Robert Aldrich directs Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Victor Buono in this dark thriller about an ageing former child star who tortures her bedridden sister when she discovers their house is soon to be sold off.

The original hagsploitation / psychobiddy flick. The game lead performances are energised by the much reported off camera gossip that our co-stars were openly vile to each other. I mean neither of them served the other one a rat for dinner in real life but… maybe the opportunity to do so never arose. The fact that this was knowingly their last stab at retaining Hollywood A-List status certainly vibrates in their passionate sniping and distress but it also might explain why it is slightly overlong with extraneous moments of fraught emoting. These slightly overpower any tension creating set-pieces. For the most part this manages to hit the same malevolent sinisterity as Hitchcock’s Psycho and is almost as shocking. The highlights are Buono and Davis’ scenes together. These ripple with the excitement of two everyday grotesques feeding off each other. A rollicking night in, if not quite as taut as Hush… Hush… Sweet Charlotte. 

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