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This week on the Rotten Horror Picture Show we’re stuck firmly in the ebbing glow of our past fame, so we hope you enjoy the creepy, outdated, vaudevillian greasepaint monstrosity we’ve become after 50 episodes as we cover the 1962 creep-out classic, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is an aging child star left to care for her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), also a former child actress. Stuck living together in a mansion in old Hollywood, Blanche plots to get even with Jane for the car crash that left her crippled years earlier. But Jane is desperate to keep Blanche imprisoned as she plans a new rise to fame, and tries to hide Blanche’s existence from doctors, visitors and neighbors while she devises a way to get rid of her sister.
Join Clay and Amanda as they deck the halls with bows canary al-caprese (among other classically prepared questionable game), a totally non-threatening, lifesize child doll, the name “Blanche,” and HIGHLY questionable parenting, but also some good parenting too, so who are we to judge? Definitely some questionable sibling-ing though, that’s for sure!
Definitely filled with unnerving scenes and some pretty objectively horrific actions, it’s still difficult to classify Whatever Happened to Baby Jane as a horror movie. Does it make it on the merits of Jane’s torture of her sister alone? What about the dark, creepiness of Jane’s delusion, and her murderousness? Or is it missing something to really put it firmly in the “horror” camp? Either way, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Is quite a ride with a blockbuster performance by the great Bette Davis in the title role!
So put on some pancake makeup, serve your closest family member a dead bird for lunch, and write a letter to daddy with us…if you DARE!