RIP Jean-Marie Pallardy

 

Jean-Marie Pallardy (1940-2024)

Le Film du jour

December 14, 2024

 

Considered a pioneer of French erotic cinema, director, actor and producer Jean-Marie Pallardy died on December 12, 2024 at the age of 84.

A former model, Jean-Marie Pallardy entered the world of cinema in the late 1960s by directing a few short films, then in 1971 he directed and produced L'Insatisfaite, his first feature film, which was already banned for those under 18. In the process, the budding director launched into the "soft porn" niche (a type of film where the cast makes love all the time in a more or less simulated way, but without X-rated shots). He then offered stunned viewers breathtaking views of nipples and buttocks in Érotisme à l'étude (1972), also known as Dossier érotique d'un notaire.

Jean-Marie Pallardy, who played in all his films, followed up with The Erotic Journal of a Lumberjack (1973) with Claudine Beccarie - who would later appear in X-rated films and in the famous documentary Exhibition (1975) by Jean-François Davy - and the Dutch actress Willeke Van Ammelrooy, who would become the director's muse.

The pretty Dutch woman can be found in the credits of the two erotic and parodic westerns that Pallardy shot in the mid-1970s: The Backside Will Whistle Three Times and Rules for Women at OQ Corral (1975). The director made a few more erotic films such as Love Among Heavyweights (1975) and The Doner (1979) before launching into real X-rated films in the 1980s under the pseudonym Boris Pradley (or Pradlay).

After 1975, Jean-Marie Pallardy did not limit himself to directing a few X-rated films. He also directed feature films that skillfully mixed detective fiction with a touch of eroticism. After L'Amour aux trousses (1974) - with Willeke Van Ammelrooy and Corinne Marchand - the director directed Le Ricain (1975) with Jess Hahn and bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell, then Une femme spéciale (1979) with Gordon Mitchell again and Karin Schubert - previously seen as a Spanish queen in La Folie des grandeurs by Gérard Oury.

Gordon Mitchell is again featured in White Fire (1984). He shares the bill with Jess Hahn and Fred Williamson, a leading actor of "blaxploitation" that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez will rehabilitate in From Dusk Till Dawn in 1995.

In the 1980s, Jean-Marie Pallardy, still working independently, would have more and more difficulty making films. He nevertheless participated in the production of Bruce Contre-attaque (1982), an improbable kung-fu film with Bruce Le (sic!), a Bruce Lee substitute. Gordon Mitchell would make another appearance in Overdose (1987), then it would be the turn of David Carradine (not yet back in the saddle with Tarantino's Kill Bill) to appear in the credits of The Donor/Femmes ou maîtres (2000). In 2007, Jean-Marie Pallardy had published a detective novel called "Amours parallèles" put into images in 2009 with bits of string under the title Kill for Love.

PALLARDY, Jean-Marie

Born: 1/16/1940, Auvergne, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Died: 12/12/2024, France

 

Jean-Marie Pallardy’s westerns – actor:

Gunfight at OQ Corral – 1974 (Indian) [director, writer]

Lucky Lucky and the Daltons - 1974 (John Keykett) [director, writer]

Pornowest – 1981 (halfbreed) [director, writer]