Diagnosis: Murder

A lumbering, shakily scripted essay in the kind of emotional area (actions stemming from hatred, greed and possessiveness) that Chabrol effortlessly activates into his fraught and loving critiques of the bourgeoisie. Consultant psychiatrist Lee's wife disappears; notes appear blaming him for her murder. Enter Finch's police inspector, dragging with him an ambitous but awkward subplot involving his girlfriend and her crippled husband (not only is the poor guy confined to a wheelchair, he is also given the most unspeakable lines in the script). Hayers' pedantic, explanatory style, and failure to sustain any very revealing mood or to probe his characters with the necessary relentlessness, makes the going grim.