Cinemaniacs present 'You're a Vile Sorry Little Bitch' - A Celebration of Hagsploitation!

P R E S E N T
YOu’re a vile
,
sOrry little bitch!
A Celebration of Hagsploitation !
1 2 / 1 3 J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

P R E S E N T
YOu’re a vile, sOrry little bitch!
A Celebration of Hagsploitation !
Thematically, horror is a woman’s domain. It is a female genre. Most horror movies
feature women or girls as their protagonists, and this is something that should be
celebrated and revered.
Something that also should be championed about the genre is that horror embraces
women and girls of all ages and puts them on the front line, bringing them to the
foreground – be they women in their “prime” (the most varied and dynamic of
roles), young women and teenage girls (oft-used in slasher fare), little girls (many a
time presented as “monster”) and thankfully, women in their more seasoned years.
The latter is what Cinemaniacs are honouring with this festival! Those grand-dames
of horror! Those wonderful, more mature, but still as vibrant and as active-as-ever,
legendary actresses who reclaimed Hollywood and made it their own in their later
years. Superstars and revolutionaries such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Olivia de
Havilland, Ruth Gordon, Ruth Roman, Shelley Winters, Gloria Swanson, Myrna Loy,
Piper Laurie, Agnes Moorehead, Yvonne de Carlo and many more, resurrected their
careers during the time of their advanced age, having to leave their ingénue days
behind in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Come the early 60s, these versatile and passionate talents re-entered showbiz
carrying axes, sporting knives, drinking heavily and were caked up in grotesque
make-up all the while screaming and clawing their way onto the silver screen as
maniacal movie monsters! These older women that shaped Hollywood and were
massive box office draw cards in the 30s and 40s, now got a chance to go crazy on
screen, and the results were all gleefully delicious! The “psycho-biddy” sub-genre
was fundamentally “born” as soon as Bette and Joan had their “divine feud” in the
American Gothic masterpiece WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, a film that
brilliantly dissected the horrors of ageing in the entertainment industry, and ever
since after that Warner Bros. freak show, audiences hungered for more!
The beauty of these hag show horrors is that these divine divas really got a chance
to cut loose and have fun being psychotic. It’s an honour and a privilege to head
this festival and give this unfairly underappreciated subgenre of horror cinema a
platform and a voice – I just hope that afterwards, it inspires self-proclaimed horror
fans to seek out more of these awesome movies, purchase them, integrate them
within their DVD and bluray collections and proudly sit them next to their slasher
flicks, Gialli and 80s faves. Remember – all horror matters!
– Lee Gambin (Cinemaniacs director)

