Stephen King claimed Henri-Georges Clouzot “out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock”
Without Stephen King, the world of cinema wouldn’t look anywhere near as horrifying as it does now, with the influential author having written the source material for some of the greatest genre flicks of all time. King is a truly iconic figure in the world of cinema, collaborating with filmmakers like Brian De Palma, Rob Reiner and Mary Lambert for such movies as Carrie, Misery and Pet Semetary.
His most significant collaboration came in 1980 when he worked with the American mastermind Stanley Kubrick to adapt his novel The Shining, which starred Jack Nicholson alongside Shelley Duvall. Whilst the film is celebrated in many corners of cinema, King wasn’t best pleased with the adaptation, calling Kubrick’s classic “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it” before adding, “I didn’t care for it much”.
Despite his dislike of Kubrick’s daring adaptation, King remains a vocal lover of the contemporary horror industry, often taking to social media to voice his opinion about the best films of our time.
In an interview with BFI, King discussed some of his all-time favourite movies, picking a beloved remake as his number one pick. “My favourite film of all time – this may surprise you—is Sorcerer,” King explains, adding: “William Friedkin’s remake of the great Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. Some may argue that the Clouzot film is better; I beg to disagree”.
However, the author wasn’t all that opposed to the work of the French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot, with his second choice on his list of favourite movies going to the director’s 1955 film Les Diaboliques. Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse, the stylistic 1950s classic tells the story of the wife and mistress of a hated school principal who goes about trying to murder him with the ‘perfect’ plan.
Speaking about the movie, King compared Clouzot to an utter icon of the movie industry, stating: “My second pick would be Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, his suspense-horror masterpiece, as terrifying now as it was back in 1955. He out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock”.
Helping to shape the future of 20th-century horror, Les Diaboliques is infected with suspense as Clouzot slowly cranks the narrative to its shocking conclusion. Created from the same mind who made The Raven in 1943 and The Wages of Fear in 1953, Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques is considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time, even making it onto our exclusive list of genre classics.
The film was remade for American audiences in 1996 by director Jeremiah S. Chechik and screenwriter Don Roos, with Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani and Chazz Palminteri in the starring roles, but predictably the film was a critical and commercial flop. Enjoy the trailer for the original classic below.
