Landru (aka Bluebeard) (1963)

Set during WWI, a bourgeois working man (Charles Denner) is married with children. He supports his family by luring susceptible widows and spinsters to his rented country estate where he murders them and then helps himself to their bank accounts. Based on the life of the notorious serial killer Henri Desire Landru from a screenplay by Francoise Sagan (BONJOUR TRISTESSE) and directed by Claude Chabrol (LE BOUCHER). Chabrol's macabre black comedy is amusing up to a point but after he is caught by the police and put on trial, the film becomes tedious. One of the movie's stumbling blocks is Charles Denner as Landru. He is so genuinely creepy that any normal woman would run in the opposite direction yet you have dozens of women throwing themselves at him! Surely he had more charisma and charm than the chilly arrogance that Denner delivers. One can be both villainous and charming as Vincent Price and George Sanders have proven but Denner may as well have I'm going to kill you! tattooed on his forehead! Still, there's lots of talent in the cast including Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan, Stephane Audran, Hildegard Knef, Juliette Mayniel, Francoise Lugagne and Jean Pierre Melville.