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List Price: $26.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 2782
Released: May 30, 2006 |
| Our Price: $12.52 |
| Used Price: $10.79 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A cultish horror favorite, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? will make you think twice before hungrily unveiling a covered plate of food. Bette Davis stars as Jane Hudson, a onetime child actress and singer. As an elderly woman, she wishes to revive her vaudevillian career, but she has become a grotesque caricature of her former self. Over the years as her star faded, the star of her older sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) rose, outshining the career of the has-been Baby Jane. Jane was relegated to minor roles, which she only won when Blanche demanded that she be awarded them. The film opens years after a calamitous car accident leaves Blanche in a wheelchair, with no one to care for her except the increasingly insane and sadistic Jane and their servant, Norman. Trying to punish Blanche for her years of success, Jane tortures the housebound woman, slowly trying to starve her to death, all the while attempting to recapture the fame of her youth. This dark drama also stars Victor Buono as the hefty pianist who answers Jane's ad for an accompanist, hoping to milk some money off the demented old woman. Both Buono and Davis were nominated for Oscars for their roles in this suspenseful and somewhat sick thriller that exploited well the real-life antagonism between Davis and Crawford, while at the same time rejuvenated both their careers. --Jenny Brown
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Two-Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
A Musical Comedy It Isn't... 
2009-12-28 - The first time I saw "Baby Jane" I was 14 years old. I remember being plastered to the seat in the Mayfair Theatre in Hillside, New Jersey. I had never seen anything like it before.
To this day, I dont think of this film as a "Horror" Movie. Oh yes, it's a rough film to watch. Some of the situations are severe. The characters may be outragous, but... there isn't the blood and gore I think of as basics in a Horror flick. Jane was certainly a sick puppy and Blanche wasn't always the poster child for "Loving Siblings," but it may show them as horrible, but not people in a Horror Movie.
In any case, the entire cast shows their professionalism by allowing the director to make them look their worst (and best) and play the parts of bizarre, obviously mentally challenged characters in a very dark film. It's wonderful!
Everything melds together perfectly... story, cast, support staff, art direction and director. Perfection in black and white.
If there is a bird missing, I am NOT having din-din...
Easy to Watch Again
2009-10-19 - This is a great movie to add to your DVD collection because chances are you'll watch it more than a few times. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford at their best. Davis ('Baby Jane') was famous as a child vaudeville star; Crawford ('Blanche Hudson') as a movie star now in a wheelchair. Bette is an unbalanced drinker whom Joan Crawford wants to put in a sanitarium. Bette tries to avoid that at all costs. She thinks she is going to revive her 'Baby Jane' act and be famous again. Davis is superb in makeup and adult-sized little girls' dress. A total classic. Watch for the teenaged girl next door. It's Bette Davis's real daughter, B.D. (who wrote the Mommy Dearest-like book on Bette, 'My Mother's Keeper').
"Black comedy"? 
2009-09-15 - I wouldn't call it 'edge of your seat' - it builds quite slowly - and i wouldn't call it 'black comedy' either. Certainly there are touches of the absurd - well, the whole story is somewhat absurd, but Leonard Maltin's quote on the back of the box "Thoroughly engaging black comedy" is way off the mark. For most people, I don't think a first viewing will yield much in the way of laughs - unless you found movies like "Misery" funny.
Another thing that bugged early on in the movie was the fact that while she was trapped in her upstairs room, with her neighbor working in the garden just below - she can throw a note down to her, yet she somehow can't manage to shout to her for help? There are 2 or 3 scenes like this in the first half of the movie that seem to insult the audiences' intelligence. Other than that, the movie is interesting for what it is - a showcase of 1962 theatre of the macabre, and the talents of Betty Davis and Joan Crawford. Filming and acting are fine all around, and the story slowly but surely builds interest and horror until it reaches its memorable and shocking conclusion. This is a good movie, maybe even a great one for some. It will hold more interest for the connesseur of old, unusual or even campy movies - not necessarily for the modern movie thrill seeker - for modern thrills in the macabre, check out Dexter. ;)
As for the packaging and treatment of this movie on DVD, you couldn't ask for better. Disc 2 puts the movie and it's stars into historical perspective with 3 documentaries, behind the scenes featurette, and an Andy Williams Show segment with Betty Davis. The Betty Davis documentary is substantial at over an hour giving us Davis's life story with many clips from the vast multitude of movies she made and a career that spanned 6 or 7 decades. Love that it ends with Kim Carnes "Bette Davis Eyes". Jody Foster hosts. The second documentary spotlight on Joan Crawford consists of a BBC interview filmed in black and white in the 60s some time after Baby Jane was made. The interview captures Joan (and the times) as it recounts her filmography and the latest tabloid gossip. The special features were great and make this edition a real value for money purchase. It's great to see movies get treatment like this.
WOW!!! This movie is a Classic.
2009-08-06 - I remember seeing this movie for the first time when I was 10. It scared me then and I watched it again in 2008 and I was on the edge of my seat again. This movie is a must see if you like the way movies used to be, having an actual plot. This movie has an original one.
Grotesque horror
2009-07-23 - The Bottom Line:
If Whatever Happened to Baby Jane sometimes feels like a worse Sunset Blvd jumbled up into a horror film, it makes up for it with its sheer grotesque innovation and acting; the film may be derivative but that hardly diminishes its power to horrify.
3/4
