Cheap Diabolique (1955) (Video) (Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri) (Jeremiah S. Chechik) Price

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Customer Reviews of Diabolique (1955)

The original Diabolique, in the 1950s, was considered the best Hitchcockian thriller at the time not done by Hitchcock himself. High praise indeed. It is more suspenseful, more cinematographic, and better paced than the Hollywood update. There is really little reason to see the Hollywood version when the original is still around (heck, go rent/buy the Criterion DVD of the original!).

Is there anything worthwhile about the Hollywood version? Well, if you're a Sharon Stone or Isabelle Adjani fan, I suppose you might like this film somewhat. And it's in color and you don't have to read subtitles. But really, don't waste your time.

Thumbs Up For Diabolique
Despite criticism that the film is monotonous and boring, I rented the video and was pleasantly surprised. Sharon Stone seems to be getting better every film she does. The chemistry between Stone and Isabelle Adjani is great. Chaz Palminteri is the perfect bad guy and Kathy Bates was a great detective. Listen close, Bates has some of the best lines. I really enjoyed my first viewing. I liked it enough to watch a second and third time!! Big thumbs up to the entire cast for a job well done. I would recommend this movie to anyone.

Feeding the male libido
This is a sexploitation thriller but not all that bad, mainly because it is played somewhat tongue-in-cheek so that the plot absurdities might be overlooked in the interest of high camp, or at least in the interest of a mild diversion, and also because the women are diabolically diverting each in her own way.

Especially effective in a satirical performance is Sharon Stone as Nicole Horner, a duplicitous siren teaching math at a boy's boarding school. (Just the thought conjures up visions of a vampish Mary Kay Letoureau, although director Jeremiah Chechik studiously avoids that angle.) Her partner in crime is French actress Isabelle Adjani who plays Mia Baran, an ex-nun who is the owner of the school unhappily married to (after being seduced by, it appears) the school's sadistic task master Guy Baran played with a steady macho malevolence by Chazz Palminteri. Adjani, whom I recall (vividly) from Truffaut's L'Histoire d'Adele H. (1975) in which she played Victor Hugo's daughter Adele, obsessively in love with an English army lieutenant who didn't want her. The masochistic persona employed there is revisited here as Mia is used by both her husband and Nicole Horner, who is also Guy's mistress.

Coming lately onto the scene is Kathy Bates as a man-despising, middle-aged, slightly butch Nancy Drew who doesn't let a partial mastectomy slow her down as she sleuths about looking for clues. She has some fine one-liners, but perhaps the best in the film comes from Sharon Stone. Two of the school's middle-aged bores have just come upon Stone and Adjani in the courtyard. Stone's ever-present cigarette inspires this from one of the men: "Don't you know that second-hand smoke kills?" Sharon Stone maneuvers past him, blows smoke in his face, and replies, "Not reliably."

This is a remake of Les Diaboliques (1955) starring Simone Signoret which I have not seen. My guess is that the French version played it straight and made the ending at least plausible. Here we have not only a ridiculous ending but a plot in dire need of a plot doctor. I have also not seen the TV version, Reflections of Murder, starring that quintessential sex-kitten (and personal favorite) Tuesday Weld.

Bottom line: see this for Isabelle Adjani, whose over the top performance is garnished with an au naturale glimpse, and for Sharon Stone who is at her diabolical best. Be aware however that if sexual exploitation of the male libido is not your cup of tea, you will not like this movie, and even if it is, you may find the story more than a bit silly.