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)
The film that ultimately started the trend!
Featuring one the longest prologues in the
history of cinema, Robert Aldrich’s classic sets up
its two central figures as polar opposites – one a
brassy show business brat and the other a selfsacrificing
martyr. Little Baby Jane is a superstar
of the vaudeville circuit, while her sister Blanche
sits in the wings watching.
Singing out her key song “I’ve Written A Letter
To Daddy”, little Baby Jane Hudson wins the
admiration and affection of her song-and-dance
man father, while Blanche seems to be a burden.
But anger brews in the equally twisted heart of
little Blanche, who promises that someday she’ll
“show her sister”.
Years pass and the two have become successful
actresses in Hollywood (the film featuring Bette
Davis in all her pre-code glory), however times
get tough and Jane and Blanche find themselves
in a cold predicament – Jane is rendered
unbankable and box-office poison, while Blanche
(the more lauded and talented) is in a nasty
accident and left paralysed in a wheelchair.
Shifting our focus to the current 1962, the sisters
live in a decrepit Hollywood mansion and are
locked together in hatred.
Bette Davis is a knockout in this film – plastered
with layer upon layer of powder, eyes painted
on to look like the dead dull eyes of a doll, her
bleached-out hair in twisted poodle locks and
her lips garishly constructed while a little love
heart beauty mark sits upon her twisted, angry
and bitter face – she is a new kind of movie
monster, one without true pathos and one that is
hell bent on giving those around her a bastard of
a time. She is also foul mouthed, boozy and most
importantly haunted by her past as a successful
child star and actress. One of the most vividly
telling moments in the film is where she finds
herself in the mirror after a delusional recital in
her blacked out living room – she catches her
withered face, terrified of aging and is tormented
by the image of what she has become. Following
that is her handicapped sister buzzing her for
some help, which escalates in Davis’s Jane
screaming and hollering and bitterly tending to
her invalid sister.
When she decides to resurrect her career
and enlist the help of a struggling musical
director (played by Victor Buono in a magnetic
performance) the film takes on an entirely new
life as ambitions, age, jealousy, mental illness,
resentment and the cruel mistress that is the
performing arts all come to light and bring the
film to a devastating climax on the washed out
beaches of California where truths are revealed
and a freakish Baby Jane Hudson gets the
captive audience she desperately longed for, but
for all the wrong reasons.
A cult favourite that, along with the noir/horror
melting pot SUNSET BLVD., exposed the ugly
underbelly of the throwaway machine that is
Hollywood, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY
JANE? is one of the most important horror films
of the sixties and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
should be up on the genre’s mantle alongside
the likes of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. (LG)
Opening night film!
A special gala event!
A festival welcome from Lee Gambin!
Friday, January 12th 2018 – 8.00pm

That Cold Day in the Park (1969) Strait-Jacket (1964)
Auteur Robert Altman directs this moody, pondlike
chiller about a quietly repressed and sexually
dormant “spinster” who keeps a young man
imprisoned to assuage her crippling loneliness.
The phenomenally talented Sandy Dennis (WHO’S
AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, COME BACK TO
THE 5 AND DIME JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN)
stars as Frances Austen, a young wealthy woman
perpetually surrounded by - and chronically
babied by – overly solicitous elderly “friends”.
One day, she meets a young man in the nearby
park and welcomes him inside - to escape the
relentless rain and the bone-numbing cold.
Instantly attracted to the seemingly mute boy,
Frances develops an unhealthy infatuation with
him and cannot bear to lose him to the “outside
world”. Driven by desperation and determined
to ease her internal suffering, Frances slowly
falls into a subdued mania, leading her to do
unthinkable things.
In the grand cinematic tradition of “the psychotic
woman and the kept man syndrome”, THAT
COLD DAY IN THE PARK shares wonderful
thematic and narrative constructs as its relatives
SUNSET BLVD., THE BEGUILED and MISERY.
Although, THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK focuses
on a young woman as it’s “gorgon”, Cinemaniacs
decided to screen the film to examine the concept
of the “hag-to-be”, which shall be explored in the
introduction. (LG)
Introduced by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas!
Saturday, January 13th 2018 – 12:30pm
Joan Crawford screaming in delicious histrionics
is enough to watch this fantastic film from horror
movie shlockster William Castle! Crawford is quite
honestly on top of her game here, a performance
that sings with nervous energy, relentless zeal and
an almost “I will prove that I am the greatest and
most hard working actress of the decade” vibe
that is almost penetrable.
A fabulous opening abounds as Crawford chops
the heads off her husband and his lover, beautifully
shot and now iconic in horror movie history. Years
later, and after some supposed rehabilitation she
is reunited with her daughter who welcomes her
mother back home with open arms. However, things
get messy when Crawford decides to win the heart
of her daughter’s young beau, which in turn wakes
up a monstrous malevolence that will ultimately end
in more bloodshed and more manic behaviour. But
of course, in classic William Castle style (and boy
does he have style!), the murders might not be at
the hands of Crawford…but someone else!
Crawford started off her career as a hoofer in
backstage movie musicals at MGM (however she
was most certainly no Eleanor Powell in the song
and dance department), then worked her way into
becoming the “every woman” and the working
class shop girl with the heart of gold in multiple
“women’s pictures”. However, when she was
eventually cast in the phenomenal THE WOMEN,
she got to shine as a catty, narcissistic, man hungry
glamour queen and this stuck for many years.
But come the early 60s, Crawford’s transition from
high and mighty sexy bitch to monstrous psychotic
was in clear form come the production of STRAIT-
JACKET. A role that she would continue to enjoy
with films such as BERSERK! and I SAW WHAT
YOU DID. (LG)
Introduced by Emma Westwood!
Saturday, January 13th 2018 – 5.00pm

