Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:44 — 8.0MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | RSS | More
Overview
The definition of horror has changed through the years, as we’ve seen in our episodes. Diabolique is a prime example. Like has been discussed at other times, this would probably be more a thriller now than a horror movie. Nefarious murder has been overshadows by psychos in masks.
That’s not to say this isn’t a good film to watch. It’s considered one of the “films to watch” on multiple lists. By them. whoever they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabolique_(1996_film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046911/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Trailer
Watch It
https://archive.org/details/diabolique-1955_202407
YouTube
Transcript
00:00:00]
Stephen: All right. So Reese Greetings we’re onto a new public domain, old movie everybody can watch for free. And this time it’s Dal Leak, which is a French film.
Rhys: It is Diabolique was a French film from 1955. It was directed by re George Zel. And I think a lot of people don’t know it because it’s from 1955 and it’s French.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s true.
And we can talk about this a little bit too. It it’s interesting that it’s termed horror. I don’t know if it would be called horror nowadays.
Rhys: No, it’s very much a thriller. And I don’t know that it was remade in 93 or something
Stephen: right, with a big cast like Kathy Bates and some other people. Yeah.
Rhys: And I remember watching it then, and when I was done with it, I [00:01:00] was like, eh, because, and it wasn’t because it was like. It’s mostly because there’s nothing overly intriguing about the villains in this film, and in the end they get away with it.
Stephen: It. It’s more, it felt more like an Agatha Christie murder mystery. With, and I, and people could argue somebo, they plot to kill somebody, and then they do. So that’s the horrific part. But then it turns into a Colombo show.
Rhys: I think if you’re looking at it from the perspective of the 19. Spoiler alert. In fact, one of the things when the posters for this movie were up, it said it, the thing like watch, but don’t tell anyone about it so that you could keep the ending surprise. So I’m about to ruin that for you.
Stephen: It’s 80 years if you haven’t seen it in 80 years. I’m sorry.
Rhys: but when the guy sits [00:02:00] up. The dead guy sits up. I can see we’re in the 1950s. That would’ve been like a horrific prospect.
Stephen: Absolutely. Yeah. But, it was interesting, i’ve had this discussion with others where I said, eh, I don’t really consider this horror, I could see it’s got some horrific elements and people could, and they said people are dying. I’m like, dear God, people die in westerns.
Those aren’t horror except for the couple we’ve seen. So just being plotting to kill somebody and not. It doesn’t necessarily make it horror, but I love how they use the term devilish, diabolical which helps give it that horror ring and probably drew audiences into it in the fifties.
Rhys: Yeah, it was based on a novel written by Pierre Bulo and Thomas Ceja called, who was no more and, when the director, when AU wanted to get ahold of this, the rights for it, he beat Alfred Hitchcock [00:03:00] by that much. ’cause Hitchcock heard about it and wanted to get the rights to it, and this guy just beat him out and. Those guys afterwards felt badly that Hitchcock missed out. And so they wrote a new novel for him called Dre Lamart from Among the Dead.
And he filled it and turned, filmed it, and turned it into vertigo.
Stephen: Oh, cool.
Rhys: yeah.
Stephen: doesn’t have any real horror significance to it, though. The first.
Rhys: Hitchcockian kind of, yeah. And. As you would have in say, a French novel from the 20th century, there is a lesbian element to it in the 1990s version that shows up in the 1955 version. It does not
Stephen: it hinted at almost,
Rhys: maybe slightly, not, it’s certainly not overt.
Stephen: Yeah, it was an interesting movie. There were a couple parts that made me chuckle this guy’s been missing for three days and nobody really cares.
Rhys: He was a dba. I [00:04:00] get it.
Stephen: yeah, exactly. Oh, he’s missing.
Rhys: but it’s got this kind of cool little thing. Oz’s wife, Vera Zo plays Christina, who is the ingenue in this film and Simone SRE plays Nicole. Senior Ray, when she signed up for it, signed up for an eight week commitment and that’s all she was being paid for.
And the film took 16 weeks to record, so she was screwed out of eight weeks worth of work. And apparently the arguments between her and Enri luau were. Very loud, brash, not unlike the relationship portrayed in the film where it just seemed like he was bullying her around, but she was only gonna stand for so much.
And then oddly enough Vera Czo, when at the age of 46, died of a undiagnosed heart ailment.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: and just dropped dead. Not unlike her character in the film.
Stephen: [00:05:00] Wow. King has always said he’d to write a story where someone dies when reading it. So they had this whole plot to make a fake murder to kill somebody, and I really wonder how the inspector really pinned it on ’em later, because, how do you prove somebody scared somebody to death and killed them,
Rhys: yeah. Yeah, for sure. It was just, it was really odd because apparently the interaction between the three of them was a real mirror of the actual story itself between
Stephen: Interesting
Rhys: Zo and his wife. And re so
Stephen: though I did think at the end when. The Slingshot kid, Monet said, oh, I saw her, she gave this to me. I was like, oh, is it a triple double take? And she’s faking, she won it out of it. So she faked dying so that she could get out of it, let them go, who cares? And that gave it, that Hitchcock feel right there, between the double thing and then that ending.
Rhys: Yeah, it, like I said, [00:06:00] you can see it’s an important film because of when it came out and the trends that it set. It’s well done. I just didn’t particularly care for the story myself. But, that’s gonna happen sometimes and it’s, you can tell for sure it’s not this, because in the remake in 93, I didn’t care for the story then either.
And they’re very similar.
Stephen: It, not saying that, but it’s not an uncommon type of story. Plotting to kill somebody. A double take on that and stuff. It’s very Hitchcock and like I said, Agatha Christie and how many Colombo episodes, or Jessica Fletcher or Monk or anybody else,
Rhys: yeah. If you’ve seen on tv, any crime movie, this is pretty much it.
Stephen: But any of those TV shows, it’s 50 minutes less time to get the same story told.
So this did drug a little bit at times. It was a little extended to me. It felt
Rhys: and I’m glad to hear you say that because this one and the 93 version, they both felt like they drugged for me and I [00:07:00] just kept thinking maybe it is just ’cause I’m not really enjoying it. And
Stephen: the one horror part though at the end when they were messing with her mind, Christina’s mind, and she was really starting to freak out that, that definitely had a bit of horror feel to it because of the tension and wondering is it a ghost? Especially like the school picture with him in the window.
I’m like, oh my God, how many of those are floating around on the internet nowadays? So you. Yes, I could see where they could say, it’s got some horror elements and has a bit of horror feel, but it’s more of a thriller, a with a backstabbing going on. Not even so much a mystery though. It fits that too a little bit.
Rhys: Yeah, it does. And and the surprise is there.
Stephen: Yeah. It was like, it was okay. Do I wanna go watch it again later? Nah, probably not. So we saw it. We’re good.
Rhys: Yeah, the amount of time between me seeing the 93 version in this one about 20 [00:08:00] years, and I think that’s pretty good.
Stephen: Yeah. There you go. Alright next on our public domain side dish list, we’ve got night of the demon coming up.
And honestly I don’t know anything about that one. We’ll have to see what it’s like once we get it and watch it. All right, man. We’ll talk to you later and we’ll be doing, we for everyone paying attention.
We’re on season six. We’ll get started with that here pretty soon too.
Rhys: Oh yeah, we’re getting rolling on that.
Stephen: Yep. Finishing up one missed call up on the website. We’ll have our bonus going up soon. So yeah. All right, man, I’ll talk to you later. Thanks.
Rhys: See ya.
