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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 432812" data-attributes="member: 57984">What was the appeal of the 1960s' Grande Dame Guignol genre -- the source of its popularity or its criticism?I tend to link it to the wealth-based nighttime soap trend of twenty years later, a cultural event with "strong women" from the '80s which was much-discussed at the time and yet were really quite few in number (at least, few that were any good or had any level of success).I even tend to link Aaron Spelling in my head with William Castle -- two solicitously ambitious Taurean producers with a knack for casting and concept, yet the final product usually displaying minimal actual talent (Spelling more out of cynicism; Castle more out of incompetence). No, not every Spelling series misses the mark quite as much as DYNASTY, and not every Castle movie misses it as much as STRAIT-JACKET, but it's notable that their projects with the most potential ever were also the ones they most bungled.In my humble opinion.Why do wicked, crazy women -- deranged mamas -- resonate with the audience as much as they do?In PSYCHO (1960), Norman Bates has taken over his mother's personality, and the viewer is led to believe she's still alive and homicidally bent. And then comes WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, DEAD RINGER, LADY IN A CAGE, THE NIGHT WALKER, STRAIT-JACKET, HUSH... HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, DIE! DIE! MY DARLING, THE NANNY, I SAW WHAT YOU DID, THE ANNIVERSARY, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? among numerous others. And, prior to all these entries, SUNSET BLVD.All crazy ladies battling it out -- often against one another, just as the '80s glamour soaps seemed to reach their zeniths (at least in terms of their images) when decked-out divas assaulted each other verbally, physically, and status-wise. DALLAS delved into this dynamic the least, but it had its Sue Ellen and its Lady Jessica who hinted at this kind of gal-gothicity which the audience seems to like. DYNASTY embodied this grande dame image the most, but did it far less frequently in reality (yes, there was Alexis and, occasionally, Caress and Sable, there was Dominique, and Mother Blaisdel had tons of possibility in that direction, but its use of Old Hollywood dragon ladies wasn't as much as we remember; there was Barbara Stanwyck for a moment, spinning off to THE COLBYS before soon disappearing completely). FALCON CREST was guiltiest of this kind of shameless stunt-casting, but, aside from Angela Channing herself, few of their mysterious Divas of Danger could hold a candle to the sweet nazi-bedding Bitch Mama of Them All, Jacqueline Perrault (who could only have been played by terminal sex goddess, Lana Turner). KNOTS LANDING had Abby and Ava Gardner, shrieky Karen & Valene, crazy Jill and volatile teen Diana -- but that series was so sublimely character-based that that places it into almost another category entirely.So, again, what was is the audience's attraction to this type of material? Pudgy male executives never seemed very interested in it (Jack Warner questioned who'd ever even want to see "those two old bitches" before BABY JANE became a smash in 1962 and officially started the Grande Dame Guignol genre), most of the '80s soaps failed to live up to their promise (like DYNASTY and its ballsier sister FALCON CREST) and, frankly, most of the '60s "hag horror" pictures simply weren't very good. (BABY JANE, CHARLOTTE and THE NANNY were the only ones which were solid). The majority of these movies were shlocky, low-brow pictures, fairly artless in their execution and cheesy in their B-movie shocks, featuring scenery-chewing aging cinema icons as vanity casting.The Hollywood bosses rarely made very many of them (preferring to splatter-kill pretty teenaged girls instead in the wake of 1978's HALLOWEEN), esteemed director George Cukor called the psycho-biddy format "lamentable," Katharine Hepburn eschewed the genre entirely while hissing "I don't have to do the things Bette does," and the feminists hated the genre because it portrayed women as hideous maniacs who abused each other mercilessly, labeling it as "misogynistic" (the bra-burners also hated all the housfrau or sex-kitten characters in movies & TV, only seeming to revere manipulative Golden Age heroines who murdered men and whom basically got away with it -- the Hayes Code notwithstanding ... which is really interesting). Gloria Steinem's criticism of the '80s soaps was that all the high-powered women were "fighting over a man's financial legacy."Why, then, is the viewer drawn to Grande Dame Guignol, the collective memory of it more impressive -- or offensive -- than what it actually gave us?... It's the same appeal, I'll argue, as those '80s Alexis-era nighttime serials.This Mommie Dearest syndrome seems to stir some shared primal impulse in the audience, one not everybody wants to delve into but left a weird legacy which is tough to categorize. It seems to reveal something in the filmgoer that moviemakers can't quite resist tapping into, and yet do so much less often than one would expect or remembers.What does it say about how we view women? Is it "hatred of women" as some have claimed? As nobody complains that all those villainous male characters throughout film history express a misandrist hatred of men.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/thelastdrivein.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/cm-capture-861.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /><img src="https://dallasdecoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/she-said-it-the-wit-and-wisdom-of-sue-ellen-ewing-8.jpg?w=600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 786px" /><img src="https://www.on-magazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/hush-hush-sweet-charlotte-film-review-olivia-dehavilland.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 850px" /></blockquote>

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