Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri) is the dean of an old school inherited by his wife, the teacher Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani) that has heart disease. Guy is an abusive husband and has a love affair with his mistress Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone), who is a school teacher in the same school. One day, Nicole and Mia plot a scheme to murder Guy and Mia spikes his whiskey and he faints. Then Nicole and Mia drown him in the bathtub and dump his body in the swimming school. Then Nicole dumps her keys in the swimming pool expecting that the school janitor finds him when he drains the pool. However there is no body in the pool and Nicole and Mia believe that someone knows the truth. When the snoopy retired Detective Shirley Vogel (Kathy Bates) investigates the disappearance, Mia freaks out and is near to destroy their alibi. What might have happened to the body of Guy Baran?"Diabolique" is a poor and unnecessary American remake of a 1955 French classic directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. The director Jeremiah S. Chechik succeeds not only in destroying the story and the atmosphere of the original film with clichés and a boring slow pace, but also in wasting a great cast with names such as Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri and Kathy Bates. Isabelle Adjani, for example, looks like a moron and not a fragile wife. The conclusion is a mess. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Diabolique"

The kind of needless remake (of the Henri-Georges Clouzot French classic) that gives all remakes a bad name. The wife & mistress of a nasty school headmaster plot to kill him. Director Jeremiah S. Chechik assembles a colorful cast then wastes them all. Isabelle Adjani is blank faced throughout & Sharon Stone's performance is embarrassingly bad. Stone, in a role played in the 1955 original by Simone Signoret is a lot like Signoret...if Signoret had zero talent and no charisma. Whatever sex appeal and moxie Stone built up via BASIC INSTINCT & CASINO is stripped away here. She's like a mannequin who smokes a lot of cigarettes. She's not helped by a lame-brained script that has her spout some very silly one-liners. In a role reportedly (and wisely) nixed by Jack Nicholson, Chazz Palminteri plays the headmaster. Kathy Bates is a cop on the case. This film's idea of character development is to reveal that Bates suffered from breast cancer! Spalding Gray & Shirely Knight are in it too. Sole highlight: some very good cinematography by Peter James, who shot several Bruce Beresford films including DRIVING MISS DAISY. Chechik, a talented director who'd previously helmed the under-rated BENNY & JOON and TALL TALES, saw his career evaporate shortly after working on this debacle and then on another dog, a movie version of the classic '60s TV show THE AVENGERS.

Someone recently said "Hollywood hates originality". This is the unfortunate evidence. I can only guess that the few favorable reviews came from people who never experienced the original film or were just too lazy to watch a film in a foreign language. Clouzot's effort was magnificent way back in the '50's. This was just a sad attempt at some fast bucks with no talent in front of or behind the camera. In the original film, the background of the school was seedy and cheap, the characters were unattractive in general and the surroundings were oppressive. This "sanitized" version misses the original point entirely. There was little or no suspense and no "atmosphere" at all. What a stupid waste. Ditto the remake of "Rear Window" but that's another review again...Curtis Stotlar

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.