[Movies] What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

My efforts to watch more Bette Davis movies has lead me through some interesting paths. I'm still trying to figure out if I liked her earlier movies more than her latter ones - it's like she becomes a completely different actress at some point in her career and thus it's hard to compare her works with any degree of accuracy. And it's not like should have to do that either - all of them are great in one way or another. It's really just a question of what your preferred flavor is.

This movie surprised me since it wasn't one that was a comedy or a typical drama. Instead it's a pretty serious suspense thriller, one that remains pretty intense despite it being in black and white. You don't need all those special effects in order to properly tell a scary story.

This story wasn't quite on the level of the Hitchcock thrillers, but it's still a great story. And the team of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford make for quite the heavy-hitting cast as we watch the two of them sink down into a rather dark place indeed.

[Movies] The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942)

I have to admit that what finally prompted me to start exploring the various movies of Bette Davis is primarily because of Neil Gaiman's upcoming computer game, Wayward Manor. When the game was announced, he mentioned that among his influences were stories like The Man Who Came to Dinner, which was a play before it became a movie.

This movie is rather interesting in terms of Bette Davis' overall career. This is well after her initial Oscar win for movies like Jezebel and yet still before All About Eve. So it's certainly an interesting part of her filmography to explore. Plus I was in the mood for a comedy.

So many movies owe a lot to the theater world, especially in this older period of Hollywood. In the same way that studios today are constantly looking at popular books and comics for movie inspiration, the older generation spent a lot of time looking at what had already been successful in the theater world. And that resulted in some interesting film projects and of course the big movie musicals later on.