CONTAINS A BIG SPOILER Chabrol's transitional period was coming to an end.His

golden era was about to begin,and would culminate two years later with "le boucher".But the transitional period is still here in 1967.

"Le scandale" is nothing short of rubbish.The first hour is meandering and dragging on and on and on:you're going to tell me it's Claude Chabrol 's usual disgust for the bourgeoisie.It would work the following year in "la femme infidele" when Chabrol began with a fly on the wall account of the daily life of those wealthy people.It does not here .Anthony Perkins and Maurice Ronet are wasted and Yvonne Furneaux is undistinguished.Stephane Audran is here too and with her ,comes my big spoiler :so stop reading now if you have not seen the flick (but haven't you got a better way of spending your time anyway?).Anyone who knows Chabrol's works has seen Audran in a lot of films;and you realize that Jacqueline is a Stephane Audran made look ugly ,and the German hostess is the real sexy Audran.When the movie was made,Audran was hardly known in France and the audience could be fooled.No longer.

Chabrol ,in the second part,tried to create suspense and fear ,by suggesting Ronet was going nuts.But it's too late and the ending recalls some of those Joan Crawford extravaganzas ,the likes of "straight jacket" except that you had a good laugh in Castle's movie .Not in Chabrol's dud.

Gastronomist Chabrol fills his quota of good food.Here they treat themselves to some delicious kidneys (not hot enough,one of the guests complains.)

French actor Maurice Ronet ("Purple Noon") is front and centre here as Paul Wagner, a free-spirited playboy. He is pressured by Christine Belling (Yvonne Furneaux, "Repulsion"),the wife of his good friend Christopher Belling (Anthony Perkins of "Psycho" fame),to sell his champagne business to American interests. (Represented by character actors Henry Jones ("The Bad Seed") and George Skaff ("Topaz").) But complicating matters is the fact that after Paul emerges from drunken stupors, dead female bodies are found in his vicinity. Since he hasn't been quite right since an incident in the films' opening business, he worries that he's losing his mind once again.

Critics weren't overly kind to this psychological thriller from French filmmaker Claude Chabrol, feeling that the plot was simply too convoluted. But, in truth, it's not all *that* complex, and it does have surprises in store for the viewer, including the ultimate identity of the killer, revealed to be a VERY ruthless sort. The film is extremely well shot in Technovision by Jean Rabier, and features a pleasant score by Pierre Jansen. It's noteworthy for being rather irreverent, and Chabrol gets an uncharacteristic, amusingly comic turn out of Perkins. This is the loosest that this viewer has ever seen the actor. Ronet, playing the one character in "The Champagne Murders" worthy of some sympathy, does a very effective job, but the film truly belongs to a fantastic Stephane Audran ("Babette's Feast") as the secretary.

Commendably, Chabrol may end this with the expected confrontation between principal characters, but dares to prevent the audience from feeling total satisfaction by ending the film without a true resolution.

Written by American film critic Derek Prouse and French screenwriter Claude Brule ("Barbarella"),based on an idea by William Benjamin; the dialogue for the French-language version was scripted by Paul Gegauff. This was the first of two pictures that Perkins acted in for Chabrol; the second was "Ten Days Wonder".

Seven out of 10.

Anthony Perkins plays an is-he-crazy or is-he-not post Norman Bates role and Maurice Ronet plays the French version of that same character. They were like twins...but were they killers?

What I liked about this movie was the dual role played by French actress Stephane Audran. With a little black wig, brown contact lenses and buck teeth, she played the mousy secretary Jacqueline. With her natural blonde hair and blue eyes she played seductress Lydia.

Nobody else in the cast was very effective except for Audran and it was interesting to see her as a lovesick chick-on-the-side to the married Perkins, and as the faithful, bland secretary who gratefully took the orders of her mistress, Perkins' wife.

The final scene was staged uniquely by director Claude Chabrol and it was very effective. As Ronet, Perkins and Audran all fight for a gun to kill each other for a variety of reasons, the camera pulls away from inside the red-carpeted bedroom where the three are wrestling around. The camera continues to pull away until just a small red square with the three writhing bodies is center-stage around a black border that just gets bigger and bigger. Then the Universal logo appears and that's the end.

You don't find out who won the fight and it makes for a great ending to, as I said. a pretty standard "who-is-the-killer" movie. It's worth watching for Audran's performance, though small in number of scenes; and for that last fighting shot.