Kind of a Hush

I didn’t have to blog Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), since it didn’t come from Netflix - I got it from the library. You see, Ms. Spenser watched What Ever Happened to Baby Jane on a plane, and didn’t really like it, but wanted to see more of the genre (Wikipedia calls it “psycho-biddy”).

It starts with Charlotte, Bette Davis, in her old Louisiana mansion. The government is getting ready to bulldoze it to put in a highway, and she runs them off with a shotgun. This gives them a chance to give us the setup, and queue the flashback: When Davis was young, her daddy threw her a fancy ball. Her daddy, played by Victor Buono (who I always get confused with Bruno VeSota), is trying to buy off her lover, a married Bruce Dern. But when Davis goes to see Dern, she comes back to the party covered in blood - Dern has been killed, and everyone assumes Davis did it.

Now, she lives with shrewish white trash housekeeper Agnes Moorhead in seclusion, and most people think she’s crazy. But her cousin, Olivia de Havilland, comes to help get her packed up and moved out. She is helped by Davis’ doctor, Joseph Cotten. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy. A minor complication is insurance investigator Cecil Kellaway, from Lloyd’s of London, trying to figure out why Dern’s widow never collected on his insurance.

So, SPOILER - de Havilland and Cotten are driving Davis crazy. Their method is based on Clouzot’s Diabolique. Director Robert Aldridge (Kiss Me Deadly, Baby Jane) weaves a twisty tale and gets some ripe acting out of the cast. Overall, I liked this a lot, maybe more than Ms. Spenser - definitely more than she liked Baby Jane.