sol **SPOILERS** Decent remake of the French 1955 film noir classic of the same title about two women, wife and mistress, planning the murder of their both sleazy and ape-like husband and lover that ends up boomeranging on both of them.In this modernized version of "Diabolique" the story takes place in Pennsylvania not France with headmistress and owner of an all boys private school Mia Baran, Isabelle Adjani, having her fill of taking all the abuse she can from her caveman like husband Guy, Chezz Palminteri. Mia gets together with Guy's also abused mistress, who got her left eye blackened by him, Nicole Horner played by an ultra sexy looking Sharon Stone who's also a teacher at the boys school. The two abused women plan to finally do away with the creep and make his death look like a drowning accident. It takes a while for the very Catholic observing Mia to agree to Nicole's plan to murder Guy but the way he treats her,like dirt, pushes her over the edge in willing to do him in.Luring Guy away from the boys school where he resides both Nicoel and Mia have him secretly travel to a friends home, the Danzingers, in Pittsburgh where they plan to murder him. It's there that Mia got the brutish Guy drunk, which wasn't that hard top do, on booze that was spiked with a number of strong sleeping pills. With Guy out cold the two dumped him into the bathtub and with the help of what looked like a ten gallon bottle filled with water,to keep him from floating to the surface, ended up drowning him. It's when back at the boys school when Nicole & Mia dumped the boozed and drugged up as well as dead Guy into the school swimming pool that strange things started to happen! Guy not only didn't go to the bottom he didn't even go to the top of the pool? In fact he just plumb disappeared from sight over or under the water line!The rest of the movie has Mia, the weaker of the two murderesses, slowly going to pieces in not only what she did in murdering her husband but far worse in not knowing where his body is in order to give it a decent Catholic burial! Going to the local police to have them track down her missing husband Mia is spotted by retired lady detective Shirley Vogel, Kathy Bates, who smells a big story and takes over the investigation in the missing Guy Barnan.***SPOILERS*** It doesn't take long for Vogel to realized that something isn't exactly kosher in Guy's mysterious disappearance. Checking out all the facts Vogel finds out that Guy was embezzling the funds for the boys school and planning to bankrupt it in order to throw off suspicion on himself by the local police. What's even more interesting is that Guy's partner in crime was non other then Nicoe Horner! His mistress whom, as Vogel soon suspects, was very possibly his murderer as well!The unexpected and shocking final in the film in fact outdoes the original, the 1955 French version, with the truth coming to the surface in what was the real reason in murdering Guy and who were the one's who cooked it up in the first place! This was enough to give you, like one of the principle characters in the movie, an almost fatal heart attack! The fact that the intended victim of this elaborately planned scheme didn't end up dropping dead from fright turned out to be disastrous for those who planned it!

tedg The original here is one of the best thrillers, energetic in a way that distracts us from the revelation of the con.This is a lesser movie, but adds at least three clever ideas. If you are interested in narrative structure, you'll be interested in remakes of films and how they change. (I think these are changes to the original.)First, in true folding style, they added a film within the film. The film within is a recruiting film, but that hardly matters.Second, they changed the dynamic of the detective by making him a her. This allows for the third change but along the way the possibilities exist for the three types of women: the virgin, the whore and the shrew. It isn't played up well enough to matter, but its clear that someone's intuition was tuned.Third, there is a final twist that I think is quite different than the original's. It bonds the three women, already hinted in a lesbian tendency between the first two. But amazingly, the film didn't work well for me, probably because of pacing problems at various levels. Not that any level was off by the interplay of levels wasn't syncopated according to what engages. Its an intuitive process, I think, but quite rigid in its rules.Isabelle Adjani was cast perfectly, and introduced very skillfully. Beginnings are hard.This in its original incarnation was the first double con movie, I think. Adding a third was inevitable, I suppose.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Brigid O Sullivan (wisewebwoman) Occasionally only, I should make clear. So bloody awful that not for the first time do I wish there was a minus rating on IMDb. Picked this up in a remainder bin for a couple of dollars and figured I had loved the French original from the fifties so how bad could the remake be? Might be a curiosity item and the cast was pretty stellar - for one the magnificent and rarely misplaced Kathy Bates was in it.Was I in for a shock. Nothing, absolutely nothing, worked in this movie. The plot, the minescule amount that was there of it, was drivel. There was no character development AT ALL.Some awful special effects (get those white eyes on the corpse, folks)and a supposedly creepy atmosphere that makes one chortle every time the usually lovely Isabelle gapes in a mirror at herself. Doesn't everyone look in a mirror when they're frightened? I know it's the first thing I think of, as I climb out of bed after a nightmare - I look in a mirror to make myself feel better.More threads going nowhere than you could count in a ragged old sweater. The lesbian sub-plot that never quite makes it. And it should. It is a key element in this woeful adaptation. Sharon Stone mincing around in an oddly wired looking walk with trampy tight clothes and really high heels and the strangest lipstick that doesn't leave a mark on her frequently lit cigarettes (she's a school teacher in a private school, Catholic, yeah that's believable). And on and on. How does one get funding for such a travesty, thirty million dollars, I believe??? And the overacting of Chazz and Isabelle... I could write a book on that alone. There should be a law against this kind of thing. 1 out of 10 for what I don't know, only that there isn't a zero rating on IMDb. And as I said, we need these movies, just to make us appreciate even the mediocre ones.

Sherazade That stunning genetic lottery winner known as Isabelle Adjani (in one of her best contemporary roles) stars as the push over trophy wife of a posh private school headmaster (played by that ever perfectly sinister Chazz Palmintery) and Sharon Stone plays a vixen of a teacher (and perhaps one-time lover of the headmaster) within the school who inspires Adjani's character to conspire to have her husband bumped off. Kathy Bates in the detective hot on their tails ones the allegedly crime has been committed and from here on, it is a game of Whodunit and where-is-the-body?! Brilliant performances by all the afore mentioned actors, if only the script were as solid as they are and were in this film.