From Cinerama Releasing Corp.
Directed by Lee. H. Katzin
Starring
Geraldine Page
Ruth Gordon
Rosemary Forsyth
Robert Fuller
Mildred Dunnock
Joan Huntington
Peter Brandon
Robert Aldrich, who directed such Grand Guignol pleasures as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), decided to only produce this one but his usual misogynistic stamp is all over it.
Baby Jane seemed to have started a craze of starring some movie queen whose career was on the wane and putting her in a horror film. Sometimes the actresses were paired and sometimes not. Davis and Crawford, of course were in Baby Jane while Davis and de Havilland did Charlotte. Also in '64 de Havilland appeared in Lady in a Cage and the same year Crawford was in Strait-Jacket. In 1971 came What's the Matter with Helen? with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters. There are certainly more, but you get the point.
Aldrich decided to rename his adaptation of Ursula Curtiss's novel, The Forbidden Garden, on which this film is based, starting with What Ever Happened to. It worked so well the first time... ask a question in a thriller's title and they will come... they will come to find out the answer. It worked on me. Of course I've always been a sucker for two grand dames.
I've elected to call this a crime-thriller but it could be called a crime-drama, a horror film, a black comedy or maybe something else but whatever the genre, it is wickedly entertaining. It stars two veteran actresses of the theater. Both had those extravagant gestures and busy faces and brought their considerable talents to a work that is perfect for both of them.
The story opens at a funeral. Mrs. Marrable's (Page) husband has passed away and she's licking her chops awaiting the executor of the estate to spew out the riches that are coming her way. But he informs her there are no assets, only liabilities. Her husband has left her with nothing more than one diamond cuff link, some pressed butterflies, a dagger and his stamp collection.
What's the newly-poor widow to do? She moves to a charming desert bungalow outside Tucson and takes up a new hobby... murdering her housekeepers. They are carefully chosen... older widows with no family and a tidy bundle of dough, which they give to her to invest with her brilliant money man. She never plans for them to be around for long and claims they all left of their own accord or were fired. No, sorry, she doesn't know how they can be reached.
We barely have a chance to get comfy when she entices her housekeeper out into the night air to help her plant a pine tree in a hole that has been dug earlier by her handyman-gardener. When the poor woman isn't looking, Mrs. Marrable pummels her with a large rock.
We then meet her new housekeeper, Mrs. Tinsdale (Dunnock, another Broadway regular), a frail, quiet woman who has the audacity to question Mrs. Marrable on how the investments are doing but never mind... a new hole has been dug. That shovel against the back of the head must have hurt. We note there's a row of five pine trees. As Mrs. Marrable is getting rid of the woman's personal possessions, she decides to keep her Bible in a red leather jacket. She rips out a page that has a note written on it by the person who gave Mrs. Tinsdale the Bible and then it is put on Mrs. Marrable's bookshelf.
Then Mrs. Dimmick (Gordon) arrives and we're not sure what she's up to. She does a lot of snooping and we soon find her to be as sneaky as her employer.
A compost of events include a dog that digs in Mrs. Marrable's garden, a snarling fight between woman and dog, a woman and her young son moving in to the only other home in the area, outsiders getting swept up in the drama, a terrific physical fight between Mrs. Marrable and Mrs. Dimmick and a great finale. There was a little subplot just before the finale that should have been edited out but oh well.
The way these two actresses play off one another is nothing short of sensational. I could have held off the finale another two hours just to watch them torment one another with such skill and cunning.
Page was the queen of poisonous facial expressions and acid-tongued, hurtful replies. Few actresses could give such pernicious traits to her characters as Page could. I think what she brought to the screen was everything she knew how to do. She didn't hold back. She worked little but she was just so invested in it all when the cameras started rolling or the curtain went up. She was always so real and her characters unapologetic.
There's another way to say it. I think Page always brought a touch of madness to her roles. I'm not being unkind as I see it because that madness is what I was so attracted to in her performances. She couldn't have simply invented that trait for nearly everyone of her characters... isn't it more likely something she already had when she signed on... saying, at least to herself... I got this.
Gordon, ever the quirky one, whether a film is a comedy or a rare drama, is an exquisite partner to Page... or Mrs. Dimmick to Mrs. Marrable. While one is certain what Mrs. Marrable is all about, we're not quite sure about Mrs. Dimmick. Is she on the up and up... simply the next housekeeper or is there something else? She seems brave and even canny but not as brave and not as canny as her boss. I have always thought if anyone could make one say what is going on here, it would be Ruth Gordon. You're just not sure what she's up to. If Page brings a little madness, Gordon brings her own brand of lunacy. What could be better for a crazy little flick about warring women?
Rosemary Forsyth and Robert Fuller provide the love interest... she's the new neighbor and he restores cars. Mildred Dunnock is a character actress I've always been drawn to and her being murdered here is nearly as bad as when Richard Widmark pushed her in her wheelchair down a flight of stairs in Kiss of Death. I gotta throw a biscuit out to Spike, who played Chloë, because this dog was given a helluva lot more to do than simply being a companion.
I enjoyed the desert location... there aren't enough films with them. It's certainly about the isolation of the desert that adds to the eerie feeling of this and other such films. When I was a teenager my parents had a second home in Joshua Tree, California, and we were there a lot. Page's home here reminds me of ours and having but one neighbor like she does is also familiar. I liked the desert despite the fierce windstorms and rattlesnakes coiled up on the front porch but never enough to live there permanently.
The film was a swift shoot and while Page and Gordon, who knew each other previously, got on well, that couldn't be said about others. There was a skirmish with directors. Bernard Girard was originally hired as a director by Aldrich and was let go early in the production. He was apparently not up to the task which at least partially meant according to Aldrich's exacting standards. Girard at the time had virtually no feature directing experience and his replacement, Katzin, hadn't much either but managed to survive and turn in an entertaining work.
For those not into gore or gratuitous violence, this may be for you. There is none. And no one jumps out to frighten you. I love scary movies but I would not exactly say I was scared. It is tension-filled which it should be if it wants to be a good thriller. There is a brisk pace with the suspense at a high level right up to a good finale.
Here's a trailer to get you going... or not:
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