CATCH A CLASSIC
TCM Classic Horror (With Mario Cantone): ‘Bette & Joan Horror’
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Later in their careers, after their Hollywood heydays, legendary actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were unfortunately not given the sorts of plum roles they used to get when they were younger. But the pair had a career resurgence by giving the psychological horror/thriller genre a try with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (pictured) (1962), the first film on tonight’s double bill of horror classics introduced by actor/writer Mario Cantone. Directed by Robert Aldrich, the darkly humorous film is deliciously gothic and campy fun as it follows an aging former child star (Best Actress Oscar nominee Davis) who torments her paraplegic sister (Crawford), a former movie star, in an old Hollywood mansion. The success of the film opened up doors for the actresses to star in other, similar types of psychological thrillers led by older women, and one of those ensuing titles that Crawford made is tonight’s second film — Strait-Jacket (1964). Directed by gimmicky low-budget schlock master William Castle, and with a screenplay by Psycho author Robert Bloch, the film stars Crawford as a woman who decapitates her husband and his lover with an axe after finding them asleep in bed together. Decades later, she is found to be mentally sound and reformed, and is released. Unfortunately, she soon becomes the suspect in a series of axe murders that begin to occur shortly thereafter.