The Infernal Trio

The Infernal Trio (French: *Le Trio infernal*, also released as *Lady of Hell*) is a 1974 film blending crime, comedy, and horror. Francis Girod directed it from a screenplay he wrote with Jacques Rouffio, adapting Solange Fasquelle’s novel of the same name. The story is based on the real-life case of Georges Sarret and the Schmidt sisters, who were tried and convicted in Aix-en-Provence in autumn 1933. Sarret was publicly guillotined on 10 April 1934.

The plot begins in 1920s Marseille. During a pompous ceremony where a tinny municipal band plays, middle-aged lawyer Georges Sarret receives a military medal. A beautiful nurse-attendant wheels a rich elderly woman in a bath-chair; as her eyes meet Sarret’s, the old lady slips down, dead. The attendant, Philomena Schmidt, a now-unemployed German, begins an affair with Sarret. He arranges her marriage to an older man so she can stay in France. After the wedding, Sarret also beds her sister Catherine, and a lustful ménage à trois develops.

The trio turns to insurance fraud. Catherine marries an elderly man named Deltreuil. Sarret bribes a dubious priest, Chambon, to impersonate Deltreuil at a medical exam. With Chambon’s mistress Noémie, they pull off a profitable fraud. Sarret decides to eliminate Chambon and Noémie, shooting them at a rented villa near Aix-en-Provence. He has already bought carboys of sulphuric acid. With the sisters’ help, the bodies are dissolved in two baths upstairs, and the ghastly, gooey residue is ladled and bucketed into a corner of the garden. This prolonged scene is the film’s grisly comic set-piece.

The trio appropriates Chambon’s assets and splits the loot. Catherine goes to Paris; Philomena returns to Sarret in Marseille. When Catherine rejoins them and money runs low—now the early 1930s—they start new swindles. They befriend and insure fragile patients in a tuberculosis hospital. Philomena poses as a charitable lady, Catherine as a maid. They persuade the hospital nuns to release a terminally ill young patient, Magali Herbin, into their care, where they pamper her with luxuries, casinos, and high living.

Magali and Catherine begin an affair. Then, without explanation, as Sarret and Philomena dance, Catherine’s body falls dead from an upper window. Distraught, Philomena attacks Sarret while Magali watches, confused.