Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (DVD)

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"Chop, chop, sweet Charlotte,
Chop, chop till he's dead.
Chop, chop, sweet Charlotte,
Chop off his hand and head."

I've always thought of "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" as a last hurrah for the Hollywood of old. Not only did it star of bevy of old-time stars--Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway, Mary Astor--it was shot in black-and-white.

Not that this 1964 Robert Aldrich film was the last picture these actors ever made--far from it, except in the case of Ms. Astor--or that it was the last picture ever shot in black-and-white; but it was among the last memorable films these folks made together, and it was at the tail end of the great B&W era. Be that as it may, the movie is probably best known today as a somewhat campy if always engrossing exercise in Grand Guignol.

Ah, Grand Guignol: That early twentieth-century French style that describes any short drama of horror and sensationalism, a style so well executed in Ms. Davis's hit movie of two years earlier for director Aldrich, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" The success of "Baby Jane" dictated a sequel, but "Charlotte" wasn't it. Although Aldrich had tried to team up Davis with Joan Crawford, her "Baby Jane" costar, Crawford backed out shortly after production began, pleading illness. This resulted in a frantic search for a replacement and de Havilland stepping in. Despite a few script modifications, the wonderfully creepy atmosphere surpasses most anything in "Baby Jane."

Figuring to capitalize on similar story elements and character relationships as those in novelist Henry Farrell's "Baby Jane," Aldrich and screenwriter Lukas Heller again based their script on a story by Farrell, "Whatever Happened to Cousin Charlotte." But in addition, there is a good deal of "Les Diaboliques" involved, too, and a smattering of William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," the short story about an aging Southern sinister who lives alone in a big old house after murdering her lover many years before. Indeed, the Faulkner story provided some of the inspiration as well for Robert Bloch and Joseph Stefano's "Psycho" several years before, so there's a good deal in "Charlotte" that may seem familiar.

Robert Aldrich was no stranger to action-adventure stories, having made things like "Kiss Me Deadly," "The Dirty Dozen," "Emperor of the North," and the original "Flight of the Phoenix" and "The Longest Yard," so it's no wonder he brought a sense of urgency, tension, and suspense to Gothic thrillers like "Baby Jane" and "Charlotte." "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" begins with a lengthy back story set over three-and-a-half decades earlier, in 1927. Young Charlotte Hollis is about to run off with a married man, John Mayhew (Bruce Dern). Her father, Big Sam Hollis (Victor Buono), a wealthy and powerful man in the community, gets wind of the affair, won't allow it, and tells Mayhew to break up with his daughter or else. Then, when Mayhew tells Charlotte he can't see her again, she declares, "I could kill you," and the next thing we know, an unseen person is murdering Mayhew with a butcher knife in a scene of horrifically grisly content.

When the body is found, its head and one of its hands are missing. Everyone suspects Charlotte, but the father with his political connections covers it up. The father dies a year later, and Charlotte is left to live alone in the family mansion.

Now, we move forward to 1964, where the main story takes place. I won't bore you with too many plot details, but let me just say that by this time Charlotte is quite removed from reality. Half the time she believes her lover is still alive, and half the time she believes she probably did kill him. Certainly, the community believes she's a murder, the local children making up cruel song lyrics like the ones quoted above. Think of Lizze Borden here; even though she was acquitted of the murder of her parents, people assumed she did it all the same. Still, the sheriff doesn't think Charlotte is crazy. "She just acts that way because people seem to expect it of her," he says.

But things are not always as they appear. When the State requisitions Charlotte's house for demolition (to build a new bridge and road through her property), Charlotte refuses to leave. It is at this point, early on in the story, that she calls upon her only kin (and heir), her cousin Miriam Dearing (de Havilland), for help. But no sooner does dear cousin Miriam move in with her than weird and frightening things begin to happen in the old house. Charlotte sees a severed hand and a bloody cleaver; the harpsichord plays in the dead of night when nobody's at it; mysterious figures stalk the grounds; wall mirrors are inexplicably broken; and the missing head reappears.

Is Charlotte truly insane, or is she being driven mad?

Aldrich fills his story was all the elements of good film noir, with shadowy passageways and angular photography the order of the day. Equally important, he fills the story with enough quirky and suspicious characters to keep a viewer busy guessing for hours, and it all starts with Ms. Davis's Charlotte. Davis is made up to look as old and dowdy as possible, a stark contrast with the enduring beauty of cousin Miriam, whose radiant beauty doesn't seem to have succumbed to the same ravages of time as Charlotte's. Moreover, Davis fills out the role with an over-the-top performance that seems to scream out for people to take notice of her, as though she were saying, "Remember me? I'm Bette Davis! I'm an Academy Award winner! Never mind that I'm reduced to playing goofy old ladies in horror films; I'm still a great actress!" Well, the fact is, she was still a great actress, and in Miss Charlotte's quieter, more nuanced moments, Davis proves it. But there's a good deal of shouting and histrionics involved at other times as well, and I doubt that anyone would have wanted it any other way.