There is a version with a happy ending. It was made in 1993 by the same director, in Hollywood, in English, starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland. It is one of the most catastrophic acts of self-destruction in recent cinema history.

The original THE VANISHING (SPOORLOOS), Dutch and French, 1988 - ends differently. It ends the only way it could end honestly, and that ending has been haunting people for nearly forty years.

George Sluizer made it on a budget of $165,000, shot mostly in Nîmes and the Netherlands. The screenplay came from Tim Krabbé's novella The Golden Egg - Sluizer had read the early manuscript chapters and immediately wanted the rights. They adapted it together, fell into creative disagreement, and Sluizer finished the script himself, which Krabbé resented.

Jean-Louis Trintignant was Sluizer's first choice for the killer, Raymond Lemorne. He was unavailable. Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu got the part instead, and then proceeded to make everyone on set miserable - Johanna ter Steege, in her feature debut, later said the situation became "unbearable" within days.

What they made together, in spite of all that, is a film that shows you the killer's methodology in careful, almost clinical detail - and then uses everything you know against you at the end.

Stanley Kubrick called it the scariest film he'd ever seen. Watch the original. Avoid the remake. This is not a complicated instruction.