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39 out of 49 people found the following review useful: It's so bad it's an insult to all involved- blame the director!, 6 April 2005 Author: debblyst from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
To venture a remake of Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" (1955) -- a film that needed no remake in the first place -- only one thing was crucial: a very creative filmmaker with a very personal style, so as to put away comparisons with the classic French film. Someone like Kubrick, Von Trier, Amenábar, Chabrol, Jeunet...Instead we have Chechik's ludicrous, inept direction, making the experienced crew's efforts simply bomb: the cinematography is flat, the music is predictable, the script is stale, the pace is sloooow, and he manages to withdraw bad performances from EVERYONE in the cast, including the usually reliable Kathy Bates, besides achieving the incredible feat of making Isabelle Adjani look like she's just escaped from Madame Tussaud's, and cruelly exposing the unmistakably limited talents of Sharon Stone (who manages to look like a dominatrix in the role of a Catholic school teacher!!) and Chazz Palminteri.When a film is THIS bad, considering the names involved and the amount of money spent, it's really an insult to everyone, most of all to the audience (of course). After this bomb, you'd think Hollywood directors would just leave classic thrillers alone -- but Gus Van Sant went on to commit the catastrophic remake of "Psycho".... Don't waste your time - just don't watch it, especially if you are a fan of the original film or of the stars!!! My vote: since IMDb doesn't allow zeroes, 1/10 is more than it deserves.
25 out of 30 people found the following review useful: My Attention Was Glued to my Watch, 11 April 2005 Author: James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England
Oscar Wilde was one of the great wits of his age, but he was allegedly not averse to appropriating other people's bons mots. It is said that after his friend and rival James Whistler had made a particularly apposite remark, Wilde sighed and said "I wish I had said that!". Whistler's reply was "You will, Oscar, you will". The American film industry has a similar attitude to other people's films to the one that Wilde had to other people's conversation. When the European- particularly the British or French- film industry comes up with a particularly admired film, Hollywood gives a collective sigh and says "We wish we had made that!" You will, Hollywood, you will!Recent years have seen a glut of remakes of European films, but, admittedly, the results of this creative plagiarism are by no means always bad. The plot of "Sommersby" may have been blatantly lifted from "Le Retour de Martin Guerre", but it is still a good film in its own right. Moreover, I was one of those who thought that Luc Besson's "Nikita" did not lose much in translation when it was remade as the Bridget Fonda vehicle "The Assassin". Sometimes, however, Hollywood manages to come up with a remake that is so inferior to its original model that the two films do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. "Diabolique" is a case in point.Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" was one of the classic thrillers of the fifties, as good as the best of Hitchcock's work. Jeremiah Chechik's remake borrows the same basic plot of the original, but transfers it from 1950s France to 1990s America. At the centre is the sadistic headmaster of a private school, a man who brutally mistreats not only the boys in his care but also his wife and even his beautiful mistress. The wife and mistress,tired of his mistreatment, plot together to murder him and to dispose of his body in the filthy school swimming pool, but when the pool is later drained the body has disappeared. As in the original, there is a sudden, surprise twist at the end. Chechik also, however,introduces elements that were not in Clouzot's film. The wife, Mia, here becomes a former nun, who has renounced her vows after losing her faith, but is still haunted by guilt. There is a suggestion of a lesbian relationship between Mia and the mistress, Nicole. Chechik also introduces a major character, in the form of a female detective, with no equivalent in the original film."Diabolique" has come in for some sharp criticism, largely because it is a remake of a classic. It is a mediocre film rather than a horrendously bad one, and if we did not have its famous predecessor to compare it with, it would doubtless be seen as just another banal and unsuccessful crime thriller. Nevertheless, I think that the criticism it has attracted is justified. Chechik must have known that one of the perils of remaking a film is that your work will be weighed in the balance against the original, and woe betide you if it is found wanting. And, compared with Clouzot's, Chechik's film is wanting indeed. He lacks the French director's sense of pacing and