Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, or more popularly known as the Grand Guignol, was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris. From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, after World War II, it specialized in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, what we could call to be the grandfather of today’s splatter films. Remember the scene in the movie Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) when, in the words of Brad Pitt’s vampire Louis, the theater play was “vampires pretending to be humans, pretending to be vampires” , and then the ate alive a young mortal woman? Well, that was supposed to be a common show at the Grand Guignol –but without the supernatural, for obvious reasons–.
In The Most Assassinated Woman in the World (2018) (La femme la plus assassinée du Monde in its original French language), Paula Maxa is the Parisian Grand Guignol Theatre‘s leading lady, famous for being murdered on stage every day. But one day a mysterious stalker starts to chase her and awakes ghosts from her past. Then is when people start to suspect, is there a link between the theatre and a series of gruesome real-life murders?
The movie is the debut in a fiction feature film of Franck Ribière, a veteran producer of Spanish and French horror, mystery and crime titles like Bloody Mallory (2002), Inside (2007) and its 2016 remake, The Oxford Murders (2008), Celda 211 (2009) or Livid (2011). The screenplay was written by Vérane Frédiani based on an original idea of James Charkow and David Murdoch. Anna Mouglalis, Niels Schneider, Eric Godon, André Wilms, Sissi Duparc, Jean-Michel Balthazar, Michel Fau and Constance Dollé form the main cast.
After a run in some festivals like Edinburgh International Film Festival or Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland where it was nominated for Best European Fantastic Feature Film, The Most Assassinated Woman in the World (2018) has been recently added to the Netflix catalog. You can check out here the official trailer, in French language and with English subtitles.
