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It's summertime, and they all congregate at Uncle Mathias' (Frédéric
Duvallès) estate in the countryside, boringly ordinary Marc (Jean-Claude
Brialy) and his wife Lucie (Perrette Pradier), his a little too
"adventurous" bother Stéphane (Claude Rich), Stéphane's friend
Michel (Walter Giller), a researcher into the occult surrounding the
estate, and Michel's wife Marie (Edith Scob). And while all of these
guests are out for a masque, Mathias dies, and leaves his entire fortune
to Marc ... which upsets Stéphane to a point where he starts to assume
uncle Mathias has been poisoned - but before an autopsy can be performed,
the uncle's body is gone. Of course, Stéphane is right, Marc isn't quite
the square everyone has taken him for and he actually has an affair with
uncle's nurse Myra (Nadja Tiller), who has helped him slowly poisoning
Mathias for years - that he has died has just by coincidence happened when
she had her day off and he was out with the family on a ball. Thing is,
now the housekeeper (Fené Gégin') is sure she has seen Lucie hand
Mathias what was ultimately his lethal drink, and Lucie's alibi to have
been at the ball starts to crumble ... but Marc is less and less likely to
believe that of all people Lucie has helped him and his lover to achieve
their goal, and despite everything he loves Lucie ... and all of this
eventually leads to awful results. La Chambe Ardente
might not be an absolute genre classic, as especially in the 1960s there
were too many similar films around that surpassed this one in one way or
another, but that said it's still a pretty cool film that makes the most
of its macabre undercurrents, oozes atmosphere, and seemingly gives away
waaay too much way too early on to then totally surprise the audience with
new revelations near the end. And add to that a first class ensemble cast,
and you really got yourself a great vintage whodunnit - no masterpiece
maybe, but a movie you most certainly will enjoy nevertheless!
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