ability to convey suspense, with the result that his film is slow-moving where the original was brisk and flabby where the original was taut.I was also disappointed by the acting. Isabelle Adjani can be a fine actress in her own language, as she showed in "La Reine Margot", but I have not been impressed with her in English-language films, and here her character never came to life. Sharon Stone was slightly better as the hard-bitten, sluttish Nicole, but this was not really one of her better performances and did nothing to alter my view that she has not always chosen the best vehicles in which to show off her talents. Chazz Palminteri's headmaster was almost too unpleasant to be believable, and Kathy Bates seemed wasted as the detective. Watching Clouzot's film I was glued to the screen with anticipation as I wondered how the film would end; watching Chechik's, my attention was rather glued to my watch as I wondered when it would end. 4/10
24 out of 31 people found the following review useful: Isabelle Adjani, please fire your agent!, 29 August 2000 Author: Junker-2 from Wisconsin
Poor Isabelle Adjani. She is one of the most beautiful women in the world and one of the finest actresses alive.(See "The Story of Adele H" for proof of both of these claims.) Yet somehow her agent (or whoever is responsible for these horrible decisions) keeps casting her in the worst American films he can possibly find. Did somebody say "Ishtar?"The American version of "Diabolique" is a perfect example of how Hollywood can ruin a classic film. The original 1955 French film is a subtle, fun, nail-biting mystery that builds to a wonderful ending. In this silly remake, director Jeremiah Chechik takes out the fun and subtlety, throws in some nudity, then "builds" to that same, tired "bad guy trying to kill the good guy" ending we have seen a million times before. Please!If and when Isabelle Adjani is cast in a decent American movie, she will become the biggest star in the world. Until then, our loss is France's gain.
17 out of 22 people found the following review useful: Disappointing remake, 28 July 1999 Author: Asokan Nirmalarajah (marsellus.wallace@t-online.de) from Cologne, Germany
Known primarily for light Comedy Features Jeremiah Chechik thought of a change-of-pace and adapted for his third entry into directing the famous novel "Celle Qui N'etait Pas" by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, which also served as model for the French Crime-Classic LES DIABOLIQUES from 1955 by Henri-Georges Clouzot. With an interesting cast of four fine character actors in the leading roles and a budget of 30 million dollars in his hands Chechik came up with a uneven, slow-moving, pale and glossy Thriller about a tyrannical school-master who is drowned by his long-suffering wife and mistress and thrown into the School Pool, but strangely disappears. Before the film's release there were much rumours about creative differences between the director and Miss Sharon Stone, the latter one aiming for a black comedy and Chechik shaping a crime movie on his own. Well, both failed.You can hardly judge a movie by its trailer, because sometimes the latter one can be much better than the movie it is promoting. Take for example DIABOLIQUE: The first moving pictures I saw from it were very stylish and appealing, like the drunken Palminteri, the Whiskey-Glass falling down in slow-motion, the out-of-the-water-perspective-shot of Palminteri looking at the two women who pull his head into the water etc. etc. etc.But finally watching the film was hugely disappointing. I think I wouldn't have been that dissatisfied hadn't I seen the perfectly structured original just a couple of months ago on TV. Jeremiah Chechik & Co. turned the brilliantly structured and genuinely haunting thriller into a stupid, below-average Hollywood thriller that relies too much on its star power.Hey, our teacher is lying naked on the floor! The film begins with a little boy (Adam Hann-Byrd) looking one rainy night through his bedroom window into the opposite bathroom window of his naked teacher Miss Mia (Isabelle Adjani) who suddenly has a heart attack and fells on the floor. Shocked he runs out of his accommodation into the other to save her (or maybe to see the chick naked... yeah!). Meanwhile Mias husband Guy (Chazz Palminteri), the principal of the boarding-school, comes into the bathroom looking at her without any reaction. Then his mistress and her colleague Nicole (Sharon Stone) shows off and gives her the medicaments to stop the pains. Okay, that's the situation. Guy is an emotionless, sadistic bad guy of the highest order, who to the viewer's surprise can keep his wife and mistress under control. But the sensible, heart-troubled Mia is fed up with him and so is her cool, cynical friend, colleague and rival in one named Nicole. They both decide to kill him and make it appear like he drowned himself.Hey, our teacher is killing her husband! Mia and Nicole leave for the school holidays