60's American Horror Part Nine

HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE

(1964)

Dir - Robert Aldrich

Overall: GOOD

Though not as ghastly as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Robert Aldrich and Bette Davis' follow-up Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is still a solid companion piece exploring similar themes of family jealous, greed, and two-timing.  An adaptation of Henry Farrell's story "What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?", (Farrell also having authored the Baby Jane novel), the film was initially set to star Joan Crawford as well, though her dysfunctional feud with Davis and alleged illness at the time made producers hesitant to combine oil and water twice, thus Olivia de Havilland took over Crawford's part.  As a Southern Gothic thriller, it has the quintessential antebellum mansion occupied for decades by Davis' nutty spinster, with town gossip, an unsolved murder with shady suspicions attached to it, plus lifelong grudges all coming to the surface.  Davis does the crazy old lady thing once again, though hers is a much more sympathetic and tragic character than the title role that she played in Baby Jane, with de Havviland and Joseph Cotton being the conniving pair behind most of the shenanigans.  The running time is excessive, but the movie is beautifully photographed and Aldrich knows how to get the most out of the sensationalized material.

 

TWO ON A GUILLOTINE

(1965)

Dir - William Conrad

Overall: MEH

The first of three films by Warner Bros. to be produced and directed by William Conrad in a foolhearted attempt to try and recapture the camp of William Castle movies minus the showmanship, Two on a Guillotine has one or two spooky bits, a brief yet scenery-chewing performance from Cesar Romero, and a laughably stupid mystery reveal, but otherwise it is an overly-long, lifeless slog.  Both star Connie Stevens and composer Max Steiner did not think highly of the finished project and it is indeed easy to dismiss it as lackluster fluff.  Many of the plot points are stock, such as Stevens and Dean Jones' budding romance which kicks off under false pretenses on Jones' part, all supernatural elements being mere red herrings, the accusations of certain parties only being interested in a dead guy's inheritance, the cockamamie set-up of Stevens having to spend seven nights in a "haunted" house in order to get said inheritance, etc.  Though all of the pieces are there for a Castle-esque bit of macabre goofiness, there are no clever tweaks to the formula, the script is padded, and Conrad does not lean into the schlock value enough to elevate it.

SHE FREAK

(1967)

Dir - Byron Mabe

Overall: WOOF

Answering the question that nobody anywhere ever asked as to what Tod Browning's Freaks would be like if half of the running time was nothing but real life carnival montages set to bad jazz music and the entire thing was made by somebody who does not know what movies are, She Freak is as bad as filmmaking ever gets.  Writer/producer David F. Friedman claimed that this was a deliberate, unofficial remake of Browning's seminal, oddball classic, but even though the "narrative" is unrecognizable from it, they at least tossed in the same book-ending segments which come off as a mere afterthought.  Every character on screen patiently waits for every other character to slowly enunciate all of their wretched, smart-ass dialog with an over the top, southern drawl, all of which makes every scene feel like it is nine hours long.  If the viewer does not seriously contemplate suicide while listening to one tortuously unnatural monologue after the other, worry not because absolutely nothing happens throughout the whole film and everyone on screen is either instantly forgettable or in the case of Claire Brennen's smirking protagonist, just pointlessly awful.  In fact "pointlessly awful" is the ideal tagline for this entire dung heap.