See it, be amazed at it, but... be quiet about it!” goes the tantalising tagline of the 1955 “The Great Suspense Film That Shocked the World... that Alfred Hitchcock never made and became a classic,” — Diabolique (The Devils) by renowned French auteur Henri Georges Clouzot.

Acclaimed to have deeply influenced Alfred Hitchcok’s equally immortal cinematic essay Psycho, Clouzot’s horror eerie masterpiece was considered the most frightening and artistic horror picture ever made. It is based on the novel by the author-duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, many of whose best-selling suspense novels were adapted into films.+

According to the celebrated film-maker what began as a picture that would “amuse myself” to please a young girl who hid under the covers and asked her father to frighten her with a bedtime story,” for “I just produced it as I would a game.” Yet the “child’s game” was soon hailed all across as an adult terror classic, far too chilling for the children of the world. Need one require any more stamp of authority that the movie is indeed a must-see for those who revel in the edge-of-the-seat, spine chilling, nerve-wracking and thrilling expedition into nervous excitement and entertainment. 

The macabre thriller presents an ambivalent and ambiguous pair of women who plot the man’s murder, the husband of one and the lover of the other. The film was remade in an inferior version in 1996 starring Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani. The setting, against which the veritable icy masterpiece of murder, mystery, and suspense sets rolling, is a provincial boys school run by a dictatorial headmaster. The sadistic man brutalizes his fragile wife who suffers from a weak heart condition and his headstrong mistress. If the wife dies, the school will belong to him. The two murder him and dump his body in a swimming pool. However, when the pool is drained, no corpse is found.  Further, to make the already anxious women’s life more miserable, a nosy sleuth starts sniffing around the grounds, while equally venomous and vile notes taunt and tease the two terrified women.

Screening at Suchitra Film Society this Monday (Sept 10) at 6.45 pm. For details call: 26711785