Die! Die! My Darling! (1965)

Suddenly Last Summer with a different title

I hope Tennessee Williams got a percentage when they released this Hammer horror film, because it's pretty much the exact same story as SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, just changed a little to accommodate the limited acting range of my favorite, Stefanie Powers.

You'll remember SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER in which Elizabeth Taylor is clapped in a mental hospital awaiting a lobotomy, under the dire eye of Violet Venables (Katharine Hepburn). Taylor is a mess, but mostly she's in shock from the trauma of having gone to Mexico with Sebastian, Hepburn's adored and now deceased son. In DIE DIE MY DARLING (in England known as FANATIC), Powers is an American girl in England who takes the trouble to pay one last courtesy call to Tallulah Bankhead, the mother of her dead fiance, the man Powers was supposed to marry before his mysterious death. At the bottom of each picture, the secret remains the same, the homosexuality of the dead boy, the imprisonment and brainwashing of the girl who knows too much about it, and the anger of the mother who had her boy taken away from her, with all the promise of the dynasty continuing disappearing with him.

In each case Powers and Liz Taylor have a male champion who rides in at the last minute to save them from the evil mother's lobotomy/forced Christianity threat. Taylor had Montgomery Clift, as the psychiatrist more and more drawn to his patient, while Powers is now engaged to a second Englishman, this one much more manly. The freaks of the mental hospital who menace Taylor throughout the middle scenes of SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER have their own equivalents in the servants staffing Tallulah Bankhead's giant Tudor mansion in the Cornish countryside, including Dinald Sutherland as a true Igor type.

Stefanie Powers has one fantastic outfit after another, except that Tallulah Bankhead objects to jewelry, mirrors, even salt and pepper in her evangelical madness, so little by little Stefanie (as Pat Carroll) is required to look more and more prim and proper, though the inmates bash her around so much all her clothes are ripped and sleazy. Eventually some secrets of Bankhead's past emerge, and apparently she used to be an actress of some sort, for she owns about 50,000 glossy headshots of Tallulah Bankhead in her glamorous 1920s and 1930s days when Bankhead was queen of the West End and a Paramount contract star. I never figured that one out but one look at Bankhead's secret atelier of glamor, her den of self-worship, would have presumably turned her little son Stephen gay back in his vanished childhood, and so maybe she is acting out of guilt, the way that, in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, at a certain point Katharine Hepburn realizes that the whole Mexican mess where the young boys eat Sebastian might have had something to do with her own faults as a mother. I don't know, it's sort of blame the victim time! In any case, everyone, even Donald Sutherland as Igor, out-acts our heroine Stefanie Powers, and yet we root for her escape with great fervor. May 6, 2008

over the top dialogue, a lunatic mother who will never let go, and LIES ! LIES ! LIES !!!

Die! Die! My Darling is a well done albeit somewhat campy film from the mid 1960s that looks a bit tamer today than it probably did when it was first released. Nevertheless, we get stunning performances from the great Tallulah Bankhead, Stefanie Powers and Peter Vaughan; and the suspense builds up very well.

The action starts when Pat Carroll (Stefanie Powers) arrives in England to meet her fiancé, Alan Glentower (Maurice Kaufmann). Pat insists that she must have a final meeting with her former fiancés mother, Mrs. Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead). Alan doesn't like it; but Pat insists--you get the impression that Pat is used to getting her way. Pat drives off in Alan's car to meet Mrs. Trefoile--and when she arrives at Mrs. Trefoile's, the REAL action starts.

Mrs. Trefoile turns out to be a fanatical religious zealot who's also just plain crazy; she holds lengthy Bible meetings and ultimately imprisons Pat against her will when she finds out Pat wasn't going to marry her late son Stephen. Pat tries desperately to fight and escape; but Mrs. Trefoile and her "staff" are remarkably adept at keeping Pat locked up. Pat is even forced to write a letter to Alan explaining that she is detained so that he doesn't get suspicious and go to the Trefoile residence to see what's going on there.

