Litan (1982)

Country of Origin/Production: France

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: A geologist and his anxious wife run afoul of some not-so-harmful mindless mental patients or zombies in a quaint French village. Je sais pas.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• The type of video I have has English subtitles but no translation on the opening titles. So I have no idea what it says unless I translate it myself. Fine…
• “Masks. Music and dances. In the city of Litan, every year, they celebrate the dead. But this year…”
• Ah-ah-ah the French….
• Off to a creepy start with a marching band with silver robotic face masks.
• Too much going on. The creepy band, a farmer throwing disgusting wet grass with a pitchfork, people in Halloween masks dancing, a man with a bloody face, a coffin on a river and a trapeze artist falling. All while a middle-aged lady watches in disbelief. At what exactly I don’t know. This could be a foreshadowing dream sequence. Or this is a typical night at Marine Le Pen’s estate?
• Yup. Just a dream. The lady wakes up screaming and immediately looks at a photo of her and her (late?) husband which has the words: “Til death do us part, Jock & Nora” written on it. Man, that’s kinda weird right? Someone even drew a skull and crossbones!
• She gets up and looks out her window at the very foggy courtyard and it’s just as surreal as her dream. There seems to be weird carnival setting perhaps. 
• She frantically calls the “geological studies office” and this creepy male voice tells her to meet at 9:30 at the cemetery. She also asks for Jock and the voice tells her he’s at Black Rocks wherever that may be. So Jock isn’t dead?
• Loud ominous gothic music plays when there’s a man wearing a skull mask outside looking at Nora leave her place. 

• This might be the most confusing flick I’ve seen for Schlocktoberfest. And that’s saying something!
• I guess this celebration is akin to Halloween or Day of the Dead for this town.
• Now we’re introduced to this man who is either comatose or drugged out of his gourd get helped into his van. The whole time he has this blank dead stare. His female helper turns on the van and he immediately plows into a man waiting for the bus!
• Guess Nora has to get to Black Rocks some other way now. So she hitches a ride with members the marching band with the silver masks on. Oui, they still are wearing the masks while driving.

• Hahahaha. A cop asks the comatose dude who killed the guy how can he lose control of his vehicle being an ace driver. Then tends to the dead guy and the comatose fella just slowly stumbles away.
• People just go all coo-coo on Litan’s Day.
• Some young boys (not sure if they are Boy Scouts or something like that but they are all dressed in forest ranger uniforms) are told by a teenager that every year on Litan’s Day they attempt to catch the monster. He then blows a whistle and they are off on the chase. Not sure if they really think there is a monster or if this is just playful ritual stuff for this holiday.
• Scary snake!

• Scary Phantom mask wearing dude. This ain’t Nora’s day.
• The boy rangers are still running around the forest looking for the monster but they are making squeaky toy noises somehow. It’s so weird and not-at-all intimidating.
• OK, so the boy Rangers are looking for an actual person playing the role of at the monster, which happens to be a kid named Eric who was in a Phantom of the Opera costume.
• Eric is hiding in a cave and as he stops to get some water the camera cuts away and we hear a scream. Also Jock, who’s collecting rock samples inside the cave also hears the scream and goes to investigate. He finds Eric’s body laying in the water and we see a small blue light moving in the water. Maybe it’s a Space Amoeba.
• More moving lights. 
• Some creep that works with Jock (I believe it’s Eric’s father) is trying to molest Nora as she asks him where Jock is. But a moment later Jock appears with Eric’s body. And the three of them try to get Eric some help. They will deal with the attempted rape later I suppose.
• So Nora explains to Jock that she travelled all the way over here while he was working because she dreamt he was killed. I’m willing to bet this isn’t the first time she’s done this.

