News

Horror in Black and White: ‘Les Diaboliques’ (1955)

Published

5 years ago

February 13, 2019

The year was 1955, and American audiences were riding the wave of suspense created by Alfred Hitchcock with Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Little did most of them know that across the ocean in France, Les Diaboliques aka Diabolique had taken the country by storm and had audiences on the edge of their seats.

Based on a novel by Boileau and Narcejac and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques would challenge Hitchcock’s finest works to date. In fact, it was rumored that the Master of Suspense had missed the opportunity to buy the rights to the novel by mere hours.

In the film, the wife (Vera Clouzot) and the mistress (Simone Signoret) of an abusive school headmaster (Paul Meurisse) have had enough and together they devise a plan to be rid of him once and for all. They drug him, drown him in a bathtub, and dump him in the school’s swimming pool, but when the pool is drained for cleaning, the body has disappeared.

In the following days, both women are haunted by strange, inexplicable events that terrify them and will bring them to the brink of madness with a twist ending you have to see to believe.

Les Diaboliques the moment of death — Vera Clouzot, Simone Signoret, and Paul Meurisse in *Les Diaboliques*

Is there any wonder why Hitchcock wanted the property?!

Upon its release, the film became one of the top grossing films in France that year, but it was not an easy film to bring to the screen. In fact, some of the drama going on behind the scenes nearly rivaled what made it to the screen.

For starters, the film’s star Vera Clouzot was the wife of the director, and their marriage was tumultuous at the best of times. He demanded realism from his actors, and at one point, when Vera’s character was forced by her husband to eat rotten fish, Henri-Georges actually served her rotten fish during the scene which she had to consume.

Needless to say, she was not pleased, and tensions rose on set.

Vera was also prone to bouts of depression and mania and when Henri-Georges and Simone Signoret would clash on screen she would either arbitrate or exacerbate the situation depending on her mood.

Speaking of Simone, her contract stated that she would be paid for an eight-week shoot. When the shooting schedule doubled in time, Henri-Georges hunkered down and refused to pay her for the extra eight weeks. She fought the decisions, unsuccessfully.

To add fuel to the flame, Signoret had agreed to a role in a stage version of The Crucible which was set to go into rehearsals well after the shoot for the film was supposed to end. Because of the scheduling issues and because the director would not work around the rehearsal schedule, she was forced to film all day, rehearse well into the night, and scrape together a few hours of sleep where she could.

By the end of the shoot, neither the director nor the two leading actresses were speaking to one another.

Despite what went on off-camera, the film was received well by critics and audiences alike. Today, it holds a nearly perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been included in the lauded Criterion Collection.

It is widely considered one of the greatest films of its kind ever made, and has appeared on numerous “Best Of” lists since its release.

Les Diaboliques is available for streaming on numerous platforms and is even free for members on Amazon Prime, and if you ask me, it’s perfect for a late night movie with the man or woman you love.

Then again, my sense of romance has always been a little different…

For more Horror in Black and White check out last week’s entry: The Bat.

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

1 day ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

^{High Desert Hell}

^{The Gemini Project}

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Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

1 day ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

^{Happy Sad Confused}

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

1 day ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.