THE MAKE A SCENE FILM CLUB PRIMER - WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
Ahead or our film club screening of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane at CULTPLEX in Manchester on Wednesday 9th April (tickets can be bought here!) we wanted to share our own thoughts feeling and links to amazing articles, podcasts and videos essays on the film we're screening in "the Make A Scene Film Club Primer"!
After the film we're hoping to post your reviews and thoughts too so keep an eye on the newsletter, socials and website.
HAGSPLOITATION
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is in the horror sub-genre deliciously and controversially titled "hagsploitation" which started in the 1960s dealing with the absolutely horrific concept of women aging!
Typically these schlocky horrors were low budget and stared actresses from the golden age of Hollywood that the industry no longer "knew" what to do with. These talented women would often be more willing to take the grotesque “hag” roles due to the lack of opportunities for these female stars once they had "aged out”, audiences would to be thrilled by seeing these icons play out twisted and over the top horror scenario, firmly planting it in world on exploitation cinema which used lurid and often exploitative subjects or trends to make a quick buck out of audiences’ curiosity.
For a primer on Exploitation Cinema as a concept this article is a good summary…
https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/INTRODUCTION
For a list of the core “hagslpoitation” films of this era (including the ridiculously titled "What's The Matter With Helen?") many of which featured Baby Jane’s Joan Crawford and Bette Davis (separately) check out this article…
https://allonesthatgotaway.com/the-10-best-hagsploitation-films/
The Final Girls podcast has a great episode on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, early examples of the sub-genre and discussions of exploitation horror and thriller genres…
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5I54d3YM9eAyP7W93u4aJr
This article puts Hagsploitation in the context of what came before - how Psycho gave horror villains "sympathetic" or at least psychologically interesting reasons for being villains and how the release of the film blew open possibilities for types of horror cinema (Baby Jane is released 2 years after Psycho) - and after through to Death Becomes Her to Ti West's Pearl trilogy and, of course, The Substance.
https://bruinlife.com/psycho-biddies-hagsploitation-and-the-horror-of-an-aging-woman/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20Ever%20Happened%20to%20Baby,(1950)%20cannot%20be%20overstated.
The Substance cannot be ignored as it is the most recent of pure hagsploitation. It ticks all the genre's boxes (which now includes tropes of using showbusinesses as a way of exploring women’s beauty standards like in Baby Jane, X and Death Becomes Her) and then adds more depth and meaning.
Or does it? Is it actually just - despite the film being made by a feminist female filmmaker - perpetuate the same “sexist stereotypes” and “shallow fears” of older women as “Psycho Biddies” the early examples did?
This next article by Johanna Isaacson wonderfully titled "What Ever Happened to Monstro Elizasue?" articulately dismisses that argument (which was put forward by The Guardian recently with a real whiff of and links articles spouting nonsensical TERF ideology) and adds in the queer pleasures of these films. Of course we relate to movies that pick apart how society views the human body, of course we love the thrills of terror and camp...
https://blindfieldjournal.com/2024/11/08/what-ever-happened-to-monstro-elisasue-in-defense-of-psycho-biddies/
THE DIVINE FEUD
The meta narrative of the "hatred" the two on screen stars Joan Crawford and Bette Davis had off screen is one of the quirky joys of this classic that has helped it endure. How true was it? How much was it fed into by later life interviews by an increasingly candid and eccentric Bette?
It’s expertly explored in Sean Considine's biography The Divine Feud
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bette-Joan-DIVINE-Shaun-Considine/dp/0751541877
and the Ryan Murphy 2017 TV show Feud: Bette and Joan which is streaming on Disney+ in the UK,
A cheat sheet for the feud can be found here…
https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/joan-crawford-and-bette-daviss-feud-explained.html
If you want to go in depth around specifically what ha-happened around the time of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? including all the drama that happened once Bette got nominated for an Oscar for the film and Joan didn't then Carina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast episode is a must listen....
http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/tag/What+Ever+Happened+to+Baby+Jane%3F
These are two little topics that I felt deserved a deep dive around this extraordinary classic.
Yes the campery and bitchiness is what may have powered the popularity of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? for nearly 70 years but it's the quality of the film, Robert Aldrich’s indelible imagery and the towering performances by two all time great actresses that come together in a touch of alchemy in the first instance in this brilliant shocker of a movie that kicked off the journey that it's been on since 1962. The fact it’s still being screened and inspiring new filmmakers to this day is testament to its brilliance.
Oh and one last thing… have you seen the real life video of Bette Davis singing the “theme song” from the film on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in bizarre staccato, kinda out of tune, swaying from side to side like Baby Jane Hudson herself? If not it’s a totally bonkers treat and the perfect way to to end our first ever Make A Scene Film Club Primer…
