- Directed by Robert Aldrich
- Written by Henry Farrell, Lukas Heller
- Stars Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 14 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cth9aakWf38
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The acting is amazing and it’s all-around considered a classic, pretty much universally loved and adored on every “must see” movie list. Horror Guy Kevin is going to blaspheme a little and say it’s all that plus a bit too long and tedious.
Synopsis
In 1917, Baby Jane Hudson has a sold-out show. She’s the “The Diminutive Dancing Duse from Duluth,” a child singing and dancing star of the stage. They sell dolls of her in the lobby. Her sister Blanche does not look impressed. Jane throws a tantrum in front of a bunch of women, and they aren’t impressed either.
In 1935, Jane gets into Hollywood, but she can’t act and is a raging alcoholic. There’s a clause in her contract that states for every picture Blanche is in, Jane must be in one as well. The producer says that Blanche is the biggest thing in movies today. The producer wants to dump Baby Jane completely, but that’s up to Blanche. We see that there’s an “accident” with her car where Blanche winds up in a wheelchair and Jane winds up in an institution. Credits roll.
In the present, Liza and her mother, Blanche and Jane’s next-door neighbors, talk about them. They talk about never seeing Blanche, and Jane is fat and weird.
Meanwhile, Blanche is watching TV from her wheelchair, and Baby Jane looks like a seventy-year-old drunken child. The two clearly don’t get along. People still watch Blanche’s movies, but Baby Jane is mostly forgotten.
Blanche’s nurse, Elvira, says Blanche needs to talk to Dr. Shelby about Jane, and Blanche makes excuses for her. Elvira tells Blanche that Jane is keeping her fan mail from her. “She’s sick, and she’s not getting any better. In the past month, she’s getting a lot worse.” Blanche talks about selling the house, something that Jane wouldn’t like.
Jane gets drunk and imagines her doll singing. Blanche, upstairs, hears her insane sister singing downstairs. The old woman does the whole act from when she was a child star, and it’s pathetic.
Blanche tells Jane that they’re out of money and will need to sell the house. They can’t afford to keep it. Jane pulls the plug on Blanche’s phone. Jane serves Blanche her dead pet bird for dinner.
Jane goes out the next morning, and Blanche wants to make a phone call, but she can’t get down the stairs. Meanwhile, Jane goes to the newspaper and puts an ad in the “Personals” section. Blanche throws a note out the window (why not just yell?) to Mrs. Bates, but Jane intercepts it.
They argue over who bought the house. First, Jane says her father bought it for her, then Blanche says she bought it, so then Jane changes her story to say she bought it. She also insists neither of them will ever leave this house.
More and more, Blanche is becoming a prisoner in her own home as Jane torments her. Jane pays Elvira and tells her to take the week off before feeding Blanche a dead rat. Jane cackles evilly.
Elsewhere, Edwin Flagg plays the piano and circles Jane’s ad for an accompanist for a showbiz act. He comes over for an interview, and once again, Blanche doesn’t make a peep. Edwin has no idea who this crazy old bat is, and she sings terribly, but he needs the money and goes along with her.
Jane takes Edwin out to dinner, meanwhile, Blanche is upstairs starving. She finds the checkbook and learns that Jane has been forging her checks. She eventually tries to crawl down the stairs to get to the phone, but she’s too slow; she calls Dr. Shelby just as Jane returns. He agrees to come right over, but Jane kicks Blanche unconscious. Jane calls the doctor back right away and, impersonating Blanche, tells him to forget about it.
Elvira comes by, and Jane fires her. She doesn’t give up that easily and lets herself in. She finds the buzzer disconnected and Blanche’s bedroom door locked. Jane returns and the two women argue. Elvira enters the room and finds Blanche, bound and gagged, hanging from her traction machine. Jane then kills Elvira with a hammer.
Edwin comes over to practice, but she refuses to let him in and tells him he’s fired. She loads Elvira’s body into her car as Mrs. Bates drives in. Edwin whines to his mother about the situation, and she remembers Baby Jane trying to murder her sister with her car.
The police call Jane, which sets her off again, and she ungags Blanche, who wants to talk about the accident so many years ago. The police bring Edwin, who’s drunk, to Jane’s door. She invites him in for drinks as she promises to get him a check real soon now. When Jane comes out and shows him a Baby Jane doll, he realizes that his mother’s story was true. He puts the doll in Blanche’s wheelchair.
Blanche pushes over the bedside table, and Edwin hears it. He goes into her bedroom and finds her tied up. “Please, help me,” she whispers. He runs downstairs, outside, and down the street.
Jane panics and runs upstairs, calling for Blanche, “Please help me, Blanche!”
She then wheels her sister out to her car and drives her to the beach.
In the morning, they announce on the radio that Blanche has been abducted by her sister Jane. Also, Elvira’s body has been found. Meanwhile, Jane’s making sandcastles at the beach next to a nearly-dead Blanche.
A couple of cops stop at the ice cream stand by the beach and find Jane’s abandoned car. Blanche wakes up and admits that Jane didn’t run over her with the car; Blanche was driving. Jane was too drunk, so Blanche wouldn’t let her drive. Blanche hated her sister and tried to run her over but hit the gates instead and broke her own spine. She managed to crawl out of the car, and everyone just assumed it was Jane’s fault because she was so drunk and confused.
The cops spot Jane buying ice cream and ask her about her sister. The crowd is so big that all Jane does is dance for them like she used to. Then they find Blanche.
Commentary
Blanche could have screamed out the window for the neighbors at any time. She also had several opportunities to get downstairs to the telephone but instead waited too long. When she finally did call the doctor, she could have simply said she’d been kidnapped or held hostage, but she doesn’t.
Still, the acting is good, if not completely believable. It started a whole genre, “hagsploitation,” with scary old actresses. I’d call it more of a thriller than a horror movie, but it’s got many of the same elements.
We don’t know if Blanche was alive or dead at the end.