When in peril, her eyes widen, her mouth falls agape, she even trembles.but I never believe for a minute she's ever in the throes of any kind of anguish.Īfter reading her memoirs, in which she comes across so smart and self-aware, I wonder if she simply knew exactly what kind of film she was making and merely played to the genre.
Meanwhile, the likable and always appealing Stefanie Powers -a Columbia Pictures contract player at the time and assigned to the film -relies a bit too heavily on "indicating" her emotions. In fact, she has quite a few moments where she's genuinely quite affecting (her reading of the line, " This was his room," while showing Patricia the house is heartbreaking). Sure, she's camp as all getout, but I don't find her performance to be any more overcooked than say, Al Pacino in Scarface or Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Personally, I think Bankhead totally slays as Mrs. Thus, with the horror genre bar set roughly around ankle height, and tongue lodged firmly in cheek, Bankhead & Co. However, a title like Die! Die! Myĭarling! primes you for one thing and one thing only: CraptacularĮntertainment. Themselves to the exploitation treatment. Last Summer have shown that bizarre themes don’t automatically lend After all,įilms like The Haunting, Psycho, The Innocents, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and the aforementioned Suddenly Revenge on the woman she deems responsible for her son’s death. Serious-minded thriller about a mentally unbalanced religious fanatic enacting Its UK title, Fanatic, perhaps one could entertain the idea of a Had Die! Die! My Darling! been released in the US under Proves not only a lot less problematic, but said spectacle is substantially sillierĪnd more entertaining than it has any right to be. But when captive and captor are of the same sex, the sight of a loonyīible-thumper and her butch maid taking the starch out of a genteel sophisticate Part (I disliked William Wyler’s masterly The Collector as intenselyĪs I did the infinitely inferior Tattoo and Boxing Helena Their execution to inspire anything other than indifference or impatience on my The appealing performances of the lead players and the dominant role affordedįind movies about men holding women captive to be too laboriously misogynist in Literal-minded title sequence features a demonic green cat in pursuit of aįuzzy pink mouse) are largely absent in Die! Die! My Darling! thanks to
Of repetition that usually bedevil films in the cat-and-mouse genre (the wittily