'Les Diaboliques'

Diabolique is the most fascinating story I've had the pleasure of watching in a film.

So good, that Alfred Hitchcock lost out in the bidding for the script, apparently just hours too late. It served as an inspiration for Psycho and it goes down, without a doubt, as one of the greatest thriller-horror films of all time.

That's quite the testimony.

Diabolique is set at a boys boarding school in the French countryside. It is run by Michel, who is married to Christina, the school's owner and a teacher. However, Michel openly flaunts an affair with the young Nicole (who we suspect is abusive to her), who has a good relationship with Christina in a kind of anti-Michel anti-fan club.

The pair conspire to kill Michel. They lure him outside the school, sedate him, drown him and put his body in a wicker chest and at the bottom of the school's swimming pool with the idea that it'll float to the top and look like an accident.

It doesn't and the pool is drained to find no body.

During a school photo, Michel is seen in the back of the shot. At another moment, a boy breaks a window with a slingshot that he claims he received from Michel. One dark evening, Christina is spooked by sounds in the school corridors. When she comes back to her room she finds ...

I can't spoil the movie. Why? Because it was one of the first (if not the first) films in history to issue an anti-spoiler alert at the end of the movie. Trust me, it's worth it.