Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (15)
D: Robert Aldrich
Warner/Seven Arts (Robert Aldrich)
US 1962
132 mins
Horror/Thriller
W: Lukas Heller [based on the novel by Henry
Farrell]
DP: Ernest Haller
Ed: Michael Luciano
Mus: Frank de Vol
Bette Davis (Baby Jane), Joan
Crawford (Blanche), Victor Buono (Edwin Flagg), Anna Lee (Mrs. Bates)
***spoiler warning***
Bette Davis is Baby Jane, once a spoiled rotten child star of
the stage and screen, now a haggard, mentally deranged has-been, who spends her days torturing her bed-ridden sister who she's been caring for since a car accident left her unable to
walk.
Like the finest Hitchcock movies, director Robert Aldrich
allows suspense and tension to provide the terror, rather than tacky effects and cheap scare tactics, while it's use of music, photography and limiting the majority of the story to a single
setting also helps build up the tension. Bette Davis, caked in days-old makeup is wickedly wild-eyed and creepily sinister as the deranged Baby Jane, hoping for one last day in the limelight
following her fall from grace.
The film set a trend of casting ageing actresses against type
in horror films which is still continuing today, though not many produce a performance up there with the calibre that Davis' delivers here.
Still, the film's biggest surprise is left to the coda, when
it turns out that Baby Jane isn't quite the monster after all.
8/10
