Haute Tension

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Haute Tension
Original French-language poster
Directed by	Alexandre Aja
Produced by	Alexandre Arcady Robert Benmussa
Written by	Alexandre Aja Grégory Levasseur
Starring	Cécile de France Maïwenn Le Besco
Music by	Francois-Eudes Chanfrault
Cinematography	Maxime Alexandre
Editing by	Baxter
Distributed by	Lions Gate Films
Release date(s)	June 18, 2003 September 24, 2004 June 10, 2005 August 8, 2006
Running time	91 min.
Country	France
Language	French English Italian
Budget	€2,200,000
Gross revenue	$6,291,958 (US)
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

High tension may also refer to high voltage.

Haute Tension (also known as Switchblade Romance in the UK and High Tension in the U.S.) is a French slasher film originally released in 2003, and later released in 2004 in the UK and 2005 in the U.S. and Canada. The film, directed by Alexandre Aja, stars Cécile de France, Maïwenn Le Besco and Philippe Nahon.

Haute Tension was picked up by independent distributor Lions Gate Films following a successful screening at the Midnight Madness section of the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. Originally rated NC-17 in the USA, a few minor shots were cut from the final version of the U.S. release to get it down to the R rating. However, the original cut—referred to as an unrated version—is available on DVD.

All of the effects are created by renowned horror make-up artist Giannetto De Rossi, a favorite of late director Lucio Fulci.

There are glaring similarities between Haute Tension and an earlier published novel by Dean Koontz that was also made into a miniseries titled Intensity. Haute Tension seems to mirror Dean Koontz's published words almost scene by scene but then veers off into an entirely different ending.^{[citation needed]}

1 Scenes cut for an R rating
2 Reception
3 Similarity to Dean Koontz's novel Intensity
4 External links

[edit] Scenes cut for an R rating

Some scenes were edited from Haute Tension for the U.S. version to achieve an R rating by the MPAA. About two minutes of the film were cut in order to avoid the NC-17 Rating. The R-rated edition was released in U.S. cinemas, and in a less widely circulated DVD. This section notes what was deleted from the unrated, original French film to produce the American version.

Alex's father is graphically decapitated with a bookcase, his headless neck spraying blood. In the R-rated version, the initial killing is implicit rather than explicit, and later, during a flashback, his killing is gone.
The scene of the killer applying a concrete saw to the stomach of the man driving the car was shortened.
When Alex's mother has her throat slashed, the scene is shortened; most of the arterial spurting, as the killer pulls back her head, is gone. The shot of her severed hand also is removed, leaving no indication of what exactly happened to her.
The scene where Marie strikes the killer's face in with the barbed wire pole is shortened and less explicit; Marie hits the killer fewer times, and there are fewer details of the killer's wounds shown.

[edit] Reception

Haute Tension received more positive reviews in Europe than it did in North America. Many critics derided the implausibility of several plot points related to the film's twist.[1]

The London-based band Switchblade Romance derives its name from the film, and claim that it is one of its biggest influences.

[edit] Similarity to Dean Koontz's novel Intensity

Many critics of Haute Tension have cited that, up until the climactic twist, the film's plot bears a striking resemblance to that of Dean Koontz's 1996 novel Intensity, which also deals with a young woman visiting the rural home of her friend's family, witnessing a brutal massacre in which all or most of the family members are killed (in the film, Alex survives; in the novel, all of the family members are quickly dispatched by the killer), and then stowing away in the madman's vehicle (in the novel, a large motor home) in a futile attempt to rescue her friend. The novel also includes a scene where the heroine attempts to get help from the clerks at a gas station where the killer has stopped, only to witness their brutal murders as well (as in the film, the killer banters with the clerk for several minutes before dispatching them and never becomes aware of the girl's presence), and a scene where the heroine uses the clerk's stolen vehicle to try to set a trap for the killer (in fact, it's specifically during the unfolding of this scene that the plot of the film starts to diverge from that of the novel). Intensity was also made into a four-hour miniseries on the Fox Network starring John C. McGinley and Molly Parker.