As part of TCM’s Summer Under the Stars salute to Joan Crawford, early tomorrow morning they will be showing two camp classics starring the high strung actress, from her late, “thick eyebrow” period:
1:45 am Eastern:
That heartwarming family classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The part of the film that seems to stick uppermost in our mind is the situation of two old sisters, the one (Bette Davis) terrorizing and abusing her invalid sister (Crawford).
Ah but there is a vaudeville angle! For Davis’s character is the fictional former vaud child star Baby Jane Hudson, a cloying, irritating spoiled brat of a thing. If memory serves, the vaudeville scenes in the movie’s prologue are wildly inaccurate, neither the theatre itself, nor the nature of Baby Jane’s act nor the music played or the amount or type of merchandising of Baby Jane products in the lobby bear any relationship to reality. However, according to my personal experience, the scene where one sibling serves another a dead rat for luncheon was not only true to life, but tastefully realized for the screen.
4:15 am Eastern: Trog (1970)
This is the movie that made Crawford (who LIVED to be a movie star), say, “Fuck it. I’ve had enough of this shit.” It was her last starring film role (not including television) and I’m sure there was no love lost by this point. In this peculiar monster movie Crawford plays some vague sort of scientist, who finds a living caveman, or troglodyte (trog for short). In numerous hilarious scenes, she attempts to “reason” with him, to “understand” him, to treat him kindly and with love in the accepted 1970 fashion. But to no avail. The instant the creature gets loose he goes on a rampage, just like monsters are supposed to do. Maybe it’s because she calls him “Trog” — like that’s his name! A little insulting if you ask me. I got your touchy-feely social science right here, “Doctor”! Amplifying the hilarity is Trog’s costume, which consists of a single ape mask. The rest of the guy’s body is normal, not even particularly hairy. He’s just some guy wearing an ape mask. In the end, our Trog, just like Old Yeller, must be destroyed. To quote the late Pete Seeger, ” O, when will they ever learn?”
(Travalanche) 