20 Horror Movies Everyone Remembers For Just One Scene

2. Les Diabolique - The Bathtub

Les Diabolique, a French horror flick from 1955, is often described as doing for bathtubs what Psycho did for showers. There's definitely merit in that argument, for the movie's climactic scare is terrifyingly brilliant.

This tells the story of the wife and mistress of an abusive headmaster who decide to kill him. They dump the man's body in the school's swimming pool, but the corpse disappears, and both women begin to descend into paranoia. It eventually reaches the mother of all crescendos when Christina (Vera Clouzot), the headmaster's wife, finds his body in her bath. It slowly, eerily rises and terrifies her into a fatal heart attack. 

This moment is bone-chilling, and it's followed up by a clever twist. The headmaster (Paul Meurisse) was never dead, and he and his mistress (Simone Signoret) were conspiring to frighten Christina to death (she had a heart condition) and steal her money. Thankfully, the inspector catches them, so they don't get away with it.

Having said all of this, Les Diaboliques differs from Psycho in a crucial way. Psycho has so many amazing scenes alongside the shower murder, while this one just has the bathtub, and that's kind of it. At the risk of sounding harsh, the rest of Les Diaboliques is a little bit slow and ultimately not that memorable. However, because it ends so perfectly, it has acquired a classic reputation it doesn't necessarily deserve.