Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte

A follow-up to the surprise success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - which paired two of Hollywood's most powerful leading ladies, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford - Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) began filming with the same duo in front of the camera and the same director behind it. But with Davis elevated to an uncredited associate producer status, the actress gleefully took revenge on Crawford, who eventually left the picture for (supposed) health reasons. Olivia de Havillland stepped into the vacated role, providing a more stable working relationship for this "spiritual sequel" which swings from a grand 'ol Gothic horror story to a gory true-crime expose.

Opening with a shocking prologue in which John Mayhew (Bruce Dern) has his head and hand chopped off by an unseen murderer, the guilty party is believed to be Charlotte Hollis (Davis), whose extramarital affair with Mayhew was frowned upon by her father. But the charges fail to stick, and Charlotte lives out the next 40 years of her lonely life in the family estate on the brink of insanity, comforted only by her surly housemaid, Velma (Agnes Moorehead).

But the arrival of cousin Miriam (de Havilland) throws the already unstable house into disarray. Both Charlotte and Miriam begin seeing ghostly apparitions, receiving unwelcome guests and unwanted publicity. It soon becomes clear that someone is trying to take advantage of Charlotte's fragile condition. But with so many suspects in town to choose from, the reveal might come too late.

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a beautifully shot film. Director Robert Aldrich lifts a number of tricks from Hitchcock, including a preponderance of low and high-angle shots, masterfully drawing the viewers' eye to strategic bit of evidence and macabre foreshadowing. But it's also all a bit on the nose, lacking Hitchcock's clever skill at misdirection. In short, most audiences will figure out Charlotte's plot twist shortly after the first act...and that takes a bit of fun out of things.

But Bette Davis' amusingly histrionic performance is a welcome distraction. Shrieking, whimpering, flailing and crawling, she does everything but swing from the chandeliers. And the irony is that all that over-acting is perfect for the role, contrasting quite well against the reserved character of Miriam, who de Havilland plays with perfect poise and suspicious grace. The film's thrills are more small-screen in scale (much like an episode of Thriller or Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but the cast's larger than life performances pick up the slack. Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is like a trashy paperback ghostwritten by an author trying to protect his or her reputation...and reveling in every moment.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray is yet another example of how fantastic B&W looks in hi-def, with impossibly inky blacks and unreal levels of detail. Extras include an isolated score track, two audio commentaries (one with film historians David Del Valle and Steven Peros, another with Glenn "DVD Savant" Erickson. Previous extras ported over from the previous edition include a nice 20-minute Making Of, separate interview with Bruce Dern, an archival promotion piece narrated by co-star Joseph Cotten, TV spots and trailers.