Review of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) by Ryan D — 15 Dec 2008

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a film starring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The film beings with a lengthy prologue. A young version of Bette Davis is a child star while her sister is nothing special. They grow up and the young version of Joan Crawford is a movie star while her sister has faded into obscurity. Crawford's character has it worked into her contract that every film she makes the studio has to make one with her sister despite her sister's lack of talent. Eventually Joan Crawford's character is run over by a car and paralyzed and her sister is blamed. The film then begins. Davis tortures and abuses her sister because her sister is planning on selling the house and putting her in a home. Davis grows fairly insane as the film goes along. Overall, this is sort of Rear Window meets Psycho meets Sunset Boulevard. Unfortunately, this film is vastly inferior to each of those three films.

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford give pretty good performances, but Davis was way too crazy for my liking. She sort of reminded me of a cross between Anthony Perkins and Gloria Swanson, but it just didn't work for me. Crawford was less interesting, but did a good job playing a paraplegic I suppose.

Overall, this was a boring film. It won an Oscar for best costume design and was nominated for a few others but won none of those. The film was sort of suspenseful, although the climactic ending was way too slow-moving and a little disappointing. If you like Bette Davis it might be worth a viewing, but I'd say skip it.

55/100.

F.

UP NEXT: To be determined.