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This was kinda watchable thanks to some interesting camera work and set designs, but the acting was awful. It's as if no one knew what script they were playing.
So funny that Martin Landau knew that Vivian, in her last moments, was haunted by her own mother. As if it was something perfectly logical.
The teacher's spirit is gone so yeah it's gotta be another one - because that's "how it always works". Well, I guess so....
They forgot about the pretty blonde girl on the beach and the film is mostly about lots of wind and hysterical, neurotic bitches. There's more subtlety in Dunaway's Joan Crawford than in Judith Anderson's performance of the witch-like housekeeper.
At the end, the explanations kept coming and coming as if they didn't know how to stop, and I lost track of the who's and whats and whens.
The scenes in the family burial tomb are the best because it looks like a maze of corridors and that itself is spooky enough.
Overall, long-winded and kinda trashy.
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All that's clever, but I'm not sure it all rings true. The acting is of the period, which not everybody likes. Landau played a "psychic investigator" so we're supposed to assume his diagnosis about who the ghost is is "informed". The girl on the beach was inserted to stretch out the running time to help it reach feature length (and therefore has no connection to other plots). Your criticisms of Judith Anderson are interesting, and kind of nuts
It was supposed to be a pilot for a TV series but the network found it "too scary" for the small screen in 1965. Originally, the ghost doesn't switch from the school teacher to the mother after the mother dies --- they added that to extend the length, too.
Yes, there's lots of wind and hysterical, neurotic bitches. Isn't that what we really want? And you say "long-winded and trashy" like that's bad!
I found it competent enough by TV standards then. But for me, though, it's all about the atmosphere.
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Sorry but that argument doesn't work for me because there's good and bad acting in every period.
To be fair, those cheap but psychedelic-looking special effects - both sound and visuals - were quite spectacular.
She played Mrs. Danvers on steroids. It was almost laughable except that it wasn't funny enough (and therefore not "trashy" in good kind of way).
But no matter how I feel about it, it's definitely grande dame guignol. However, as with Bette Davis, the casting of Judith Anderson is very on the nose and therefore it also misses some of the shock n' schlock value necessary for a good guilty pleasure.
The Ultimate One would have been Marilyn Monroe as a bitter, twisted, chain-smoking old hag, screaming at her sexy bare-chested movie son to "kill the whores, baby, kill them!"
It would add something extra to the degradation that is part of grande dame guignol.
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Oh, the acting is just fine.
I'm not a huge defender of GHOST OF SIERRE DE COBRE necessarily , but It's reminiscent of DARK SHADOWS with better visuals.
I like your "whores" scenario, however.
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She doesn't "get" CHARLOTTE, but then she's only 21...
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This is kind of hilarious...
In the last few years, I realize BABY JANE is about my mother and myself.
In the last few years, I realize BABY JANE is about my mother and myself.
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That's very cool. The Addamses enjoying a upfront close of sisters Baby Jane and Blanche bonding.
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Have we mentioned QUEEN BEE (1955) -- and is that grande dame guignol, exactly? It stars a northern-born, fiftysomething Southern matriarch who dominates her family and can, she asserts, have any man she wants. The direction (by veteran screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, his debut as a director) is hapless, but Crawford directs herself and that's all you need.
Barry Sullivan plays her embittered alcoholic husband, John Ireland is her occasional lover, Lucy Marlowe plays Crawford's nubile cousin who can't really act, and Betsy Palmer is Ireland's doomed fiancée.
The music score by BIG VALLEY's George Duning is sometimes inappropriate.
Christina Crawford said this was the one film of her mother's she just couldn't watch because the role and the performance were by far the closest to the real Joan Crawford at home. And, Jesus knows, you can tell Christina is speaking truth.
Barry Sullivan plays her embittered alcoholic husband, John Ireland is her occasional lover, Lucy Marlowe plays Crawford's nubile cousin who can't really act, and Betsy Palmer is Ireland's doomed fiancée.
The music score by BIG VALLEY's George Duning is sometimes inappropriate.
Christina Crawford said this was the one film of her mother's she just couldn't watch because the role and the performance were by far the closest to the real Joan Crawford at home. And, Jesus knows, you can tell Christina is speaking truth.
