Chess players may be interested in THE VANISHING because the screenplay was written by Tim Krabbe and is an adaptation of Krabbe’s novel The Golden Egg. Krabbe is a strong tournament player who is renowned in the chess community for his collection of odd formations, unusual statistics, and other chess curiosities. THE VANISHING does not involve chess per se, but it does feature a prolonged battle of wits between two intelligent men, each endowed with patience and a strong will to win, one of whom appears to be the equivalent of a low A player (like me) while the other is clearly an IM (like mighty Silman). This sort of sadistic mismatch is perfect, of course, for a horror movie.

The 1988 European version of THE VANISHING should not be confused with the 1993 Hollywood remake, which has the same title and was made by the same director, George Sluizer. Because the remake changes the ending of the story to make it upbeat, it lacks the ruthlessness and icy chill of the 1988 version. Fans of the 1988 version praise it not only for its ghastly conclusion, but also for being unusual, innovative, and original.

No doubt about it – the conclusion of THE VANISHING is genuinely ghastly. But because I correctly guessed what the precise nature of the ghastliness would be an hour before it arrived, its effect on me was far less chilling than it would have been if it had come as a complete surprise. The problem is that Sluizer overloads the first forty minutes of the film with heavy-handed premonitory omens. Anyone who bothers to think for a moment about the symbolic import of these omens should be able to predict the ending as precisely as I did.

As for the claim that THE VANISHING is unusual, innovative, and original, I’m not so sure. Sluizer’s story may seem fresh to some viewers, but key elements will be quite familiar to others. Let me give you the recipe. Take a large portion of Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES, sift in Poe’s belief that the spirit of perverseness exists in all of us, and blend thoroughly. Add a dollop of “The Cask of Amontillado” and bake for 100 minutes in a French country oven. Voila! There you have it – a nouvelle cuisine thriller!

Hitchcock himself said that in a thriller, suspense is more important than surprise. THE VANISHING has a tablespoon of the one and a pinch of the other, but mostly it’s just creepy. As the coldly rational chemistry teacher Raymond Lemorne, an apparently normal bourgeois who is secretly driven by the imp of the perverse to perform the most evil act he can think of, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu gives a performance that made my skin crawl. At one point Raymond diagnoses himself as a sociopath. Donnadieu’s portrayal perfectly captures the classic symptoms of that particular psychosis – superficial charm coupled with a complete lack of feeling for other human beings and an uncontrollable desire to hurt them.

Interestingly enough, not only is the villain creepy, so is the “hero,” a handsome but rather wild-eyed young man named Rex (Gene Bervoets). Early in the film, when his car runs out of gas in the middle of a long, unlit tunnel, Rex takes off on foot, leaving his hysterically frightened girlfriend Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) behind in the darkness. Nice guy. Later in the film, he expects his new girlfriend Lieneke (Gwen Eckhaus) to hold his hand and give him moral support while he compulsively searches for Saskia’s abductor. Very nice guy indeed.

One of Sluizer’s dark ironies is that Rex’s search does not seem to be motivated by deep love for Saskia or any real hope she might still be alive for him to rescue. Instead, Rex is driven solely by the need to know exactly what her abductor did to her. He can’t stand the wondering, the doubt, the awful speculation, and this egocentric concern with his own mental discomfort is what leads him to become more and more obsessed with the search for Raymond.

By the time Rex and Raymond finally meet, we know they’re both insane, and it should come as no surprise that Rex succumbs to the imp of the perverse himself. Just before this happens, a wonderfully lurid and garish camera shot lets us assume Raymond’s viewpoint as he looks through the rain-streaked windshield of his car at Rex. Rex is about fifty feet away, running in erratic, demented circles around a tree, periodically pausing to pound his head against the trunk and howl with indecision. Suddenly he turns and races, limbs flailing madly, face contorted, straight toward the camera.

The cinematography is stylish in this scene and many others. Equally stylish are the editing, the musical score, and the acting. Everything about the film is done well. But I refuse to rave about any flick that opens and closes with a shot of a praying mantis, and I have major plausibility issues with the adoration that Saskia and Lieneke lavish on Rex. Yes, he’s handsome and intense, but he’s also emotionally abusive and crazier than an outhouse rat. No woman in her right mind would hang with the guy for ten minutes, much less involve herself in a relationship with him.