Death Walks on High Heels 1971

Nicole Rochard, a striking French stripper, learns that her father, Ernest Rochard, was stabbed to death on a train and finds herself under police questioning about a stash of missing diamonds. Ernest had been a famous thief who had supposedly gone straight, but his past casts a long shadow over Nicole’s life. Soon after, she begins receiving threatening calls from a mysterious voice-changing caller, a danger that unsettles her as she tries to piece together who might be behind the renewed threat. While performing at nightclubs, she is watched and filmed by a composed stranger who eventually reveals himself in person after sending flowers to her dressing room. The voice-changing caller strikes again, and a terrified Nicole retreats to her apartment, only to be confronted by a masked intruder with a razor who demands to know where the diamonds are. After this terrifying encounter, Nicole spends the night with her boyfriend, Michel Aumont, in his apartment.

The next morning, Nicole discovers that Michel wears blue contact lenses, and in a panic she flees, convinced that he is the masked man. She then encounters the handsome stranger from before, Dr. Robert Matthews, a British eye surgeon, and pleads with him to take her away from Paris. The pair fly to London, where Nicole indulges in a shopping spree before Matthews escorts her to a secluded countryside estate. The locals are wary and traditional, and Matthews tries to present Nicole as his wife rather than his mistress, explaining that much of his money comes from his real wife, Vanessa Matthews. Despite her growing feelings for him, Nicole senses something off about the surroundings and about Hallory, a dubious local handyman with a prosthetic hand who keeps a close watch on the house. An unseen observer continues to monitor Matthews’s cottage, and a figure in black is seen approaching the residence, offering large sums of money to Nicole.

The following day Matthews returns only to find Nicole missing. Hallory contends he never saw Nicole leave, while Captain Lenny informs Matthews that the village believes Nicole ran off with another man. Matthews heads to London to perform an eye operation on an elderly blind man named Smith. After the operation, a shadowy woman enters the room and shoots Matthews in the shoulder, leaving him wounded but alive. The police begin a meticulous investigation, with hard-nosed Inspector Baxter focusing on small details—such as the drugged doctor asking for “Nicole” after the surgery, despite his wife’s name being Vanessa. The plot thickens as the police travel to the fishing village and discover Nicole’s body has been recovered from the water by local fisherman Philip.

Michel is questioned and questioned again, with the police suspecting him, but he discovers Captain Lenny lurking nearby and questions him about what happened. In London, Baxter questions Matthews, who vehemently denies Nicole’s involvement. Michel shows up at Vanessa Matthews’s home and threatens her, demanding an explanation for why she was seen in the village the night Nicole died. Baxter confronts Michel with the unsettling possibility that Captain Lenny saw a mysterious woman in the village, and the two eventually sit down with Captain Lenny, who is unsure if Vanessa was the woman after all. They proceed to Matthews’s cottage, where the gate opens easily, uncovering evidence that Vanessa had visited Nicole before.

That night, Vanessa—a heartless schemer—confesses to Nicole that she paid her to leave Matthews and return to Paris. Later, Matthews returns to bed, but the same masked figure who threatened Nicole infiltrates the house and murders Vanessa. The police arrive and sedate the distraught doctor. At the coroner’s office, Inspector Baxter learns that bodies kept on ice can distort the time of death, a clue that suggests Nicole’s remains were chilled with ice bricks. A visit to the cottage’s other side reveals a hidden setup: a rope and an anchor with room for a body and vast ice blocks in the water. As Baxter and Bergson prepare to leave, a shot rings out from Captain Lenny’s home, where he has fired at Michel. The authorities arrive, and Michel escapes in Baxter’s car. Baxter interrogates Captain Lenny, discovering money changing hands—Lenny had been spying on Nicole all along and had used the payments to corrupt her. Lenny is arrested, and the case heads back to London.

Michel phones the police to redirect their focus toward the blind man Smith. Smith reveals that he and Ernest Rochard had planned for Nicole to hold onto the diamonds, and the investigation begins to pull every thread together. The foursome—Baxter, Bergson, Matthews, and Smith—returns to the cottage, where a brutal confrontation erupts between Hallory, disguised in Nicole’s clothes, and Michel. Just as Hallory is about to strike, the others arrive. Bergson discovers the blue contact lenses on Michel, seemingly implicating him as the mysterious mastermind. Michel resists and is knocked out with a decisive judo chop from Inspector Baxter, and the diamonds are finally recovered by Smith.

The case appears closed as the men prepare to depart, but fisherman Phillips arrives with a crucial revelation: he provided ice to Dr. Matthews, exposing the truth at last. Confronted with the full picture, Matthews and Rochard’s partnership is laid bare: Roberts plotted the heist and then double-crossed Rochard for the diamonds. Vanessa had disclosed this to Nicole when she visited the cottage, setting in motion Matthews’s plan to eliminate both Nicole and his wife. The blue contact lenses were a deliberate plant by Matthews to frame Michel. The film closes with Inspector Baxter and Bergson escorting Michel Aumont to the airport, where the truth about the diamonds’ fate begins to come to light, and with Matthews’s final exposure as the man behind the scheme.