Les Diaboliques (French: [le djabɔlik], released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends)[1] is a 1955 French psychological horror thriller film co-written and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse and Charles Vanel.

The story blends elements of thriller and horror, with the plot focusing on a woman and her husband's mistress who conspire to murder the man.

Clouzot, after finishing The Wages of Fear (1953), optioned the screenplay rights, preventing Alfred Hitchcock from making the film.

[4] Robert Bloch, the author of the novel Psycho, stated in an interview that his all-time favorite horror film was Les Diaboliques.

[5] A second-rate boarding school in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, in the Paris metropolitan area,[6] is run by the tyrannical and cruel Michel Delassalle.

Using a threatened divorce to lure Michel to Nicole's apartment building in Niort, a town several hundred kilometers away, Christina sedates him.

Christina, Nicole and other teachers find a student who claims that Michel has ordered him to rake leaves as punishment for breaking a window.

In the book, the action takes place between Enghien-les-Bains and Nantes but Clouzot transposed it to Saint-Cloud and Niort, his own birthplace.

[10] Susan Hayward suggests that the gender switch made by Clouzot was caused not so much by censorship considerations (in the source novel, Lucienne and Mireille turn out to be a pair of lesbian lovers), but by his desire to create a sizeable role for his wife.

So in Clouzot's script, Mireille (now named Christina) is the one who has a weak heart, and is the object of manipulation of her husband Michel and his mistress Nicole.

Among them were Jean-Philippe Smet (the future Johnny Hallyday), Patrick Dewaere's brother Yves-Marie Maurin, and Georges Poujouly, who previously received acclaim in René Clément's Forbidden Games.

[3] He did it by opening the film with a quote from the preface to d'Aurevilly's work: "A portrait is always moral when it is tragic and shows the horror of the things it represents.

[21] Bosley Crowther gave the film an enthusiastic review in The New York Times, calling it "one of the dandiest mystery dramas that has shown here" and "a pip of a murder thriller, ghost story and character play rolled into one".

He added "the writing and the visual construction are superb, and the performance by top-notch French actors on the highest level of sureness and finesse.

"[23] The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote, "If you like a good mystery and can stand it fairly morbid and uncompromising as to detail, this is one of the best offerings in a long time."

Its macabre aspects and lack of sympathy for the characters make this a hybrid which flounders between a blasting look at human infamy and an out-and-out contrived whodunit.

"[25] The National Board of Review named it among the best foreign films of 1955,[26] and called it "a genuine thriller—a shocking, satisfying chunk of Grand Guignol psychological suspense.

Milton Shulman in the Sunday Express accused the film of "calculated malevolence", and commented that "it is no trick to sicken an audience by such blunt methods as these.

"[29] Reg Whiteley in the Daily Mirror described it as "a suspenseful but sordid slice of French life," and exclaimed: "Just how horrible can films get?

"[31] Time Out commented that the film "makes for a great piece of Guignol misanthropy" where "everyone is in the end a victim, and their actions operate like snares setting traps that leave them grasping for survival.

[38] In 1964, TV writer/producer/director Joseph Stefano was inspired by this film to create a pilot for a thriller anthology series for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

Both versions starred Vera Miles as Kassia Paine, Barbara Rush as Leonora Raymond, and Scott Marlowe as their sadistic blackmailer-returned-from-the-dead, Andre Pavan.

The 1967 film Games, written by Gene R. Kearney and directed by Curtis Harrington, and starring James Caan and Katharine Ross, has a different basic situation, but similar twists at the end, and again features Simone Signoret as the corrupt woman of mystery.

British filmmaker Jimmy Sangster cited it as a major influence on his writing and directing, stating: "most of my 'psycho' type movies ... were derivative of each other and they all went back to my original inspiration: Les Diaboliques.

"[39] An American version of Les Diaboliques, titled Reflections of Murder, was made by ABC in 1974, starring Tuesday Weld, Joan Hackett, and Sam Waterston.

In 1996, the film was remade again as Diabolique, adapted by Don Roos, directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik, and starring Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani in the leading female roles, with Chazz Palminteri as the husband and Kathy Bates as the detective.