Author Archive for Krustee

I may have been mean to my sister when we were kids, but I never tried to feed her a dead budgie. This is the story of two show-business sisters, “Baby” Jane Hudson (Davis,) a washed-up vaudeville child star, and her sister Blanche, (Crawford) a glamorous 30′s film star. One night Blanche is crippled from the waist down in a car “accident.” No one’s quite sure what happened, but it’s pretty clear that Baby Jane ran her sister over in a fit of pique. Now Jane must wait on her sister hand and foot, attending to her every need. Blanche is totally dependant on her sister, yet it’s her money that pays all the bills and rent.

Of course, Jane doesn’t exactly enjoy being Blanche’s nurse. When she discovers Blanche’s plans to sell the house, move out with her paid nurse and ditch Jane, Jane goes apeshit. How easy would it be to forge Blanche’s signature and keep cashing her checks? And if Blanche were conveniently out of the way, who would know?

So Jane sets about making Blanche’s life a living hell. Watch the sparks fly as Jane kills Blanche’s parakeet and serves it to her sister on a lovely bed of sliced tomatoes. Watch Blanche get upset and ring her buzzer. Watch Blanche starve and steal chocolates out of her sister’s bureau. Watch Jane try to revive her signing career with a con-man as her piano player. Watch Jane hit people with a hammer.

I can’t really describe this movie. If you’ve seen many Bette Davis films, you’ll know how good she is a playing creepy old ladies. This really takes the cake, however. Joan is cast against type as a whiny, perpetually naive and sweet older sister. She wheels herself around looking scared and upset and ringing her buzzer a lot. Now, if you were confined to a wheelchair, wouldn’t you insist on living on the first floor? The Hudson Sisters are ultra-rich, yet they can’t afford one of those electric chairs that climbs stairs for you. You’d think that Blanche would at least make certain she’d get out of the house once in a while.

But Blanche has a deep, dark secret that’s causing her to be such a whiney nincompoop. Don’t miss the ironic surprise ending.

I think this movie was technically supposed to be a horror movie, but you can’t help but chuckle the whole way through. This is one of those films that everyone quotes, yet we had to visit three different video stores in two different cities to find it. Watch Joan Crawford torture her children in Mommie Dearest and then chase it with Baby Jane.

Based upon the timeless, teen-angst classic, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, this film adaptation was a terrifying depiction of one young woman’s descent into annoyance. Scooter and I stared at the screen dumbfounded (well, maybe not completely dumbfounded) for two hours while Esther Greenwood (Hassett) pranced around throwing temper tantrums and screaming and generally, just freaking out over little stupid things. What, you say? You say that that’s the way depressed people act? Well, let me just say… no. I read The Bell Jar, and it’s a pretty good book. However, I’m sure that if this movie had been made as soon as the book came out, Ms. Plath wouldn’t have wasted so much time in offing herself.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: Ester is a bright young college student with a lot of talent. She writes a villanelle and gets invited to work for a summer at a ritzy fashion mag in New York City. She has many adventures in the Big Apple, including getting into a screaming match with her editor, getting sexually assaulted by a blind date, and throwing all of her clothes out of the window. She also has many poignant flashbacks of her boyfriend Buddy (Parker,) a big dork who just wants to do the nasty with her. You really can’t blame Esther for not wanting to get hot ‘n heavy with Buddy, because even his mere presence onscreen in a constant source of irritation. However, Esther looses her sympathy chip pretty quickly.

After Esther’s job in NYC is up, she has to go back home to the suburbs and live with her mom, a creepy widow. Esther starts to loose her cookies. She’s a total over-achiever, and when people question her natural intellectual superiority, she flips out. She also gets turned down for a summer writing program, so she’s bored and doesn’t know what to do with herself. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m bored, I spend a lot of time eating raw hamburger and visiting cemetaries. (Actually, I did visit the cemetary a lot during my painful teenage years… which I guess is the point of this film.) Aanyway, Esther’s dad dies when she was really little, and her creepy mom forbids all mention of his name. Could this be part of Esther’s problem? Gee.

Why is it that whenever an insane woman in a movie has to leave a message, it’s always written on the mirror in lipstick? Is this some kind of feminist statement about the nature of cosmetics? Are Hollywood producers ironically implying that women express themselves through make-up? Or do filmmakers simply assume that women don’t know how to use any other writing instrument? I don’t know, but Esther gets a lot of practice.

Eventually Esther downs a bunch of sleeping pills and wakes up in a sanitarium. Her mom won’t admit that she has a problem, which causes Esther to flip out and scream at her at random intervals. Esther also gets electro-convulsive shock treatment and stares at the wall blankly and other fun things. I won’t go into details. Eventually Esther is cured and her best friend hangs herself. The End.

It’s fun, though, watching Esther flip out and scream at people. For one thing, she’s supposed to be nineteen, yet the woman playing her is obviously in her thirties. Dust off your old high school journals, light a clove cigarette, and watch this movie with your depressed teenage poet friends.