TO COMPLEMENT THE RE-RELEASE OF KISS ME DEADLY, HERE’S A CHANCE TO SEE A LATER SHOCKER FROM THE EVER-FASCINATING ROBERT ALDRICH.
This superbly dark Hollywood horror-comedy-satire features one of the most remarkable Bette Davis performances. She’s a force of nature as the title character, a bitter former 1930s child star whose career nosedived in adulthood while that of her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) took off. After Blanche was crippled in a mysterious car crash, the pair ended up virtual recluses, grinding on each others’ nerves in their Los Angeles mansion. As has been very widely chronicled, the off-screen enmity between Davis and Crawford was scarcely less vicious than Jane and Blanche’s, and this adds a prickly edge to a picture which the intervening decades have done absolutely nothing to blunt. Aldrich shows a masterful touch with what could easily have been campy, pulpy fare. It’s a deceptively tricky task, but he manages to strike just the right balance between laughs and chills. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has lost none of its power to entertain
and disturb.