Much of Édouard Molinaro’s Des femmes disparaissent (US: The Road to Shame) takes place in a remote, self-contained villa housing pretty young girls a la the Playboy Mansion, yet the beautiful setting and beautiful women are merely concealing a foundation of sex trafficking, drugs, abuse, and violence. Robert Hossein stars as Pierre Rossi, who one night follows his beautiful fiancée Béatrice (Estella Blain) as she leaves her apartment across the street for some kind of rendezvous; while on her trail, Pierre is attacked, and his identity papers are stolen, by two thugs who work for gangster Quaglio (Jacques Dacqmine). Pierre manages to follow one of the thugs to a luxurious home with high-security grounds where he discovers that gorgeous, scantily clad women, possibly including Béatrice, are being lured, drugged, and sold into white slavery (a popular European noir subject at the time) by Quaglio’s gang, who capture Pierre and hogtie him in the garage. Deftly combining sleaze and luxury, Molinaro keeps the film moving visually through high angles (the view of the party), smash cuts (a relatively new cinematic invention), and moments of abrupt brutality (one woman is stripped naked and whipped), while Blakey’s score adds a chill in the air via plucky bass and percussion.