10 Perfect Horror Movies About Hollywood

A companion piece, of sorts, to Sunset Boulevard, Robert Aldrich’s 1962 melodramatic horror takes the hook of a fall from fame and adds family rivalry, betrayal, and two of the 20th century’s most famously combative actors going toe to toe.

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?'s hook, and key to its considerable success, was its casting of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The two infamously despised one another, with their careers linked almost from the off, and Baby Jane plays on that to no end. The pair star respectively as Jane and Blanche Hudson, a former child star and her sister. We learn that Jane’s youthful success faded as Blanche, the more naturalistic actor, outshone her as they aged.

But a tragic accident left Blanche wheelchair-bound, and decades later she’s at the mercy of her vengeful, bitter sibling. Jane pulls the strings around the house, but it’s Blanche’s money they live off, and the power dynamic ebbs and flows, with an epic blow up always pending.

The setting is claustrophobic but the acting, from Davis especially, is delightfully maximalist. While the staging is of its time, Baby Jane is a blast, packed with twists and a genuine sympathy for its characters.