Crucible of Horror

Chabrol gives the key in a grand analysis (La Cérémonie) from this second or foreign title, The Corpse it’s called originally, Polanski is evidently the starting point (Repulsion).

Pinteresque means British, to be sure.

Several points in the telling show the stylistic derivation from Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques as a matter of form.

A great work of the British cinema under any name.

Howard Thompson of the New York Times missed it quite, but called it “quite a picture. Quite.”