ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . of this often mislabeled flick. If you cut out the groaning toilets, bellowing pipes, thundering bath tubs, and plugged up pools gurgling throughout DIABOLIQUE, you wouldn't have much of a movie left. As the plot takes its characters from city to village to last chance gas station all around France, the one constant here is lavatory facilities that no doubt date back to the Era of Napoleon (if not Charlemagne). Should anyone in a large building unleash a loo, the resulting racket proves ear-shattering for folks several floors or hallways removed. Tubs are even worse, easily drowning out the din made by lawn mowers or revving jet engines, as these "Moaning Myrtles" register 150 decibels plus. It's not too hard to understand why the average French swimming pool is filthier than the waste tank at a pig farm, given the lacking of being drained after their initial installation. DIABOLIQUE documents why no one from Nice to Dunkirk dare empty a natatorium, because the ensuing cacophony is enough to literally raise the dead. My brother-in-law is a master plumber, and he tells me that his French counterparts are eligible for "Poolitical Asylum" in the U.S.

davidcarniglia Diabolique twists the convention of a love triangle into something completely different. It might more accurately be described as a hate triangle. Paul Meurisse's character can't stand either his wife, Vera Clouzot, nor his mistress, Simone Signoret. And they, in turn, hate him, and, somewhat more naturally, don't like each other very much.Having resolved to kill the haughty husband/lover, Clouzot and Signoret bungle the act, or so it seems. They become panicky when an increasingly disturbing series of incidents both seem to point out their guilt and leave doubt that Meurisse is actually dead. The tension between them increases as a result, as Clouzot's innocent/hypochondriac character seems to physically melt down, whereas Signoret, steely and determined, only becomes more intense.Essentially, all three characters are unsympathetic. Both husband and mistress are inflexible and domineering, while the wife passive/aggressively wants the other two to feel guilty merely for existing. Admittedly, she is wronged by both the others, and is the only one of the three who seems at home working with the kids they're all responsible for.Clouzot's collapse literally in the face of her 'victim' is thoroughly convincing, and builds at a dizzying pace to its macabre climax. Having said that, and, as much as I admire Diabolique as a whole, I admit there are a few questionable turns.It seems odd that the two 'murderesses' can't find a more discrete place to dump the body than the pool on the same school property where they all work. The 'murder' sequence itself is fairly convincing from Clouzot's point of view, which helps suspend the audience's disbelief, but Meurisse could've survived the Inquisition's test for witchcraft.What elevates this movie's status as one of the best thrillers, despite a few little flaws, is the creepiness lurking in everyday, even dull circumstances, which each of the main characters allows to grow, with truly 'diabolic' consequences.

avik-basu1889 I watched 'Diabolique' for the first time in 2017, which means 62 years after its initial release in theaters and yet it managed to completely knock me off my feet with Henri-Georges Clouzot's meticulous direction and an ultimate reveal which even after all these years has the power to knock anyone's socks off. 'Diabolique' is truly a timeless piece of work.

Leofwine_draca LES DIABOLIQUES is a spooky and intense classic from France, a psychological thriller in which a pair of women decide to kill a bullying and controlling school headmaster. One of them is his wife, the other his mistress, and both hate him for good reason. Their plot goes to plan but the psychological toll of what they have done weighs heavy on them, compounded by further mystery when the body goes missing.There's very little to dislike about this classic movie which has a sheen of quality to it. The expert direction draws out the suspense of the situation without resorting to jump scares or sinister music; the camera-work is very fine and the slow-moving nature of the narrative allows you to become fully immersed in the realism of the piece. The actors are exemplary, as you would imagine, and the film features some quite wonderful ghastly set-pieces involving corpses rising from baths and the like. That it is still frightening when seen today says plenty.LES DIABOLIQUES is also an influential movie; try watching Hitchcock's PSYCHO and in particular Kubrick's THE SHINING afterwards, you can see this film's fingerprints all over them. The Shaw Brothers studio even went ahead to make their own, even more involved spin on the story, the quite wonderful HEX which turns out to be very nearly every bit as entertaining as this film, albeit in a quite different genre. Horror and thriller fans will be in their element with this outstanding lesson in movie-making.