René Clément's moody, visually arresting Hitchcockian thriller begins well but eventually gets lost in a series of plot convolutions that border on the comic. Marlène Jobert is a woman who kills a stranger who has broken into her house and raped her while her husband is away. After she dumps his body off a cliff, military investigator Charles Bronson shows up in search of an escaped serial rapist. It's easy to see how this atmospheric noir inspired the Doors' song "Riders on the Storm," but like the movie, Jim Morrison was never big on coherence. The early sequence of rape/murder is well executed, but as soon as Bronson arrives and starts a relentless interrogation of Jobert, things go downhill. Aside from the difficulty that arises from requiring Bronson to speak many lines and imply some intelligence, the startling contrast between his rock-like bearing and the delicate, almost childlike Jobert conjures memories of Bambi Meets Godzilla. After a sequence of wildly improbable events, the film arrives at a meaningless ending. Nonetheless, Francis Lai's haunting score and cinematographer Andréas Winding's carefully chosen palette are a welcome distraction.