All Hallows: Hitchcock in Dinard

For over 30 years, the Dinard Festival du Film Britannique has awarded the Hitchcock D'Or (Golden Hitchcock) to the British film that best ... the best film that Britishes the best ... I have no idea.

But then again I don't know how other prizes in the arts are awarded, either. But I do know that the seaside town of Dinard in Bretagne had the good taste to erect a statue of Alfred Hitchcock, paying homage to one of his two authentic horror films, The Birds (1963). The master of suspense has a crow on one shoulder and a gull on the other--and is coated liberally in bird shit. If this trailer for the film is any indication, Hitchcock would have appreciated this subtle touch immensely.

The movie is set in and around San Francisco and Bodega Bay, but the screenplay was based on a 1952 short story set in Cornwall, England by British author Daphne du Maurier--whose name at least sounds French, so maybe that is the Dinard connection.

As if to salvage the French connection to horror cinema, the 1958 movie The Fly starring Vincent Price was based on a 1957 short story by Paris-born author George Langelaan. Mais non, the setting is Montreal, and it was published in English by an upstart American magazine called Playboy.

That pretty much leaves 1960's Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face) as France's only really classic horror movie. Diabolique (1955) is perhaps the other, and is much truer to Hitchcock's sensibilities.

If you have not seen Les Yeux, there is no reason for me to rehash it. It's truly horrifying--especially for the black and white era--and serves as a precursor to slasher, torture, and body horror movies of later decades.

None of which are my thing at all--and none of this explains the Billy Idol song, except that "les yeux sans visage" is repeated in the background as part of the chorus. I guess that mystery will endure for the ages.