What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962

Feuding superstars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford came together for this, their only shared screen credit, a good decade-plus past their respective peaks. In it, they play faded showbiz sisters sharing a crumbling Hollywood mansion. While the youngest (Davis) experienced child celebrity and then fell on hard times, her elder sibling (Crawford) enjoyed a successful adult movie career before an untimely auto accident rendered her paraplegic. Now, she depends on little sis to deliver her meals and interact with the world on her behalf, a weakness that the bitter, jealous former Baby Jane relishes and abuses.

There isn’t much more to the story. Jane’s a crazy person who’s allowed years of disillusion and resentment to irreparably crack her while Blanche, the older sister, has no choice but to appease her tormentor and eat punishment. This drags on for quite a while, a cruel monotony that’s only broken by occasional visits from the housekeeper. But that’s not really what this show is all about. Most audience members came out to see the spectacle of Davis and Crawford’s cohabitation, and on that front we get plenty of fireworks. The only thing these two despised more than each other was the thought of having their scenes stolen. There’s a frosty, constant chill between the pair that extends well beyond the typical dramatic fare, like they’re always on the verge of scratching each other’s eyes out. That, plus Davis’s preposterous makeup job (caked at least twenty layers deep) add unusual amounts of authentic, unsettling tension to a picture that would’ve, otherwise, been rather shallow.

Well, it’s still shallow. Hammy and drawn-out, too, but at least there’s something more to it than all that. A film that’s more about the squabbling starlets than the story they’ve set out to tell, Baby Jane aims to be a dark, Hitchcockian thriller, but it hasn’t got the brains to deliver. Instead, it’s more akin to a mad, morbid sideshow.