Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) The influence of What Happened to Baby Jane? and the resulting boom in psycho-biddy thrillers is obvious in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte – once again, Bette Davis (with support from elderly classical Hollywood stars such as Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton and Mary Astor) plays in a gothic thriller, this time heading to the American South in a vast and coveted mansion for a story reaching a few decades earlier and weaving a big web of deception. Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte is interesting in the ways those kinds of films are supposed to be interesting, but there’s a feeling that it’s aping better movies, and adding a layer of hagsploitation that feels more exploitative than worthwhile. It’s not bad, but it feels redundant – maybe I’d like it more if I had let more time elapse between it and its most obvious inspirations.