Written 20 years later, Le Boucher could have been a Danielle Steel book. The story follows a quiet French woman who begins an affair with the local butcher, just as locals begin turning up murdered. Is he the culprit or is she just paranoid? This theme's been done to death in years since, and Boucher doesn't add a whole lot to the experience. Stéphane Audran's heroine is hard to love, she's just so plain, and Jean Yanne's cigarette-toting villain/non-villain is smarmy but doesn't quite strike the right chord between good guy and bad. An interesting effort from Claude Chabrol, but not his best work.

Aka The Butcher.