Details

Release year: 1960

Storyline

A golddigger inspires her older lover to murder wealthy women for the finances to keep her happy.

Top credits

Directors

W. Lee Wilder

Writers

Myles Wilder

Cast

George Sanders — Henri Landru
Corinne Calvet — Odette
Jean Kent — Mme. Julienne Guillin
Patricia Roc — Mme. Vivienne Dureaux

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Did you know

• A very inaccurate version of the Landru case, ignoring the fact that Landru had a wife and child whom he supported (and to whom he gave every sign of being devoted) throughout the quite lengthy period of his career as a serial killer of wealthy women. The Corinne Calvet character has no equivalent in real life. George Sanders is quite as dapper as the real Landru famously was, but looks nothing like him - Landru was a man of below average height, almost completely bald and with a spade beard. Many commentators on the case have wondered what it was that made this suave but unattractive man so successful with women. Claude Chabrol's film about him, a few years later, was a far more accurate portrait.

• George Sanders may not have been entirely serious when he said in his autobiography that he had confused W. Lee Wilder with his more famous brother Billy Wilder, but it is true that W. Lee Wilder only got into the movie business (in middle age) because he wanted to emulate his younger brother's success and he seems to have deliberately called himself "W. Lee" rather than Wilhelm, and encouraged people to call him "Willy", because he hoped to be linked with him. Billy Wilder took a dim view of this and took care to separate himself from his brother's movie activities, which were confined to B-movies and cheap exploitation pictures. On the rare occasions when he mentioned him to interviewers, he was extremely disparaging, and they were long estranged.

• The real-life Henri-Desire Landru murdered about 18 between 1914 and 1918. He targeted mostly widows and disposed of some of the bodies at his villa in Gambais, France. Other films based on Landru are Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Bluebeard (1944), and Bluebeard (1963).