Terreur Crepusculaire from Technoir Classics by Autographic

“Terreur Crépusculaire“ (“Terror at Twilight”)
From the film A l'Ombre des Tours de Silicone (In the Shadow of the Silicon Towers) (1985)
Directed David Laser

While Technoir was generally considered a parochial movement confined to a single 10-year span and localized in New York City and its boroughs, there were a few notable international flowerings of the genre that managed to turn heads in the city of its birth. One of the most enticing of these was the sexy, slow-burning “Terreur Crépusculaire,” also called “Terror At Twilight” during its brief two-week run amid more prurient competitors at Time’s Square’s dodgy Victory theater.

Owing as much to the sexually charged cinema of Pasoloni and Bertolucci as it does the bumping rhythms of Electro-gods Newlceus and Twilight 22, “Terreur…” is an unsurprisingly conflicted film. Some of the film’s scenes float past the viewer offering a bemused and often clinical look at sex, drugs and various other pleasure seeking vices; five minutes later, the film sinks into a morass of sensual indulgence and hedonism. Chaotic and aloof, at once, and yet there is something admirable in the film’s many failings. Throughout its 130 minute run-time, manic bursts of violence and energy are juxtaposed with serene moments of plaintive contemplation as its heroine – a charismatic signer played with effortless strength by Parisian Kloé Artaud – fights to catch her band’s killers before they reach the Soviet border.

Autographic is Darby McDevitt. Sometimes other friends join in the fun. Darby was born in Spokane, educated in Bellingham and Dublin, and sharpened in Seattle. He now lives in Montreal where he is a Narrative Director at Ubisoft Montreal.

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