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MIMSY FARMER, JEAN GABIN & ALAIN DELON 'TWO MEN IN TOWN'

2026-08-11T00:00:06.162-07:00

Mimsy Farmer and Michel Bouquet in TWO MEN IN TOWN Year: 1973 Rating: ***1/2

French New Wave director José Giovanni's TWO MEN IN TOWN is obviously inspired by Victor Hugo's LES MISÉRABLES, but for a 1970's crime fan it will be most reminiscent of the late-seventies STRAIGHT TIME starring Dustin Hoffman...

Based on a 1973 novel NO BEAST SO FIERCE (same year as this feature) by Edward Bunker, particularly the second-act plot-line involving a badgering police inspector, who had originally arrested bank robber Alain Delon for the ten years that social worker Jean Gabin gets him out early from in the film's semi-optimistic prelude...

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Hoffman battles M. Emmett Walsh's stubborn parole officer, who, like the investigator here, is dead-set on getting the ex-con back in prison... even (in both cases) throwing him behind bars for a couple of humiliating days...

That's despite having a good job and a new girlfriend in American turned European starlet Mimsy Farmer, ironically working at a bank and part of the reason that Delone winds up being...

Gérard Depardieu and Victor Lanoux in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Well that shouldn't be spoiled... yet the anti capital-punishment aspect not only takes up the entire third act, it derails two potentially thrilling story-lines: one involving Delone's former partners-in-crime (including potential young firebrand Gérard Depardieu), who keep showing up unannounced, and that tenacious detective (Michel Bouquet), putting the heat on Delon: for having met with those crooks...

Overall, despite great camera angles and fine leading and side performances (including extremely beautiful Ilaria Occhini as Delone's short-lived wife and his feisty red-headed lawyer Malka Ribowska), TWO MEN starts feeling like a collection of cautionary tale vignettes... and all of the intriguing crime-genre aspects become a deliberate means to a tragically predicable end...

Alain Delon and Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Especially once the agenda becomes clear, with Jean Gabin's narration more sermonizing than expository — his character feels more like the director's political mouthpiece than an actual person...

Like Stanley Kubrick's far superior yet equally dismal anti-war classic PATHS OF GLORY, also about France's severe death penalty, if there's no hope for the main characters, there's no real hope for an audience.

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Malka Ribowska in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Gérard Depardieu and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer and Michel Bouquet in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Mimsy Farmer in Two Men in Town with Alain Delon, Cécile Vassort, Christine Fabréga and Jean Gabin

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon, Cécile Vassort and Jean Gabin

Cécile Vassort in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon and Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

MIMSY FARMER IN RUGGERO DEODATO'S 'CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79'

2026-08-10T12:47:58.225-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79 Year: 1979 Rating: ***1/2

A year before Italian auteur Ruggero Deodato invented the found-footage horror-genre with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, he directed the mainstream CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79, a slight-of-hand effort deliberately mirroring THE CONCORD: AIRPORT '79, the last AIRPORT outing before the blockbuster spoof AIRPLANE killed the franchise by spoofing it...

Both are basically crime-thrillers combining the usual airline disaster melodrama... but Deodato's Italian import spends the entire first two acts hardly involving the record-breaking passenger-jet-plane: other than an opening scene where it crashes into the ocean...

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Co-starring American actress turned European-cinema scream-queen Mimsy Farmer (somewhat aged, resembling more of a hot young aunt than a gorgeous young ingenue): she's the lone stewardess during that doomed passenger-less test flight... not shown facially during the studio-shot crash landing (obviously using a double), and, having survived, she's kidnapped by a motley group of Italian thugs...

Here's where much of the espionage-driven story takes place: not with Farmer but another American import in handsome James Franciscus, a roving journalist given a tip to search the ocean for the missing jet that, it turns out, is being hidden by mogul Joseph Cotten, whose corporation wanted the Concorde to seem dangerous to create their own fast-moving vehicle...

