Robert Hossein’s Les salauds vont en enfer (US: The Wicked Go To Hell) is a film in two parts. The first part takes place in a French prison, where Hossein himself plays a small part as prison yard tough guy Fred and where inmates Pierre Macquart (Henri Vidal) and Rudel (Serge Reggiani) prepare for the day they’ll escape, which soon comes. After they narrowly and violently make it out (German Shepherd lovers, avert your eyes), we begin the second part of the film in which the fugitives, Rudel injured, traverse the countryside until stumbling upon a remote house belonging to an artist and his muse Eva, played by the impossibly radiant Marina Vlady. The artist is soon dispatched (the drawn-out death by gunshot on the stairs is brilliantly done), which leaves two over-sexed men alone with a beautiful, young girl as hostage. Complications ensue. Jacques Duby shines in a memorable role as Georges, a weaker inmate easily bullied into performing a strip tease for the guys the same day his wife visits to ask him for a divorce. Production designer Piménoff and cinematographer Kelber paint vivid settings, especially the prison, which features an elevated intersection where corridors meet — and inmates march — in front of a statue of Christ, and the score, written by the director’s father André, employs an overly dramatic refrain, as if from a symphony, whenever the action heats up.