and move into a apartment, where Guy shows off depressed about Mias decision of getting divorced. She gives him something to drink with narcotics in it. After Guy is drowned by both women they put the dead body into a big case, drive it back to school and throw it into the school pool. But the next day, when the pool is cleaned the body's missing...Jeremiah's Genre Vacation. Chechik was already a acclaimed and award-winning director of commercials and music clips when he entered the film business making his way through the Chevy-Chase-Comedy NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989), the audience-friendly Romantic Comedy BENNY & JOON (1993) starring Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson and the Fantasy-Comedy TALL TALE (1995) with Patrick Swayze. So far, so... acceptable, but how could he think of helming the US remake of a French classic that was almost perfect in its own rights and couldn't be topped or even reached. So the comparison between Clouzots and Chechiks interpretations of the same story is inevitable. Chechik focuses very much on the stylish visuals and atmosphere of his film pushing it sometimes to a kind of gothic nightmare placed in a old, shadow-filled, dark boarding-school, cool-as-ice-light filter on the actors, especially dead-cold Sharon Stone, and good art direction, made even more accessible by unsubtle slow-motion scenes and unusual camera angles. But these things don't make the already highly suspenseful story any better or worse. Surprisingly Clouzots tight creation of the not-so-wealthy-boarding-school with its dark gaits is far more effective. Clouzots visuals don't harm the story nor the excellent cast, so that every detail of the clever plot and the intriguing characters could be fleshed out. That's focused storytelling at its best with every single frame fitting into the story. But Chechik doesn't seem do care about pacing or character development and focuses on stupid plot details to make it logical for "stupid" American audiences, which weighs down the whole film, especially in the unbelievably bad third act. Add to that a mediocre mystery-score by Edelman and you will fall asleep halfway through. In the end Chechik is in the wrong genre, whether it is a black comedy or a thriller.Catherine Tramell without a ice-pick and Queen Margot without a crone. The teaming of Sex symbol Sharon Stone, who just had turned through her excellent work in Martin Scorseses epic gangster movie CASINO into a Oscar-nominated, serious actress, and internationally popular Isabelle Adjani, a versatile and talented performer, looks attracting on the paper, but not onscreen. Miss Stone does her Catherine-Tramell-routine from her most famous film BASIC INSTINCT (1991) in the role of Nicole, who in the original was played by the beautiful Simone Signoret. Stone is cool, cynical, calculating, clever and bitchy, but doesn't appear nude. So Isabelle Adjani has to do that job. While Stone's performance as bitch dressed in tasteless clothes and smoking lady-like is so broad that it's almost great fun, Adjani is a huge disappointment looking as ugly as she never looked before with her black hair hanging down in front of her face like big curtains and her face incredibly pale and in terms of acting disastrous. What a waste of beauty and talent! But she should be used to this kind of treatment by Hollywood after forget-about-appearances in Walter Hills THE DRIVER (1978) and Elaine Mays flop ISHTAR (1987). In the original Clouzots real-life-wife Vera excels as sensible beauty who slowly gets crazy and frightened. Add to this unhappy pairing of good actresses some other wasted performers like Chazz Palminteri, who after doing the intense-as-usual a**hole-routine turns into a stupid Michael-Myers-copy, and Kathy Bates, who is to a certain degree solid fun, and useless appearances by Adam Hann-Byrd (LITTLE MAN TATE, 1991), Spading Gray (SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA, 1987) and Allen Garfield (THE STATE OF THE THINGS, 1982).Adaptation equals creative death. Don Roos who scripted the race-relation-drama LOVE FIELD (1992) starring Michelle Pfeiffer and the sexy thriller SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992) took on the task of updating Clouzots flawless and tight script. The best thing he could have done was to note some costume, setting and dialect changes into the original script and hand it over to the director, but that - sadly - isn't the way Hollywood does its adaptations of European movies. So what we get here are too many subplots weighing down the actual plot, like for example a filmmaker-couple who are ordered to make a commercial for the school, some fine ideas like turning the Columbo-lookalike-detective from the original into a clever, ironical heavy-set Ex-Detective suffering from breast cancer, and finally one of the worst finales to be found in any film of the decade. It's neither thrilling nor funny, just increasingly stupid.