• Hahahahaha, as Eric’s father is carrying his near lifeless body to get help, the other boy rangers all run up to Eric and claim they found him, meaning the monster. Stupid kids.
• Nora seems to think that Eric stopped breathing but is still alive. Zombie?
• Nora tries to explain that Bohr (Eric’s dad) tried to assault her and doesn’t want to stay at the hospital alone with him and Jock thinks it’s a minor foux pas. Jock’s a jerk.
• Eric is getting thoroughly examined by the hospital staff for about 5 minutes now and nothing of note to report. Lots of weird quirky electronic noises and the doctor just says “that’s impossible” when he examines Eric’s eye that had a reflection of some dude’s face on it.
• Outside the mayor is talking to what I can only assume are a large group of mental patients. Has the same general feel as a Trump rally.
• Nora is slowly running around the hospital when she bumps into another doctor. And immediately this doctor tries to put the moves on her. This is the most French movie I’ve ever seen. Oh L’amour. 

• I’m kind of pondering why Jock and Nora care this much for Eric and Bohr. Bohr just works under Jock.
• Pardon my French but what the fuck is wrong with that dog?!
• Jock finds Eric chained to a hospital bed still catatonic and then chases after Bohr into the next room. When Jock turns Bohr around, he’s sprayed all over with blood spurting out of Bohr’s slashed neck wound. Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
• The skull-masked fella is still lurking around. Wonder what his deal is? 
• With Eric now missing again and some other random patient in the same bed instead, Jock is being gaslit by the hospital when he tries to explain this all to the chief of police.
• Funny thing is, Jock could just go home—this really doesn’t involve him anymore.
• This hospital is more of a horror hospital than Horror Hospital.
• The chief mentions that he’s getting annoyed by Jock and his girlfriend Nora. Girlfriend? So the “Till death do us part” message on the photo was more of a promise than an actual vow? Why do I care so much?!
• Jock punches the chief for insulting him and Nora. I’m sure they all will be chatting over wine and cheese in a few scenes from now.
• The chief commands his police to apprehend Jock and Nora but I think they should locate the stolen Pink Panther diamond first.
• So just to add this now before I have to explain this later but Jock and Bohr as part of the geological studies office has placed detonators around the forest area that they were at before. Sooner or later les bombes will be crucial to the plot I’m sure.
• After the gendarmes catch up with Nora and Jock, they abandon the car and go in a factory of some sort. Here Nora sees the same farmer with the pitchfork throwing gross wet grass like in her dream. 
• Sacre Bleu! This movie is so loosey-goosey with explaining anything. As Jock and Nora are running around this factory, someone throws something at another worker causing him to fall in a vat of green-ish water. Other workers are trying to help him but he’s just stuck or something. I can’t explain what’s happening!
• I can’t even figure out what this factory is for! I can only assume it’s Grey Poupon or maybe lingerie.

• OK, so (maybe) the fella that fell in the water just turned up falling into another vat of dirty water as Nora was running past. She sees him fall in the water and then those blue glowworm-like things attach themselves to the guy and he disappears. 
• Jock says that the vat is acid and that’s why he dissolved. Yes, a vat of corrosive acid outside totally open to anyone in this courtyard. Good thinking Jock.
• As the cops are trying to locate the body of the dissolved fella, it’s revealed that that vat isn’t even filled with anything dangerous! Just like the French army!
• Le sigh. Some random Boy Scout kid is wandering the forest and finds a set of bombs and detonators lying around the rocks. But the detonators are set up with old-style wind-up alarm clocks like this is a bomb in a 1930s gangster movie.
• As Nora and Jock are trying to disarm the bombs, some random little girl approaches Nora and is then taken away by the little girl’s father who also kinda could be an infected person. His right hand is completely covered in blood too.
• Not for nothing but this seems like a small town where most people would know each other. But besides that, wouldn’t the chief of police know Jock and Bohr are doing work for the geological studies office and plan on detonating explosives for the town? Seems like something that would be planned way in advance and cleared by town officials.
• As Nora is pondering the significance or coincidence of her dream earlier, one of the bombs goes off behind her as the trapeze artist falls and the coffin from the dream is released into the river as she saw in her dream. Some of the glowworms are out and about as well after the blast.
• Now is the time of the celebration that random people start waltzing outside while the creepy band plays.

