Entertainment
The Chilling Thriller Stephen King Called Better Than Hitchcock Is Streaming on HBO Max
One of the best-regarded thrillers of all time, 1955’s Les Diaboliques is every bit as … well, diabolical today as it was when it was released. In 2017, Stephen King even claimed the devious, jet-black film noir “out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock” — and he had good reason to say so. The film remains a taut and darkly comedic thriller with a twist ending that’s beautifully plotted. Les Diaboliques petrified audiences in France before making its way stateside, and it laid the groundwork for countless erotic thrillers and psychological horror pictures in the 1980s and ’90s.
And the film has even more admirers among horror royalty, including Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, and novelist Ramsey Campbell. The film’s infamous twist ending and screw-tight suspense methods were often imitated by Western filmmakers, including Hitchcock with his cheeky Psycho campaign revolving around its twist.
An ill-advised American remake was even attempted in 1996, but there’s nothing like the real thing — and today, Les Diaboliques is streaming on HBO Max.
What Is ‘Les Diaboliques’ About?
Just outside Paris, a boy’s boarding school is run by Michel and his wife, Christina. While Michel is an obnoxious tyrant, Christina takes comfort (figuratively, though there are undertones of romance) in the arms of teacher Nicole — who is also a bed partner of Michel. The women eventually plot to get rid of Michel, with everything going to plan, aside from Christina’s heart condition, which nearly paralyzes her during the film’s centerpiece murder sequence.
The remainder of the film depicts Christina’s psychological meltdown and the crushing paranoia that follows such a deed. However, there are hints of the supernatural, as Michel’s body vanishes from the school’s swimming pool, where the women planned for it to be discovered; his “ghost” also appears to haunt Christina around the school.
When it arrives, Les Diaboliques’ notorious twist ending changes everything we thought we knew about the characters and their relationships — and it all comes crashing down in one legendary jump scare. With Christina almost completely lost to paranoia and madness, she clambers through her home at night, hearing sounds of Michel, before finding his body returned once again to the bathtub in which she and Nicole drowned him. As Christina looks on in silent horror, Michel’s “corpse” rises from the water, and the woman promptly dies from a heart attack, before the actual plot — between Michel and Nicole — is revealed.
How ‘Les Diaboliques’ ‘Out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock’
Once the inciting murder is committed, Les Diaboliques becomes a relentless tightening of the screws as the women spiral into paranoia, in ways that will remind viewers of Hitchcock and even the Coen Brothers. The film is chock-full of agonizing suspense sequences in which the women are almost discovered, and a strong Hitchcockian element of dark humor persists. From a drunken soldier almost discovering Michel’s corpse to friendly neighbors’ gestures turned sinister by our knowledge of what the women are trying to hide, the film is a delight in the vein of Psycho or Blood Simple.
During the harrowing murder sequence, Clouzot even injects humor by cutting to an older couple upstairs as the husband loudly complains about the sound of Nicole’s tub drowning out the quiz show he’s trying to enjoy; his wife’s patient nod when he brags about getting a question right earns a massive laugh.
It’s little wonder Hitchcock himself tried to get his hands on the rights to the novel, with its watertight plotting and twisted sense of identification with a pair of killers. According to Hollywood lore, Clouzot beat the master of suspense by mere hours in obtaining the rights, though, and thus Les Diaboliques has taken a longer path to the American suspense film canon. Viewers who are fans of the Coen Brothers’ sweaty, blood-soaked comedic thrillers and, of course, Hitchcock’s nastier pictures owe it to themselves to experience the film today on HBO Max or Plex.
- Release Date
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January 29, 1955
- Runtime
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117 Minutes
- Director
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Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Writers
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Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jérôme Géronimi
Cast
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