Summary
The gendarmes of St Tropez face their biggest challenge yet: aliens from another planet!
Having seen a flying saucer parked in a field, Cruchot tries in vain to alert his adjutant
Gerbier of the threat. But too late: the aliens, who can change their appearance
to resemble any human being, have already infiltrated the gendarmerie...
Review
The most popular of the six Gendarmes films, Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres was
the biggest box office hit in France in 1979, attracting an impressive 6.2 million spectators.
Although the Gendarme formula is beginning to look a little tired, by extending the range
of the series into science-fiction parody the production team found a new lease of life.
If you don’t take the film too seriously (in fact it would be very difficult to take the
film at all seriously), Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres is a hugely entertaining
comic romp. The film provides a comic tour de force for Louis de Funès and
Michel Galabru, who have by now developed a brilliant double act – Galabru the straight
man to de Funès’ brand of over-the-top comedy. De Funès certainly gets some
of his funniest material in this film – dressing up as a nun, slapping sunbathers to find
out whether they are aliens or not (the aliens are apparently made of metal), not to mention
sticking a sharp object up his colonel’s rear end. And much more.
Whether by accident or by design, the film is a brilliant send-up of the entire B-movie
scri-fi genre, complete with easily-destructible aliens and a fibre glass spaceship on
which every expense was obviously spared. Any resemblance to Spielberg's Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (which went on release the year before this film went
into production) is of course purely accidental...
© James Travers 2001
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