F lowers in the Attic (1987)
Relentlessly trashy and proud of it, this gloriously
garish adaptation of writer Virginia Andrews’
novel is a monstrous affair loaded with sickly
imagery such as malnourished children, borderline
(and blatant) incest and bloodletting. This cult
favorite strings together the aforementioned
nasties and threads them alongside oppressive
concepts such as child abuse which acts as the
film’s thematic backbone.
Louise Fletcher’s performance as the stern,
ready-to-be-hated grandmother is too much
fun to ignore – and it is her captivating screen
presence that steals the show. She is outstanding
in her uncompromising evil and has no shame
in being a one dimensional caricature; with her
hair tightly pulled back in a bun, and dressed in
her sensible black dress and buckled shoe, she is
absolutely stunning. Her remarkable meanness
leads her to chop off the hair of the teen heroine,
lift up one of the young children by the head and
methodical attempts to poison her “ungrateful
grandchildren”.
Fletcher, who never seemed to be able to shake
off the atypical “bitch” role as presented in Milos
Forman’s analogous ONE FLEW OVER THE
CUCKOO’S NEST as Nurse Ratched (of which she
won an Academy Award for), came to represent
stoic and unfeeling authority throughout her
career, however in FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC,
she is permitted to overplay the monstrousness
and she revels in doing so with delectable and
dedicated vehemence. (LG)
Introduced by Sally Christie!
Saturday, January 13th 2018 – 8:30pm
SPECIAL EVENTS
Curtis Harrington Retrospective
Curtis Harrington: the man, the legend.
Harrington, an independent filmmaker, auteur,
friend of Hollywood royalty and cult figure, would
be a forerunner in the Hagsploitation movement
with his excellent films WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE
ROO? (a macabre take on “Hansel and Gretel”
starring Shelley Winters), WHAT’S THE MATTER
WITH HELEN? (a Depression-era parlour room
horror romp pitting Debbie Reynolds against the
aforementioned Winters), RUBY (an EXORCIST/
CARRIE “rip-off” hybrid starring Piper Laurie)
and THE KILLER BEES (a made for TV ecohorror
classic starring Gloria Swanson) proudly
represented on his filmography.
This event will showcase his wonderful work with
clips, stills and anecdotes.
Hosted by Lee Gambin!
Saturday, January 13th 2018 – 3:30pm
The Women of Hagsploitation
A panel discussion celebrating the legendary
actresses who worked in the Hagsploitation
subgenre!
Join three of Melbourne’s most important voices
in film criticism as they discuss the careers and
lives of celebrated Hollywood stars Bette Davis,
Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Shelley
Winters and many more.
Hosted by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas,
Emma Westwood and Sally Christie!
Saturday, January 13th 2018 – 7.00pm

Festival Timetable
f R i d A Y 1 2 T h J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8
7.00pm
8.00pm
FESTIVAL DOORS OPEN
What Ever Happened
To Baby Jane? (1962)
S A T U R d A Y 1 3 T h J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8
12.00pm
FESTIVAL DOORS OPEN
12.30pm That Cold Day in the Park (1969)
3.30pm
Curtis Harrington Retrospective
5.00pm Strait-Jacket (1964)
7.00pm
The Women of Hagsploitation
8.30pm F lowers in the Attic (1987)
festival location
T h E b A c k l o T S T U d i o S
6 5 h A i g S T R E E T , S o U T h b A N k
ticKets
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