Joseph Cotten in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

The expository scenes occur in stuffy offices that resemble any low-budget Italian effort, combining American actors with Italian while all are pretty badly dubbed... but Franciscus's oceanic diving mission matters most, despite the underwater sequences often dragging...

But the plot and overall pacing ignites tremendously once the two leads get together: Franciscus finally rescues Mimsy Farmer (who the thugs are using to blackmail Cotten since she survived the first rigged crash), leading to a kind of NORTH BY NORTHWEST style run-and-dodge-bullets action flick, occurring concurrently with what the American AIRPORT/CONCORDE vehicle does for the entire 90-minute ride...

Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Providing the titular plane full of eclectic passengers, here piloted by American veteran actor Van Johnson... and Mimsy Farmer finally means more than just a tattered damsel since, as a witness, she may hold the clue to how the rudimentary crash occurred: to keep the second disaster from happening...

How CONCORD AFFAIRE really works is putting the literally grounded characters in more palpable danger than the passengers above, combining a fast-paced spy adventure with the inevitable last minute airline thriller that, backed by TENTACLES composer Stelvio Cipriani's signature techno-score-as-if-played-inside-a-jazzy-guitar-nightclub, is even more fulfilling than the big budget vehicle it clones: more proof that the once financially successful AIRPORT franchise was on its very last... wings at this point.

James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Van Johnson in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

From CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Alessandra Stordy in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

From CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Maria D'Incoronato in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Maria D'Incoronato in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Venantino Venantini and Edmund Purdom in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Maria D'Incoronato in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

Mimsy Farmer in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

James Franciscus in CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79

MIMSY FARMER MOTHERING RUGGERO DEODATO'S 'BODY COUNT'

2026-08-09T20:01:48.545-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT Year: 1988 Rating: ***

With CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, groundbreaking Italian auteur Ruggero Deodato invented the found-footage horror sub-genre that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT reinvented decades later, so it's no real sin that he ripped off American slasher franchise FRIDAY THE 13TH: which already had about six films by 1988...

Both involving teenagers who get picked off in the woods by a masked menace... the supposed spirit of an Indian Shaman from long ago... making this a genuine BODY COUNT horror, built right into the title...

Bruce Penhall in BODY COUNT

Problem is, there are way too many victims when only real-life motocross champ Bruce Penhall and mousy-cute Italian starlet Luisa Maneri, with a few of their camper-camping friends, really matter, including a fat guy providing a fake-jump-scare while wearing a spooky mask... exactly like the legendary Larry Zerner did introducing the hockey mask into the third 13th...

Leaving the most intriguing aspect for the b-story involving a very important actress playing an attractive middle-aged wife/mother... as American-born Mimsy Farmer, initially appearing in 1960's counter-culture exploitation flicks, wound up a French resident/1970's Euro scream-queen... so she'd have been one of the pretty young victims only a decade earlier...

Luisa Maneri and Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT

As the secret lover of Charles Napier's stalwart sheriff while married to abusive SWAMP THING antagonist David Hess, their dark soap operatic story-line isn't given enough screen time the same way the young campers aren't distinguished enough for their hunt-and-chase demises to really matter...

Overall feeling like Italian horror icon Ruggero Deodato doing visual genre calisthenics, making rural Italy look like rural America whilst providing a few creative death sequences... unfortunately it's all in one bloody ear and out the other.

Luisa Maneri in BODY COUNT

Mimsy Farmer and David Hess in BODY COUNT

Charles Napier in BODY COUNT

Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT

Luisa Maneri and Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT

Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT

MIMSY FARMER IN 'DEVIL'S ANGELS' STARRING JOHN CASSAVETES

2026-08-08T22:14:15.316-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in DEVIL'S ANGELS Year: 1967 Rating: **1/2

In the same year, the peak of the hippie counter-culture, 1967, American blonde starlet Mimsy Farmer plays a vulnerable young ladies attacked/sexually-assaulted by a group of drugged-up men in both RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP and DEVIL'S ANGELS...

