Movie · 1962 · Drama, Horror, Thriller · 2h 15m · English
Curator score: 8.9/10 (193K ratings)
Sister, sister, oh so fair, why is there blood all over your hair?
Overview
A former vaudeville child star viciously torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.9/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.19/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Metacritic: 75
TMDB: 7.9/10
Director
Robert Aldrich
Production
The Associates & Aldrich Company
Cast
Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Julie Allred, Anne Barton, Marjorie Bennett, Bert Freed, Anna Lee, Maidie Norman, Dave Willock, William Aldrich, Ernest Anderson, Russ Conway, Maxine Cooper, Robert Cornthwaite, Michael Fox, Gina Gillespie, Barbara Merrill, Don Ross
Curator Review
Verdict
A vicious, campy, and genuinely unsettling psychological horror-drama with towering performances and a rotting-Hollywood atmosphere. It’s as much a landmark of star-driven melodrama as it is a proto-psychological thriller, and its influence on later camp and horror is enormous.
Best for
fans of classic Hollywood with a dark edge
viewers who like performance-heavy psychological horror
people drawn to camp, melodrama, and toxic sibling dynamics
fans of decaying-mansion gothic atmosphere
Skip if
you want subtle or realistic character behavior
you dislike theatrical acting and heightened melodrama
you’re sensitive to cruelty, abuse, or sustained emotional nastiness
you prefer modern pacing and polished production values
Overview
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is one of the great American movies about resentment curdling into performance, and performance curdling into madness. Robert Aldrich turns a faded Hollywood mansion into a pressure cooker where every hallway seems to preserve old humiliations, old rivalries, and old lies. The result is both grotesque and oddly funny, with a tone that keeps slipping between grand guignol and tragic decay.
Worth noting
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are the whole event: their rivalry becomes the movie’s engine, but the film is smarter than mere backstage gossip. It understands how fame can freeze people in place, how childhood success can become a lifelong prison, and how dependency can mutate into sadism. Victor Buono adds a crucial layer of menace and absurdity, keeping the film from becoming only a two-hander.
Bottom line
Even now, it feels sharp and strange. The movie’s camp reputation is deserved, but it also works as a genuinely nasty psychological thriller with a strong sense of dread. If you like your classics with teeth, this is essential.
Top Letterboxd reviews
👽 Zara 👽 (4★) · 3807 likes
whatever happened to baby jane more like what the fuck are you doing baby jane
Marian (5★) · 3800 likes
i can't believe marina and the diamonds is still walking free to this day
Allyson (4.5★) · 3398 likes
My mood is Blanche spinning around in circles and screaming
Aaron (5★) · 2071 likes
“You mean all this time we could have been friends?”
From the very beginning, we know something is wrong. Child star Baby Jane Hudson (Julie Allred) is beloved by her fans as she performs her vaudevillian routine. But things are amiss. Baby Jane’s stage persona is too saccharine, too unnatural to be pleasing. Those “Baby Jane” dolls in the lobby are eerie and off-putting, the embodiment of Jane’s phony kewpie doll act. Jane’s backstage behavior is appallingly bratty and manipulative.… more
Sara Clements (5★) · 2026 likes
I bet Ivanka Trump twerks to "I've Written a Letter to Daddy"