Wicked Stepmother

This film wasn't THAT bad. I actually enjoyed it! Sure replacing Bette Davis with Barbara Carrera and THEN having them share the same body was not the smartest decision ever made in Hollywood, but it sure beats Ed Wood's solution to replacing Bela Lugosi in "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Also, it does get rather silly in the scenes toward the end. But there are some very clever scenes too, like the one involving the photograph of Lionel Stander's horrible first wife. The photograph is of Bette's rival, Joan Crawford. Colleen Camp, Tom Bosley, David Rasche, Seymour Cassel, Evelyn Keyes (!), Lionel Stander and even Barbara Carrera did wonderful in their roles. And Richard Moll was very funny in his small, but memorable, role as the inspector. But the true star of this movie is Bette Davis. She is wonderfully evil in the role of Miranda. She is so good at being bad. And even though it was not her best movie, she still is wonderful to watch. I think Larry Cohen did a fine job with this, considering all the trouble it ran into. Overall, Wicked Stepmother is an okay movie.

** 1/2 out of ****

Of course this film will never be a classic film, but it does have some catchy and campy scenes and lines and it will keep you wondering "what's next?" Bette Davis looks like she has just risen from the dead both figuratively and literally speaking. In 1981, Kim Carnes sang the hit song Bette Davis Eyes but in this film the then 81 year old Bette Davis could be better associated with the 1980 song Welcome to THE MONSTER CLUB - theme by The Pretty Things.

The film is very fractured with scenes jumping all over the place as the witch Priscilla, (Barbara Carrera) places magical spells on anyone she seems to come in contact with, but eh, that's camp comedy for you.

I wouldn't call it a memorable camp film, but I wouldn't call it one of the worse in the camp/horror genre that I have seen in the past either.

I give it a bare passable 5 out of 10 IMDB rating. It will not be on my purchase list either.

Probably had Bette Davis been in better health and actually finished the film as planned Wicked Stepmother might have been a reasonably good black comedy about the occult. As it was with her walking out of the film for reasons of health I suspect we get both an incoherent story and only about 15 minutes of Bette Davis.

As it was she could have and should have took her final cinema curtain call with the wonderful Whales Of August. It's not as bad a valedictory as Cuban Rebel Girl with her old fellow Warner Brothers player Errol Flynn, but it's still a mess. And Bette looked positively terrible in her scenes.

Detective Tom Bosley is on the trail of a witch who ingratiates herself in a family, loots it and then does something to them for her amusement. In the case Bosley is on they're turned into puppetoons and are found in a shoe box.

His quarry has moved on to another family and vacationing Colleen Camp and David Rasche come home and find that her father Lionel Stander is now married again to Bette Davis. Things start happening to all of them even their son Shawn Donohue as the witch switches back and forth from Davis to Barbara Carrera with Stander not noticing or figuring how lucky can an old guy get. Camp sees her family being torn away from her and she's not taking it lying down.

Not only is this Bette Davis's farewell to the big screen, but also Evelyn Keyes who plays the owner of a shop on the occult who gives lessons in magic. Both Camp and Bosley get a crash course.

Wicked Stepmother is funny in spots and the climax is nicely done, but maybe if some insurmountable problems hadn't occurred we might have seen a better film.

Wicked Stepmother (1989)

* (out of 4)

Bette Davis, like so many other great actors and actresses, ended her career with a really embarrassing film. Depend on who you believe, Davis walked off the film after a week due to her not liking the screenplay, or, according to director Cohen, she was in such bad health that she had to walk off. Either way the film centers on a witch (Davis) who moves in with a family (Colleen Camp, David Rasche) and soon starts to take over the house. Her daughter (Barbara Carrera) then comes to stay and more trouble follows. The truth behind why Davis left this production will never be known but I seriously doubt the film would have turned out very good either way. Cohen, best known for various horror movies, doesn't have too much to work with his as his screenplay undoubtedly had to be rewritten with the daughter aspect added in. Some would say Davis walking off the film would ruin it all around but even the stuff she's in doesn't appear to be written overly well. We get a few campy moments because it's rather strange seeing someone like Davis doing a movie like this. She is over acting quite a lot but if she was really unhappy with the screenplay, I kept wondering if she was giving a bad performance on purpose. The comedy falls flat on its face but I must admit that there's some weird charm with the way Davis is delivering her lines. The supporting cast are all pretty bland and doesn't bring any energy to the film. Tom Bosley is pretty bad as a detective. Even with Davis walking off the film there's no excuse for all the other issues with the movie. This includes it not really knowing what it's trying to do because on one hand it tries to come off as a kids movie but then we'll have another scene, like the sex scene between the witch and the married father, which seems out of place. I find it shocking that the movie got a theatrical release because it looks like a TV movie at best and that might be an insult to TV movies. Fans of Davis might want to check this out just to see her final film but others should stay far, far away unless you're a fan of bad movies.

I have a feeling there are two groups-- those who rate this a good example of Bette's acting late in her career (and her willingness to still act at all); and those who find the film so abysmal as to be an embarrassment that mars the Davis legacy.

From what I have read, she was quite ill during filming. It probably became too much of a toll for her, but she labored on because she still wanted to act and my guess is she needed the money for her mounting medical bills. Then, there were creative differences over the script and how the project was being filmed. So she walked off.

WICKED STEPMOTHER had a rather small budget of $2.5 million. But it only made $43,000 at the box office. So by all accounts, it was a huge bomb and not the type of movie swan song befitting a legend of Davis' magnitude.