• A middle-aged fella is dancing with an older lady and she asks him who he is. He says Yann and she says that Yann is dead. The fat guy with the bloody hand asks the old lady’s husband if he’s going to allow Yann to dance with his wife and the husband, silently takes a switchblade and stabs Yann until he dies (again).
• The head research fella for the hospital (not sure if he’s a doctor or not and I can’t recall if its the same guy who examined Eric earlier but it probably is) examines the dead guy’s eye and again some weird superimposed male face comes up for a brief moment. Still don’t know who it is.

• Aw shit. That guy that was stabbed was a priest! Mon Dieu!
• I don’t know if I missed it or the film didn’t emphasize this adequately but Nora fell into the caves when the blast went off. Jock spelunked down to get her. It’s fun to say “spelunk” don’t you agree? It’s a French word for falling slowly while foraging for snails.
• The shady head research fella is pretty much the French Bill Nighy.
• Man! You should see these impressive stalagmites! Puts mine to shame.
• Just to keep up: Nora witnesses the glowworm things and tries to rationalize them with Jock. Meanwhile Frog Bill Nighy is with the chief of police discussing why they bury the dead in lead coffins and in thick stone vaults.
• An unknown ore? Or what Jock? Or what?
• Hahahahaha. Frog Bill Nighy is telling the chief that people in India purify the souls of the dead in the Ganga’s holy waters. From what I heard about Indian rivers he might be right about that.
• I don’t think now’s a good time to wax all philosophical about the afterlife Nora. You’re literally in a cave trying to escape.

• And now they’re getting all gooey and romantic. Incroyable!
• Why exactly are the chief of police and Frog Bill Nighy looking for Jock and Nora? Last I checked their only crime was being in a hospital and witnessing a man be dissolved. Is it still because Jock punched the chief?
• Plus, what’s the use of running from the police? They all live in that same town. Where are they going to go?!
• A clumsy cop falls into the water in the cave and gets absorbed by a glowworm. Frog Bill Nighy just observes it.
• Nora and Jock escape the police outside the cave by hiding in a floating coffin.
• Hey it’s that fella who rammed those pedestrians earlier. He’s back home with his family. At least that’s what it looks like but he is confused and looking at photographs trying to remember who he is. As he approaches his wife, she fires her rifle and kills him. Jock and Nora come to her aid. Jock looks throughly at the dead guy’s eyes. However, Jock wasn’t around when the other fella examined the faces in the eyes so I don’t know exactly what Jock is looking for.
• The chief also comes in and arrests Jock and Nora. For the crime of French kissing on a train platform (look it up if you don’t believe that that’s a non-non)
• Apparently Frog Bill Nighy has a catatonic wife in the hospital. Motivation.
• I don’t know if it’s just this town or whatever but most public or municipal buildings are like part old castle, part modern. I looked up the town of Litan and it doesn’t even seem to exist!
• Man, Jock doesn’t give a fuck. As the cop is placing Jock into his cell, Jock attacks him, knocks him out and gives Nora the jail keys. I understand that they are in the middle of some sort of crisis or conspiracy but they have very little facts to go on to be this mired and invested to be fighting cops. However, I’m saying this an American and if you’ve ever seen the difference between the passions of protesters between the US and the French then this more or less tracks. The French say fuck authority and civility and solve the issue with community, then deal with the aftermath. We disposed of our monarchy by writing a sternly written letter to our old king. The French used a guillotine! Vive la France!

