Fear City: A Family-Style Comedy

Fear City: A Family-Style Comedy (La Cite de la peur, 1994) is Alain Berberian's French spoof, free to watch online on iFILM. Picture the Cannes Film Festival, a hammer-and-sickle killer, and absurdity packed into every frame.

A cheap slasher called Red Is Dead is heading to Cannes, and publicist Odile Deschamps is there to promote it. One problem: before every screening, somebody murders the projectionist exactly the way the movie does it, in a welder's mask, with a hammer and a sickle. To save the premiere, Odile (Chantal Lauby) hires a hopeless bodyguard, Simon (Alain Chabat), while bumbling inspector Biales (Dominique Farrugia) chases the culprit. None of them makes a sensible decision, but the gags pile up three films deep.

The script was written and performed by the comedy trio Les Nuls, and in France it has long been quoted line for line; Chabat's deadpan dance to Carl Orff became a meme decades before memes existed. This is pure farce for fans of Naked Gun style nonsense, only with a French accent and the Cannes circus as its target. Stream Fear City (1994) online on iFILM.