19 out of 31 people found the following review useful: bad bad bad, 31 December 1998 Author: Jonathan Doron (jrd@netvision.net.il) from Israel
This movie is worse than bad. The credits do not include the fact that it is based on the wonderful earlier version, from 1954, or the book it was based on- and maybe it's just for the best. A terrible movie; the most unsubtle movie I ever saw. And somehow, the beautiful Isabel Adjani doesn't look so good in English. The plot in this version isn't realistic, the ending is pathetic, the twists are shallow. This movie deserves all the bad words in the English language. I gave it a 1, which it deserves only for Adjani's clothes. One of the worst movies of 1996, perhaps of all time.
7 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Diabolique, 27 October 1999 Author: Janos Smal (jsmal@osi.hu) from Budapest, Hungary
A tyrannical school principal terrorizes his fragile wife with heart disease and his cynical mistress as well (both are teachers in the couple's private school). The two women plot to kill him, but after the murder their plan starts to fall through. The body disappears, then more and more signs become apparent to prove: he is alive.The real mystery is why anyone had to remake a classic French thriller that was imitated so many times before, why it had to be done so terribly, cast so wrongly and acted in such unsubtle way - and why anyone on earth should care the whole stuff.
8 out of 11 people found the following review useful: Suckered by an American remake of 'Diabolique' (not that I'm bitter), 18 June 2005 Author: lemon_magic from Wavy Wheat, Nebraska
I saw that 'Diabolique' was showing on a cable movie channel, and I had heard great things about it, and so I was prepared to be impressed and intrigued, and to improve my 'cultural literacy' in the process.Instead, what I got was a draggy, lifeless 'film noir' remake with Sharon Stone and Chazz Palmintieri. The frustrating thing about the movie was that it was JUST GOOD ENOUGH and kept JUST ENOUGH of the elements of the original plot to make me hope that things would improve somehow. So I kept watching it. But it never did.I am not Sharon Stone's biggest fan, but I acknowledge that she gave a compelling performance in "Casino", and that very few actresses past or present could have played her role better. (Joan Crawford or Betty Davis, maybe). And she's a black hole of bitterness and anger here -somehow sexually inviting and repellent at the same time. That doesn't make for comfortable viewing. There's the same problem with the lesbian undercurrents between the wife and the mistress - it ought to be titillating or erotic, but it's just stale and nasty. And Chazz Palmintieri is a great character actor( see 'The Usual Suspects' or "Bullets Over Broadway"), but the character he plays is such a flat-out son-of-a-bitch that you really don't want to watch him.But the real the problem with the film is that they were going for dread and suspense, but the pacing and rhythms of each of the individual scenes was way off - empty and interminable. So the viewer wound up feeling dread and BOREDOM instead. That doesn't make for 'recommended film viewing'.I still hope to seek out the original one of these days, so at least the remake didn't spoil anything. And some one else might like this version just fine on its own merits, depending on how big a Stone fan they are (it is really her movie - her character drives the events in the plot).
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Bland, 13 November 1998 Author: Michael Roberts from USA
Diabolique not only lacks substance, it lacks any real effort on the part of the main players. Sharon Stone's character is completely banal. Kathy Bates pops out of nowhere to accomplish nothing except adding 30 more minutes onto this pseudo-thriller bore-fest. As the movie went on, I found myself concerned less and less with the gratuitous sex and not-so-intricate plot twists that I seriously considered going out to the lobby to play "Space Invaders."