• But Jock stayed in his cell and waited for the chief. Maybe it’s sieste time or something.
• Nora runs past a store that as luck would have it, is being robbed at knifepoint by some random hooligans. The store owner isn’t even flinching because, he too, is catatonic. 
• Nora witnesses other random townsfolk wandering around mindlessly and even the hooligans try to assault her before they get distracted by another meandering townsperson.
• Did this movie not have the budget for zombie makeup and effects so they simply made the zombie-like people just be catatonic idiots milling around?
• As Nora is frantically running around this old apartment house, I think one way she couldn’t go because of rats (enough of the fucking rats please!)[I heard squeaking but rats were never shown] and she opens up another random door and the only thing in the room is an old bald man sitting on a chair pointing a shotgun at the door when she opens it! He’s protecting that empty room with his life!
• I’m not sure if this flick is trying to be funny or just wasting time here. Nora goes into an office labelled Geological Survey and tries to talk to two men sitting there that ignore her and again catatonic. Two other women barge inn the office and demand to talk to someone and before Nora can try to explain what’s going on with the men, one man spins around to face them and says that he is probably the last man to be able to understand them. But he can’t help because … let me double-check his reason here … ah yes. The phones are down. His only advice is to leave Litan now and quick.
• Sacre Bleu! Hahahaha. Bohr’s niece comes into the jail looking for answers and Jock persuades her to take the keys off the catatonic cop sitting there to free Jock so he can help her. As she’s fumbling with the key chain on the cop, he somehow catatonically shoots off his gun, hitting the niece, moments after Jock assured her that he wouldn’t move or react.
• With the last of her breaths she slowly itches over to the jail to hand Jock the keys. However, she dies midway over and Jock can’t reach the keys now. She could also have just tossed the keys to Jock and saved her strength but that wouldn’t be as dramatic would it?
• Now the flick’s turned into the finale of The Wicker Man with most people wearing animal masks and doing creepy shit.
• Fetchez la vache!

• Nothing makes sense anymore as some members of the marching band are just running around with their instruments around town for no reason given.
• This is what Les Miserables was lacking—more people milling about mindlessly in animal Halloween masks.
• Come to think of it, these are the perfect representation of French zombies. Lazy, slow and having that air of superiority and not giving a shit. If they smoked cigarettes it would be complete.
• Actually all zombies are French; they’re named after the region. Otherwise it’s sparkling reanimated corpse.
• Ya know for a geologist, Jock sure can throw down. Here he’s kicking the ever-living shit out of another cop.
• Nothing says quiver in my boots more than having your zombies just sit or stand around just blank-staring at the living. If I wanted to see that I could just go to my local mall’s food court, merci buckets.
• Cute whimsical music starts up once Nora rounds the corner here trapped between the chief of police (who hilariously was just asking a local fishmonger if she’s seen Nora) and the Hooligans in pig masks chasing her. It’s like a cartoon.
• Did I just…was that a giant sculpture of a housefly that Nora just pushed over to block the main hooligan? What’s going on?!
• I want to know the connection between the zombies, the glowworms and the hooligans? Perhaps it’s a French Connection…

• I’m assuming that these 3 hooligans are just hooligans and have always been that way and just taking advantage of the catatonic zombie plague that’s happening to rape and pillage and they are not acting this way because of any glowworm involvement. They are French so it’s tough to tell.
• When one of the hooligans threatens the chief with a knife, the chief does the sensible thing and shoots the bastard into a brook. Now the chief witnesses the glowworms absorb a human with his own eyes. Sometimes people just to see it for themselves, ya know?
• This town full of crazies is still less crazy than the Village of the Crazies in Gymkata!
• I don’t know what exactly Nora almost walked into but it looked like a drum with 5 huge blades protruding from it. I’m only mentioning this because there’s a high chance that this mechanism will come in handy in a few moments. Also, it might be nothing and now I’m making fun of the fact that they highlighted such a random dumb thing out of place and it’s never seen again. Let’s see which option comes true!
• What exactly is Nora’s plan here in this flick other than damsel in distress? When Jock gave her the jail keys he told her to tell the office what’s happening and then go home. Again, their home is in Litan, so how is this supposed to help her. But even so, she’s been running all over town wasting time.
• So again they show that the hooligans chasing Nora stop just before the bladed drum thing and they look around in the dark trying to find Nora. I was thinking that while he’s stopped right in front of the blades that she would push the shield into them to kill him but nope. They both moved on. So (far) the bladed thing meant nothing.

 

• Nora enters this one room and two of the Hooligans corner her before Jock arrives to save her. But Jock only fights one of them, punches his lights out and the other hooligan is nowhere to be seen. Where’d he go?!
• Hahahaha. So Nora opens a door and we see that the chief of police accidentally ran or briskly walked into the blade mechanism! So there ya go!
• I get that Jock and Nora are the main heroes in this flick, however, they know virtually nothing and have only 14 minutes to come up with a plan to solve the issue. What do they think they can accomplish to save their town at this point?
• Frog Bill Nighy is conducting more tests or something on Eric asking him what it’s like to be dead. His next question should be: what’s it like to be sad?