Of course, the plot can go anywhere from here. Does Alan try to go after Pat or does he believe her letter? If Alan doesn't come, will anyone save Pat from a likely death? What about Mrs. Trefoile--will she really murder someone with the gun she always carries around with her? No spoilers here, folks, you'll have to watch the movie to find out the answers.

The cinematography works best in the scenes where Pat is running outside to try to escape as she is chased by Harry (Peter Vaughan), one of Mrs. Trefoile's servants. The choreography works well in the scenes in which Pat struggles to be free of her captors.

Unfortunately, the DVD has no real extras to mention. All we get is three trailers for Mr. Sardonicus; Straight-Jacket; and Homicidal. Oh, well. The movie is so good that I will overlook this disappointment; this movie really held my attention well.

Overall, Die! Die! My Darling! Has a great plot that gives us some camp mixed in with a horror flick about imprisonment, torture and insanity. Tallulah Bankhead acted brilliantly and she truly carried the film. Look for some great performances from Stefanie Powers and Peter Vaughan as Pat Carroll and Harry the servant respectively; and honorable mention goes to a young Donald Sutherland playing a mentally handicapped man who works on Mrs. Trefoile's estate.

I highly recommend this film for fans of horror films, fans of camp and the actors in this movie, too. This was Tallulah Bankhead's last movie; and she went out in grand style!

Enjoy!
October 1, 2007

An out-of-the-way nook in the Hammer catalog worth checking out.

Die!, Die!, My Darling! (Silvio Narizzano, 1965)

How can you not like any movie called Die! Die!, My Darling!? Especially when it contains Tallulah Bankhead's final onscreen performance, as a religious wingnut determined to preserve the purity of her dead son by imprisoning his former fiancée, Pat (Stefanie Powers), in her secluded house. Pat, however, is engaged again, and new fiancée Alan (The Abominable Dr. Phibes' Maurice Kaufmann) is sure to notice her disappearance eventually. (Isn't he? You never know, this IS a Hammer horror film, after all.)

Ah, the scenery-chewing! Powers and Bankhead are great foils for one another, with Bankhead lording it over Powers (and the rest of her equally insane household) while Powers tries to find various methods of escaping, getting a note to Alan, or anything else that might help her out of her jam. There are other characters of note-- specifically, rising star Donald Sutherland in one of his early roles for Hammer-- but the movie would be just as fun if it were just Bankhead and Powers in one room. No one will ever confuse this for immortal cinema, but if you happen to catch it on the Saturday afternoon creature feature, you'll find it a pleasant surprise. *** May 12, 2007

Legendary Talullah Bankhead Chewing The Scenery In Her Final Film Performance

I admit to being one of those movie fans who totally enjoys the efforts from the "twilight years" of the careers of the great actresses of the 1930's and '40's. Call them camp or the last gasps of talent often stretching back 40 years these women always gave their all in these lesser efforts which nowadays are often among the best remembered film roles from their long and distinguished careers. Starting off with veterans Bette Davis and Joan Crawford verbally and physically destroying each other in the classic "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", that film's huge success with audiences in 1962 officially began a decade that provided a goldmine of work for ageing actresses as diverse as Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters, and Dorothy Lamour, in macabre horror efforts that provided these women with starring roles when no other work was being offered . While the infamous Tallulah Bankhead never enjoyed a super successful film career like Crawford and Davis she nevertheless represented "Old Hollywood", and was thus ideal casting for Hammer Studios production of "Die! Die! My Darling!". The famed British "Studio that Dripped Blood", often imported American actresses for their efforts and the year of 1965 saw then use both Bette Davis (The Anniversary) and Bankhead for some of their non Gothic efforts. I only saw this effort for the first time recently but I must admit I was very impressed with both the overall production and the ageing Bankhead's performance which made me regret that she had not done more film work like this in her later years. April 19, 2007

Not as good as I thought!

This movie was a good movie to watch on a dreary weekend. I thought that it would have been better but overall it was ok. January 4, 2007

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