Only here, based on the Hell's Angels court-case documented in Hunter Thompson's novel, the titular DEVIL'S ANGELS only brutally attack the poor girl, not actually raping her (or having enough time to since she gets away)... and this movie wants that gross distinction to be completely clear...

Mimsy Farmer in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Sounds insanely sickening, but these were the days of rudimentary progressive insight that punctuated the fact it was still a man's world... as in, a roadful of marauding goons...

As DEVIL'S is produced by exploitation mogul Roger Corman, having had a surprise hit with the Peter Fonda vehicle THE WILD ANGELS the previous year...

Beverly Adams and John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

It's lower-budgeted and feels like something from one of those throwaway b-westerns... which the entire biker sub-genre really is: extremely cheap to make and taking place in rural towns that get violently taken over...

As lead star John Cassavetes, a year away from his breakthrough as an unapologetic scene-stealing cut-throat in THE DIRTY DOZEN, is the only biker with a conscience...

Leo Gordon and John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

And with voluptuous vixen Beverly Adams literally at his back, he has to deal with his own group of cut-throat rowdies while attempting to deal with tough but logical sheriff Leo Gordon...

In an extremely brutal vehicle with two acts instead of three: many riding in but only one riding out and, with some groovy rock tunes backing the perpetual bedlam, DEVIL'S ANGELS is a decent enough time-filler that grates on the nerves... perhaps intentionally.

From DEVIL'S ANGELS

Mimsy Farmer in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Leo Gordon and John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Beverly Adams and John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Mimsy Farmer in DEVIL'S ANGELS

John Cassavetes and Russ Bender in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Leo Gordon in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Beverly Adams in DEVIL'S ANGELS

John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Beverly Adams and John Cassavetes in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Mimsy Farmer in DEVIL'S ANGELS

Beverly Adams in DEVIL'S ANGELS

MIMSY FARMER AND RITA HAYWORTH TAKING 'THE ROAD TO SALINA'

2026-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA Year: 1970 Rating: ****1/2

At the end of Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL VOLUME 2, a cascading prog-rock instrumental backs a beautiful American blonde, driving through rural Mexico, for the conclusion of her revenge-epic mission...

As both the song and situation were lifted from French auteur Georges Lautner's Spanish-shot/set 1970 giallo/noir THE ROAD TO SALINA when a gorgeous car-driving American blonde is instead just arriving...

Rita Hayworth in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Inevitably providing brooding protagonist Robert Walker Jr. a reason for the dire situation during the sporadic frame story (including an ongoing narration), telling a local lawman his tale about showing up at a middle-of-nowhere gas station/cafe, run by an older woman played by Hollywood Golden Age icon Rita Hayworth...

The GILDA star still looks somewhat attractive as a world-weary lady suffering the kind of heart-broken loneliness (courted only by affable old-timer Ed Begley) that's usually given to aging post-ingenues...

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Here finding plot-central solace in being completely convinced that Walker, a road traipsing loner who happens upon this vacantly-dismal central locale, is her son who died three-years previously...

An enigmatic and bizarre dilemma making Walker the kind of vulnerable character both thoroughly confused and utterly determined... doubly-ignited once gorgeous blonde Mimsy Farmer (who had recently driven another handsome lone-wolf nuts in the counter-culture drama MORE) shows up...

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

With wide sad-eyes and a sullen full-bottom-lip pout between tremendously bright smiles, American-imported Euro-starlet Farmer predictably mesmerizes Walker in the cliche noir fashion, quickly turning him into a smitten sap... yet he still investigates the gothic mystery of why he's being called Rita Hayworth's returning-from-the-dead son and Mimsy's long-lost brother: despite the latter quickly making him her own personal beach-sprawled lover...

Actually, two ROAD TO SALINA soundtrack songs were used by Tarantino... here injecting sporadic momentum into a deliberately slow-burn thriller, character-driven by two great-looking male and female leads while keeping the viewer guessing throughout director Lautner's creative camera-angles and searing close-ups, where the lost souls are as equally doomed as the sparse POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE-inspired purgatory location.

Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker Jr. and David Sachs in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker J. and Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer and Rita Hayworth in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer and Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Sophie Hardy in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA with Bruce Pecheur

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer and Marc Porel in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Marc Porel in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer and Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Sophie Hardy in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Mimsy Farmer and Rita Hayworth in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Robert Walker Jr. in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Ed Begley in THE ROAD TO SALINA

Albane Navizet in THE ROAD TO SALINA

From THE ROAD TO SALINA

MIMSY FARMER KILLS DARIO ARGENTO'S 'FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET'

2026-08-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET Year: 1971 Rating: ***1/2

American actress Mimsy Farmer really went native after moving to France and starring in European horror flicks after merely co-starring in counter-culture melodramas (like HOT RODS TO HELL) stateside...

That is, in several of the Euro-thrillers, she would have an accent, speaking a kind of broken English, like it's not her original language, sometimes even choosing each word... very... carefully...

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

But she's not the main character in Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, where another American in ruggedly handsome Michael Brandon plays drums in the kind of prog-rock band that would soundtrack Dario Argento's signature bloody/groovy features...

And as one of the most artistic auteurs of the Giallo horror movement, Argento's human characters aren't much more important than the colorful interiors or local Italian exterior locales...

Laura Troschel (as Costanza Spada) in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Sometimes getting right down to the wire, literally in one particular telephone sequence: yet always filming inanimate objects with the kind of precision that Alfred Hitchcock would direct a murder...

Speaking of: there's one close-up death sequence by the mysteriously creepy mask-wearing, unknown-to-the-audience killer where exotic Francine Racette falls down a staircase, like Martin Balsam in PSYCHO...

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

With chaste vulnerability matching her perfect model looks, long brunette-haired Racette... contrasting Mimsy's short usual blond cut... is more of a dependably effective scream-queen, playing her cousin having an affair with Brandon, Farmer's flaky husband...

Who's been blackmailed inside a Victorian-style theater right out of Argento's plushly visual wheelhouse, and for a starring role he's a bit morose and backseat-mellow... being a rock drummer, after all... leaving some of the best moments to comic-relief gay gumshoe Jean-Pierre Marielle...

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Overall not one of Dario Argento's best, nor does it equal Mimsy Farmer's more fleshed-out (literally in some cases) features like THE ROAD TO SALINA or THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK...

Meanwhile, the eclectic multi-character investigation process takes away Brandon's potential, or Farmer's method of speaking volumes with merely a pouting bottom lip narrowing sullen green eyes...

Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

But FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET is one of those unique 1970's art-house horror-thriller-whodunnits that seems almost deliberately punishing to an audience since, by the end, everything becomes clearer...

As our otherwise passive male and female leads are finally (and desperately) pushed to the forefront — of what's mostly vibrant backdrops and visually creative camera-angled shots otherwise.

Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer and Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET with Mimsy Farmer

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET with Michael Brandon

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon and Jean-Pierre Marielle in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET with Michael Brandon

Jean-Pierre Marielle in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Francine Racette in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

From FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET with Michael Brandon

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Michael Brandon in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

From FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

Mimsy Farmer in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

MIMSY FARMER HEADLINES 'THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK'

2026-08-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Mimsy Farmer in THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK Year: 1974 Rating: ****

Ultimately paying third-act homage to ROSEMARY'S BABY while plot-proceeding John Cassavetes's OPENING NIGHT... an indie-drama version of an Italian Giallo where Gena Rowlands hallucinates a beautiful young girl... Italian auteur Francesco Barilli's THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK has long-haired blonde American ingenue turned European short-cropped blonde starlet Mimsy Farmer seeing her dead mother, guided around by her younger self in scream-queen Lara Wendel...

Which all ends up inspiring another future horror flick, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME... not to be spoiled since Farmer's "Industrial Scientist" character Silvia Hacherman spends most of the time like a deer-in-headlights, perfect for an actress possessing a unique kind of powerfully magnetic vulnerability: able to speak volumes without saying very much, and she's rarely been more beautiful — and she's always really beautiful...