What grande dame guignol pictures were we lacking?? Which stars who never did one should've and what would the story be??
A great GDG film needs to be absolutely fearless because it's about suffering and sacrifice. That's why BABY JANE works and why QUEEN BEE doesn't.
Looking for an actress with divinity status (and "how to lose it in a brilliantly hysterical horror"), Marilyn Monroe - had she not died - would have been the self-explanatory #1 choice.
To make the story as on the nose as possible - subtlety is for great movies - I want our star to be a has-been movie goddess who's working on a big comeback but this only fuels her feelings of loss and insecurity. Lots of bitching with her younger co-actresses, one being a confident slut (and gets horrifically killed in a freak "accident") and the other one the pure, meekly-mousy heroine that you're going to hate. Which will make the bitchy insults all the more satisfying.
The grande dame tricks the potential Film Hunks into casting couch auditions, she really doesn't have the authority to do so but these men need to be stupid and as naked as possible, and every time it happens it needs to be as humiliating as possible for both the famous actress and the pretty-stupid young actor.
"Why can't you love me anymooooooore! You son of a bitch!" *grabs knife*
But the last one turns out to be her son who she had given up for adoption, because without incest it wouldn't be sleazy enough.
She doesn't know who he is, but he has always known - the obligatory actress-goddess film posters on the bedroom wall - and the irony here is that he's the only one who truly loves and desires her.
For the sake of a Plot Twist! it turns out that he had killed the young slut actress in such a very, very horrific way.
Once the grande dame realises who he is, the script pulls out all the stops with toe-curlingly over-the-top histrionics, resulting in a fire that ruins the set of the Victorian mansion, killing both mother and son on the grand staircase.
But then....in the "six months later" scene,
who is the mysteriously veiled person lurking around the set of the new film, starring the pure and lovely young actress that we all hate so much? At least it ends with the promise that she'll never make it to the Oscars.
I was thinking about black & white but that would undermine the shameless exhibition of hunk flesh during the casting couch scenes.
Besides, the brutal colours would contrast the B&W dignity of the movie star's heyday very nicely, I think.
That's it, for now.