• Why does Frog Bill Nighy keep calling Eric, Koonst? Is this not Eric? [there’s no one named Koonst in the cast list on imdb]
• Now all hell’s breaking loose! People scurrying around, random fires, sirens, people shooting people. Finally, some life in this sleepy burg!
• Still with the Koonst. Just a shot in the dark here but maybe Koonst is the face that keeps showing up in the eyes and he’s possessed the body of Eric. But the film isn’t explaining how Frog Bill Nighy knows this.
• This flick is so French. As Frog Bill Nighy is about to drive the ambulance out of town with the head nurse, she professes her love for him while laments about the loss of his catatonic wife. At no other point was it implied that the head nurse had feelings for this fella.
• Nora, Jock and a random cop they picked up in the Jeep encounter a roadblock on the outskirts of town and are forced to abandon the vehicle since there’s no way around the roadblock. The crazies then kill the cop and then steal the Jeep. Nora and Jock ran away on foot. 
• Wait a gosh darn minute! How the hell did Eric/Koonst get ahead of Nora and Jock as they meet up with Bill Nighy with the body of his near-dead wife? Can he teleport?!
• But as Bill Nighy goes to attack Koonst with a metal pole, Jock somehow comes to Koonst’s aid with a metal pole of his own. Now they’re battling it out in the lamest most weak-ass fight I’ve ever seen. Highlander, this isn’t.

• I’m also scratching my head why Jock is defending Koonst. Like, is it because it’s a matter of principle to defend a kid? He’s not questioning anything as they fight. And Bill Nighy isn’t explaining why the boy should die either.
• Anyway, while they fight, Koonst picks up Bill Nighy’s wife’s body and starts to walk into the lake and then both of them dissolve and two glowworms swim away. As that’s happening, Jock gets the upper hand and knocks Bill Nighy into the lake. The two glowworms then absorb into his body.
• Jock and Nora then hitch a ride on a canoe. Where are they going? I seriously have zero clue.
• Jock may be a great geologist but he can’t row a canoe for shit.
• As Nora and Jock row into a cave (more caves?!) they float right into a whole nest of glowworms!
• Meanwhile, back in Litan, the French zombies are now in church and the priest prays to God that he show them mercy to not die twice. As he’s praying, Nora’s eye has Jock’s face superimposed on it. While other random people’s eyes have other random faces show up in their eyes. So deep!

Final Thoughts: I’ve seen a slew of zombie flicks in my travels and I’ve seen some bad ones here and there but nothing can compete with Litan’s weirdness. Don’t get me wrong—Litan is not a good zombie flick. Nor is it a good horror flick. It’s pretty much a complete waste of time and brings nothing new to the table. The quasi-religious, spiritual, philosophical aspect of the flick doesn’t really work and the horror aspect is all but zombie’s lazily lumber around staring mindlessly. It’s the exact opposite argument for people who disagree with running zombies. I think there was 3 kills and only one was made by a zombie and that was when the fella plowed into another with a van. I mean, sure, the zombie sub-genre is tired and formulaic so I can sort of give some credit that they tied it in with a folk festival/holiday honoring the dead but whether they lumber along slowly or bolt at you foaming at the mouth, at least make your zombies intimidating. Most of the time, our protagonists simply avoided being attacked (huge overstatement of a word) by walking past them. Couple that with a very weak plot about (possible) possession that never was fully explained to further befuddle the audience. Simply stated, Litan is a mess which is shame because I kinda had high hopes for this one.

How French 🇫🇷 is it: There was no crowd breaking out singing La Marseillaise or anything but it probably should have because this film didn’t really feel French but it definitely oozes Western European. There was no croissants, crêpes, or even a raspberry beret from a second-hand store! C’est la vie! Tariff rate: 40%

Score: 3 Michelin Stars (out of 10)