6 out of 9 people found the following review useful: DIABOLIQUE a diabolical debacle, 2 April 2004 Author: kibler@adelphia.net (jere816@verizon.net) from PA
Diabolique (1996) Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri, Kathy Bates, Spalding Gray, Shirley Knight, D: Jeremiah S. Chechik. Revamped version of the 1955 French thriller, with Palimenteri as a tyrannical boys-school headmaster done in by the joined forces of his mousy wife (Adjani) and icy blonde mistress (Stone) in a murder plot they wrongfully assume is foolproof. First-rate performers can't serve justice to this diabolical debacle, which doesn't start off too bad, then goes astray. This unspeakably bad rip-off trashes the classic original with too many `oh, come on' moments, ridiculous red herrings and twists of its own, and a finale right out of a slasher flick. Bates is even gone to waste as a retired detective who's investigating the case `for something to do'. Running Time: 107 minutes and rated R for nudity and sexual content, violence, and some language. * ½
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful: Not very good., 28 October 2007 Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Diabolique is set in Pennsylvania at the St. Anselm's boarding school for boys which is owned by Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani), however her husband Guy (Chazz Palminteri) who runs the school treats her like dirt & cheats on her. Mia & a teacher named Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) whom is one of Guy's many lovers devise a plan to kill him & make it look like an accident, the plan is to drown him & then throw him in the school pool where he will be found & to the police his death will seem like a simple drowning. However after a few days the body isn't found so Mia orders the dirty pool drained when Nicole 'accidently' drops her keys into it, once drained Guy's body is not there. Was Guy dead? Did someone find out there plan? Who knows...Directed by Jeremiah Chechik this is a remake of the black and white French film Les Diaboliques (1955) which itself was based on the novel 'Celle Qui N'Etait Plus' by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac & I thought was a fairly lazy & plodding mystery thriller with truly one of the worst twist endings ever. The humourless & slow moving script by Don Ross takes ages to do what the average episode of Columbo took about 10 minutes to, to show someone committing the so-called perfect murder. Then it switches to creepy thriller mode as the body vanishes from where the murderers left it & seemingly has come back to life before it all falls apart with one of the worst, most predictable & frankly unlikable twist endings ever. I can't continue my review any further without massive spoilers which will give away the ending so beware, anyway I hate the fact that Mia & Nicole suddenly turn into the heroes of the piece when they were just as bad as Guy since in the case of Mia she planned to kill him in cold blood & Nicole was prepared to trick Mia & ultimately kill her if the plan had succeeded. They were really unlikable character's to begin with so this horrible ending where they become the heroes by killing Guy which is basically exactly the same thing which they set out to do in the first place just grated my nerves. Also, if Mia was feeling so guilty why did she seem almost redeemed at the end? She still ended up killing Guy anyway so why the miraculous change of heart? Also, what about Nicole? She still was part of some scheme where someone was always going to die, be it either Mia or Guy. The ending is just so misjudged, it makes no sense with the rest of the context of the film, it's horribly acted & it's utterly predictable. In fact I guessed how this would end within 30 minutes & I was absolutely right in just about every detail. A really horrible film with an even worse ending, one to avoid.Director Chechik has made some really, really awful films & after this mess & his subsequent big screen adaptation of The Avengers (1998) which is considered one of the worst films ever made Hollywood thankfully hasn't let him anywhere near a film camera since. This guy should be directing traffic rather than films. This is blandly shot in dull autumnal colours which give it forgettable look. I also have to mention the acting, especially by the two female leads Stone & Adjani who are simply terrible. I hated their character's, I hated their acting & thought they were two of the worst performances by leading actors in a Hollywood flick I've ever seen. In the UK this is rated '18' meaning no-one under that age can watch it, I have no idea why as there's no violence worth mentioning, no nudity or sex & it's devoid of any action or excitement.Technically the film is alright but it's flat, dull & blandly filmed. There's no real style here & it's not a film I will remember in any way apart from that terrible ending. As I've said I think the acting by the two leads is simply awful.Diaboliques is a slow moving, utterly predictable thriller with a horrible ending that didn't do anything for me. One to avoid. This probably would have worked better as a 30 minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode or maybe even as an obscure black and white French film from the 50's...
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