The first remake of the Clouzot Diabolique under the same name. (But see Games, see Reflections of Murder.) The retention of the French title emphasizes that this is frankly a film for those who refuse to read subtitles, or who are blind to black-and-white, or who can find no way to identify with actors who haven't been profiled in People magazine. For anyone, however, who knows movies (what more damning way could it be put?), this remake can offer nothing but drudgery. Some minor revisions have done more harm than good. Who, for instance, is supposed to have taken those snapshots of the wife and mistress loading the body of their shared man into the trunk of the car? And the stamping-out of any supernatural suggestion increases dullness more than it increases credibility. Kathy Bates, a fair trade for Charles Vanel, brings to the wily police detective a totally different gender, one in keeping with the new, updated, politically corrected, feminist slant to the thing. But the altered ending is brought into line with that slant only at a cost of turning our ingenious criminal into a complete nincompoop (let's check the pulse before we pop the cork, shall we?), and of making nonsense of everything that preceded it. And the drawing-out of this ending, the compulsory coming-back-to-life of a presumed corpse (or two or three), adds only drudgery of a new and different kind. Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri; directed by Jeremiah Chechik. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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