Les diaboliques

A fragile wife and a cunning mistress conspire to murder the cruel headmaster of a boarding school, only for his body to mysteriously vanish. As paranoia sets in, eerie signs suggest he may still be alive—or that something more sinister is at play. The tension builds to a shocking twist that redefines betrayal and revenge.

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  Les diaboliques has been so widely imitated that repetition and familiarity seem to have called in question the film’s status as horror … That Les diaboliques does indeed function as a horror film is clear, not just from the squalid and prolonged murder sequence, but from the script’s central conceit—that a man appears to have cheated death and is bedevilling his killers from beyond the grave. … European horror may have gone quiet again for a while after Les diaboliques, but its flinty, cold-hearted example would be by no means forgotten. Quite apart from its enduring power as a well-nigh perfect horror-thriller, the film remains significant for the impact it had on Alfred Hitchcock. … No less a game-changing horror classic than Psycho can therefore be seen as Hitchcock’s means of ‘getting even’ with Clouzot … The film’s influence extended well beyond Psycho, however. Not only would its plot mechanics be replicated all over the world, but its sleazy, verging on fly-blown, atmosphere would sink deep into the fabric of European horror. France itself may have made no special effort to replace its success, but in Italy, for example, the black gloves worn by Clouzot’s nocturnal interloper during the film’s climax would become an inescapable signifier of the giallo sub-genre, while the bilious view of marital relations contained in the film became a staple feature of Italy’s Gothic horrors.