Autant-Lara's devilish farce is set circa 1830 at a lonely inn in the Ardeche Mountains where the innkeeper (Julien Carette) and his wife (Françoise Rosay) make a dreary life interesting by murdering all guests who stop for the night. On a particularly busy evening--when a broken-down stagecoach provides more potential corpses than the couple could have wished for in a whole year--a monk of gluttonous proportions (Fernandel) learns the terrible secret of “the bloodstained inn of Peyrebelle.” French film historian Georges Sadoul calls L'Auberge Rouge “an excellent success by Autant-Lara and his team, stylistically polished, with a rough Voltairean satire that is lively but lacks bitterness.... The characters of the travelers are only sketched, but the three principals are all excellent. One of Fernandel's best roles.”