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DVD Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
Poor Charlotte Hollis. She's been shunned by the community for decades, ever since the fateful night in 1927 when her lover was hacked apart with an axe. Her antebellum southern mansion is slated for the bulldozer, as it stands in the way of highway construction. Charlotte's only hope lies in her cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland), coming down from up north to help settle things. Miriam, however, has other designs. Together with her boyfriend Drew (Joseph Cotten), she embarks on a scheme to systematically drive Charlotte out of her mind (not a great leap) and get her mitts on the family fortune. From there, things only get more complicated. Charlotte puts the "gothic" in southern gothic, as a great showcase for completely bizarre, overwrought, and out-of-control performances from all involved. Agnes Moorehead plays Charlotte's loyal, disheveled housekeeper to the hilt, with an odd inflection that calls to mind Amos and Andy more than southern gentility. As the drunken, conniving Dr. Drew, Cotten's accent is indeterminate at times, and seems to come and go. As great as the supporting players are, though, the crown goes to Bette Davis as the shrieking Charlotte, a portrait of isolation and decay stuck in a world of tragic delusions inside her crumbling mansion. De Havilland is a close second as the scheming Miriam; the scene where she slaps the holy snot out of a hysterical Charlotte is itself worth the price of admission. Mary Astor (in her last role) and Cecil Kellaway (as a kindly Lloyd's of London adjuster) put in the only performances with any restraint, acting as counterweights for the rest of the cast. Besides, you'll never get another chance to see Joseph Cotten playing the harpsichord and singing, or caked in mud and lily pads! With Robert Aldrich's claustrophobic direction, Charlotte is as Southern as a field of kudzu, and as subdued as a train wreck. --Jerry Renshaw
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, one of my all time favorite horror films, is finally released in DVD format. Looking forward to the "extras," I expected the commentary that accompanies the film to be far more interesting and--sadly--accurate. The commentator, Glenn Erickson, refers to the Harry Wills character as Mr. WILLIS. He refers to the Louisiana location, Houmas House, as HEW-mas House instead of the correctly pronounced HO-mus House. He also ignores the use of Oak Alley plantation as the location of Jewel Mayhew's house. Further, he inaccurately refers to the music box--a gift from Charlotte's dead lover, John--as a gift from Charlotte's father. I expected more--perhaps some of the footage of Joan Crawford as Miriam, even if only stills. The commentator perpetuates the myth that HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE was first a novel. No novel was ever printed. Perhaps I'm picky, but there is so much more to this film that was left out in favor of "reference" material on the stars and producer-director--material that would have been more entertaining and more interesting to the HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE fan.
No hushing, it's great !
I nearly didn't buy this dvd because I have a vhs copy. But I am gald I did just the commentary by film historian Glenn Erickson is worth getting this dvd ( but correct me if I am wrong Mr Erickson it was 'Hotel' the tv pilot that Ms Davis was in and not the other tv series that you mentioned in your commentary ) .Great acting by Ms Davis as usual what a pity Ms Crawford turned down this film. From www.rareprint.org
Great Film/Ho Hum Commentary
Anyone who grew up during the 60's and caught this on late night tv will recall this film with high nostalgia.Everyone else has summarized the story, so I'll pass. Sure there are plot holes and devices, but who cares.
However, there is no excuse for substandard commentary, yet this film has it in spades. There are numerous factual errors,one of the most glaring is that the interior is a replica of Houmas House (it ain't)but worst of all, the commentary is just plain b-o-r-i-n-g. This film really deserved someone either deeply knowledgeable of cinema history, or a fun narrator to give listeners a heavy on the camp hootfest.
It's a shame Fox Entertainment went on the cheap with this one.
It's brash! It's grotesque! It's a blistering display of psychological terrorism! One of the blackest comedies ever made, this 1962 thriller rejuvenated the careers of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and played heavily on their own Hollywood legends, incorporating film clips from their earlier stardom to add depth and realism to a severely twisted tale of sibling rivalry. Davis plays the former child star turned wrinkled hag Jane Hudson, whose sister Blanche (Crawford) eclipsed her star in Hollywood, and has been paying for it ever since. Now confined to a wheelchair, Blanche is held prisoner in the musty mansion she shares with Jane, who terrorizes Blanche with maniacal control (and dead rats for dinner), and embarks on an absurd campaign to revive her career, curly-haired wig and all. A... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Joan Crawford Director(s): Robert Aldrich DVD Release Date: Released the 25 September 1997 Usually ships in 1 to 2 weeks
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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In the opening sequence of The Letter, director William Wyler delivers a primer on film directing: at a rubber plantation, in the tropical funk of a Malaysian night, the heavy stillness is suddenly broken by shots... and a woman with a gun, descending a staircase. She is the wife of the plantation owner, and the dead man is, ahem, not her husband. Holding the gun so securely is Bette Davis, in one of her greatest performances (her acting of a big revelation, late in the film, is still an astounding piece of emotional fluency). The story is taken from one of those sturdy Somerset Maugham tales that has proved itself in many versions, but this is the keeper; it was nominated for seven Oscars®, including best picture, director, and actress, winning none. Wyler's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Herbert Marshall - James Stephenson Director(s): William Wyler DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The definitive screen adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the 1961 production of The Innocents remains one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed. Originally promoted as the first truly "adult" chiller of the big screen (a marginally valid claim considering the release of Psycho a year earlier), the film arrived at a time when the thematic depth of James's story could finally be addressed without the compromise of reductive discretion. And while the Freudian anxiety that fuels the story may seem tame by today's standards, the psychological horrors that comprise the story's "dark secret" are given full expression in a film that brilliantly clouds the boundary between tragic reality and frightful imagination.