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I don't recall us mentioning QUEEN BEE in this thread, but I know we've discussed it a little over in the Joan Crawford thread.
I've never seen the movie, other than clips (including the one you attached), so I cannot say for sure how I'd classify it. Judging solely by the clips, I hesitate to call it full-fledged grande dame guignol. It seems a little too A-list-reaching and snootily melodramatic in a very mid-'50s fashion. What clips I've seen make me think of QUEEN BEE as a poor man's PEYTON PLACE more than anything.
Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps if I watched the movie, I'd think about it differently.
What I do know is that Crawford was using that B&W cinematography to her advantage. You can tell shadows have been strategically placed on her to try and "disguise" her age. What was she here --- around 50 or so? In frankness, she doesn't look too bad, but she needed to do something different with her hair. That chopped off look isn't flattering to her age or her features.
I recall in the TCM "Ultimate Movie Star" documentary on Crawford discussing her behavior on the QUEEN BEE set. Betsy Palmer remarked how "sweet" she found Crawford's attentiveness to newcomer Lucy Marlowe, only to later see how openly mean she was to her once filming actually started. Palmer theorizes that Crawford "must've been disappointed" in young Lucy Marlowe not having the talent "she thought she had".
I believe even Christina Crawford pops in and says how QUEEN BEE was basically her at-home-life glamorized for audiences.
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This is just so very Joan:
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What a fun thread! I love these movies. BABY JANE being one of my favorite movies of all time. I never realized THE NANNY was so good. I’ll have to check it out soon. Along with some of the other movies mentioned in this thread, that I wasn’t aware of. I did recently see DEAD RINGER which I hadn’t known about previously, and I really loved it. Not as much as BABY JANE, but it looked very slick and I was thoroughly entertained. I hated THE ANNIVERSARY, though. I thought — Betty Davis with an eyepatch in the English countryside? That must be a hoot. But I had trouble staying awake.
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Yes, THE ANNIVERSARY looks like it ought to be fun, but it doesn't really work all that well.
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said:
Appropriate, since Ruth Roman and Joan Crawford are both Scorpio Rising/Moon in Aquarius.
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How do I find out what the "rising" and "moon" are in my zodiacal sign? It all seems very mysterious to me....
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I think you're Sun in Sagittarius/Moon in Aquarius. But we'd have to have your birth time to get the Rising sign..
All the books are wrong, I say with majestic presumption; they only dish cliches, sometimes with benign intention.
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I've thought about that so often -- had they done a feature length version of "Eyes" with Crawford, directed by Spielberg with all those pan-and-blur artsy shots that NBC rejected, and the script (intended for Bette Davis) from Serling.
In fact, they could have even called the feature length version itself THE NIGHT GALLERY, a pilot that might or might not sell, but one where the same title would work for both the pilot segment and subsequent series if there indeed was one (which, of course, there was). So we'd not only have a full 90 to 120 minute movie, it could possible even be released theatrically (as they used to sometimes do back, and like they did for THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE) if NBC decided not to pick it up as a series.
Imagine Crawford living alone, quite blind and unable to see the priceless art work she's greedily collected in her uptown apartment suite despite -- or perhaps because of -- her inability to see them. She has surgery to briefly allow a moment of vision, and then the most legendary of NYC black-outs happens, one which occurred only hours after famed journalist and Crawford pal, Dorothy Kilgallen, died under wildly mysterious circumstances, her JFK investigative file (with the only interview with Jack Ruby) absconded with by government agents (according to the butler), and Crawford appeared at Dorothy's apartment before the police even arrived.
So it's multi-leveled and whatnot.
Then Crawford crashes through her picture window from many stories above Fifth Avenue or wherever.
Yes, Joan's segment could and should have easily be expanded.
Perhaps, A.I., artificial intelligence, will sometimes allow us to do these things: extend Joans' NIGHT GALLERY episode to our likings, produce her HORNET'S NEST movie I've have in my brain for ages, switch-off Donna Reed's head for BBG's in that 84/85 soap seasons, and overhaul most of DYNASTY from S3 thru S8.
But we're going to be real busy.
So, yes, it could have been the peak of the genre, The Eyes of Lucille LeSueur.
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One of the best of the genre:
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Most definitely. THE NANNY is one of the finest pieces of hag horror.