Hitchcock, even in his earlier and rougher days, never turned out a movie of such diabolical proportions.

| Jan 31, 2023

Diabolique is a devilishly good movie, real cool for hot weather.

| Jan 31, 2023

Don't sell Diabolique short, because it has the most shocking sequences you've ever seen on the screen.

| Jan 31, 2023

The arch fiends of hell couldn't have plotted better than Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac in the devising of Diabolique. The horrors, psychological as well physical, make this a shocker worthy of the devil himself.

| Jan 31, 2023

It's a fantastically fine, grisly suspense shocker; a deep-freeze exercise in conscienceless killing; a tricky, murderous little honey dealing in sheer horror.

| Jan 31, 2023

This is a throwback -- and a grand one -- to the creaky, old-fashioned whoopdoodle that distinguished Caligari and, for that matter, The Cat and the Canary.

| Jan 31, 2023

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.

| Jan 31, 2023

I think a few words about Director Henri-Georges Clouzot are in order. In the process of playing havoc with our digestive tracks, he succeeds remarkably in deep characterization and the evocation of milieu.

| Jan 31, 2023

If your fingernails aren't gnawed to the knuckles when you leave the theater, you have stronger nerves than most.

| Jan 31, 2023

Clouzot's latest effort will do nothing but enhance his enviable record of outstanding and nerve-wracking films.

| Jan 31, 2023

Through his sheer cunning at moviemaking, however, Clouzot soon breaks down our disbelief; and with the situation -- and us -- well in hand proceeds to tighten his vise so steadily that we are soon powerless to escape.

| Jan 31, 2023

A strange and sinister film bearing the Clouzot signature all over it. No other director exploits so brilliantly the depths of civilized savagery, the frissons of the sadist, the anatomy of fear.

| Jan 31, 2023

M. Clouzot's essay in delayed horror is hair-raising in a rare way indeed. Offhand, I cannot remember an ending to a film so shattering in its ghastly ingenuity.

| Jan 31, 2023

Clouzot belongs to a traditional French type: The artist with the compulsive need to shock.

| Jan 31, 2023

The suspense and mystery are built up with deliberateness and at great length, but the whole process is kept admirably in balance by numerous episodes of compelling charm and humor.

| Jan 26, 2023

Les Diaboliques might in fact be best regarded as a deliberate essay in the manner of a Hitchcock thriller -- except that, by comparison, even the toughest of Hitchcock's films seems gentle and kind.

| Jan 26, 2023

Clouzot, as usual, establishes a climate of evil unpleasantness right from the start, and yet it is useless to deny the peculiar fascination that this Clouzot unpleasantness exerts.

| Jan 26, 2023

Clouzot does it, all right; his Grand Guignol techniques are so calculatedly grisly that they seem silly, yet they succeed in making one feel queasy and sordid and scared.

| Jan 26, 2023

Rarely if ever has such a wallow in the sickeningly macabre been passed for distribution in this country.

| Feb 24, 2017

Superbly acted, Les diaboliques is as effective a thriller as Hitchcock's film, if lacking the depth and resonance.

| Mar 22, 2011