Bangkok'' ( en, The Sidewalks of Bangkok, italic=yes, also known as ''Bangkok Interdit'') is a 1984 French erotic thriller film directed by

Jean Rollin Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil (3 November 193815 December 2010) was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his work in the fantastique genre. Overview Rollins' career, spanning over fifty years, featured early short film ...

. The film was inspired by the 1932

Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film '' Frankenstein'' (1931) (his 82nd film) established ...

film ''

The Mask of Fu Manchu ''The Mask of Fu Manchu'' (1932) is an American pre-Code adventure film directed by Charles Brabin. Written by Irene Kuhn, Edgar Allan Woolf and John Willard, it was based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Sax Rohmer (the sixth in the serie ...

''. The film was released in France on 24 October 1984 by Cyrile Distribution.

Hubert Toyot Hubert is a Germanic masculine given name, from ''hug'' "mind" and ''beraht'' "bright". It also occurs as a surname. Saint Hubertus or Hubert (c. 656 – 30 May 727) is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers. ...

worked as a cameraman in this film. In contrast to Rollin's usual themes of vampires, dream-like atmosphere and crumbling

château A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions. Now ...

s, ''Les Trottoirs des Bangkok'' mixes themes of adventure, crime and mystery with

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

dialogue, while still featuring naked women and sex, which his films were known for.

Plot

Rick, a French secret service agent, is shot and killed. His friend Jacques retrieves Rick's camera, which contains shots of a young woman named Eva. The secret service concludes that she possesses the item Rick was killed for, a deadly substance that would kill an entire city if released. The secret service fly back to Bangkok to search for Eva, who works in a local brothel. Two women break into the secret service apartment, kill a man and retrieve the film canister; these women work for an evil syndicate which is run by a lady who is also in search of Eva. Since the secret service cannot afford to fly out to Paris, the syndicate get to Eva first. Eva is helped by Claudine, another woman who works for the syndicate, who tries to arrange for Eva to be taken away on board a cargo ship and smuggled into France. Claudine arranges the murder of a French secret service agent and poses as the dead agent's wife when Agent Roger arrives. She takes him to the nightclub, where they pretend that Eva is nowhere to be found. During this visit, the film and its nature are revealed. Claudine tries to protect Eva, but they are captured by the syndicate. Eva is chained up and whipped. Claudine tries to save her but is killed. It turns out that Rick was not murdered after all. He shows up to rescue Eva, killing everyone, then tells Eva that he must kill her too. Eva overpowers him and kills him instead.

Cast

* Yoko as Eva * Françoise Blanchard as Claudine * Jean-Claude Benhamou as Le Chef des Espions * Jean-Pierre Bouyxou as Capitaine Bouyxou * Jean-Paul Bride as Tong *

Gérard Landry Landry Fernand Charles Marrier de Lagatinerie (16 October 1912 – 18 September 1999), known professionally as Gérard Landry, was an Argentinian actor. He began acting in 1932 with his first movie ''Mirages de Paris'', acted for over fifty ...

as Rick * Brigitte Borghese as Rita * Chokie * Michel Guibe * Antonina Laurent * Pierre Pattin * Tiane Pochier * Olivier Rollin * André-Richard Volniévy *

as Un Tueur (uncredited)

Home media

''Les Trottoirs de Bangkok'' was released on VHS in France on 18 August 1999 by LCJ. The film was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in the United States on 27 August 2002 by Image Entertainment in a widescreen edition, and in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2004 by

Redemption Films {{unsourced, date=February 2021 Salvation Group is a UK-based media company, specialising in exploitation film and alternative music. The company's original name and current trading name is Redemption Films. The Salvation Group was dissolved in No ...

in full frame.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1984 films 1984 action thriller films 1980s crime action films 1980s crime thriller films 1980s erotic thriller films 1980s spy thriller films Biological weapons in popular culture Films directed by Jean Rollin Films set in Bangkok French action thriller films French crime action films French crime thriller films French erotic thriller films French spy thriller films Girls with guns films 1980s French-language films 1980s French films