WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? Find Out Thursday Night at Schlafly Bottleworks

“I didn’t bring your breakfast, because you didn’t eat your din-din!”

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? screens Thursday December 3rd at 7:00pm at Schlafly Bottleworks

The 1962 shocker WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? blended PSYCHO with SUNSET BOULEVARD to compelling effect. One of the great movies about the movies, (and the best movies about the movies bite the hand that feeds them), and the best of director Robert Aldrich’s ‘women’s pictures’. It’s about a couple of self-loathing sisters hauled up together in a decaying Hollywood mansion, a too-close-to-home study of the real life rivalry between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford or even as a veiled study of homosexual self-depreciation with the sisters as aging drag queens. But these are the very things that make the picture great. It is precisely because it can be read in this way that makes WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? such a perversely enjoyable, subversive piece of work.

As the sisters, Davis and Crawford pull all the stops out and then some. What makes Crawford’s performance great is that she is never sympathetic even when Davis is feeding her dead rat or quite literally kicking her when she’s down, while Davis is simply astonishing. With her face painted like a hideous Kabuki mask and dressed up like a doll that’s filled with maggots it’s an unashamedly naked piece of acting, as revealing as her work in ALL ABOUT EVE and almost as good. After the success of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, every actress of a certain age got to star in their own ‘Hag Horror’ film including HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE(Davis with Olivia DeHavilland), WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN (Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds), WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE (Geraldine Page), DIE DIE MY DARLING (Tallulah Bankhead), THE NANNY (Bette Davis again), and more, some better than others, but this bitch-fest is the real McCoy.

Now you’ll have the chance to see WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? when it plays on the big screen this Thursday night (December 3^rd) at Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Avenue Maplewood, MO 63143). The show begins at 7:30pm.

A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/967603589966135/

Brought to you by A Film Series, Schlafly Bottleworks, AUDP and Real Living Gateway Real Estate.

Doors open at 6:30pm.

$6 for the screening. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed suds.

“Culture Shock” is the name of a film series here in St. Louis that is the cornerstone project of a social enterprise that is an ongoing source of support for Helping Kids Together(http://www.helpingkidstogether.com/) a St. Louis based social enterprise dedicated to building cultural diversity and social awareness among young people through the arts and active living.

The films featured for “Culture Shock” demonstrate an artistic representation of culture shock materialized through mixed genre and budgets spanning music, film and theater. Through ‘A Film Series’ working relationship with Schlafly Bottleworks, they seek to provide film lovers with an offbeat mix of dinner and a movie opportunities.