‘CLASSICS IN THE LOOP’ – Monday Film Series at The Tivoli Continues October 21st with WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

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

‘Classics on the Loop’ continues at The Tivoli next week with WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? Screenings happen on Monday October 21st at 4 pm and 7 pm . Admission is just $7.The Tivoli is located at 6350 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63130. A Facebook invite can be found HERE

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.