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I hadn't read much about this movie except that it was badly marketed as a mass-audience appeal film when in reality it was on the super-arty end of the spectrum. Truer words . . . All the acting is superb. And Haley Joel Osmond was fantastically good. Talk about lovable! He is infinitely more appealing than the flesh and blood children in the movie who are vicious little ogres in both character and appearance. The John Williams score is absolutely the best he has written, maybe the only really original film music he has ever done. Everything else he has written sounds to me like Richard Strauss or Mahler or Gustav Holst. This music is truly ethereal, mystical, and scary. My favorite scene was the Flesh Fair. What is so bizarre about this scene is that I found myself identifying with and feeling sympathy for the terrorized robots in the merciless hands of the humans who were staging a kind of auto da fe with them. I'm still digesting the film. It has many levels. The special effects, especially towards the end are spine-tingling. And of course, the Kubrick legacy is palpaple, as is Spielberg's perennial obsession with the mysteries of childhood.

I have rarely seen a movie where every single main character was truly sick. This one fits the bill. Some people have commented about how disturbing the movie is, so I won't do a repeat. The rape scene is particularly graphic and horrendous, made even more gruesome by the distinct impression that the victim thinks that she or he was at fault. I think we should note that the main character is not a lesbian, and explicitly rejects that identity when her only real friend calls her a dyke. Brandon is obviously dealing with massive sex/gender confusion issues, but his/her incredible naivete and utter dishonesty are almost unbelievable. One wonders what the character's redeeming qualities are. He/ she lies to everybody about everything. He/she is a car thief, steals money from people who befriend him/her, and involves his girlfriend and others in schemes that end up being life-threatening and ultimately murderous. Brandon is obviously sick and delusional, needs a lot of psychotherapy, and clearly has no idea of who she/he is. And talk about naively stupid! How could he/she possibly think that he/she could be accepted by the white trash, narrow-minded primitives that surround him/her in rural Nebraska. This is a sad movie, but the only sympathy the main character evokes in me is similar to what I would feel for a seriously mentally disturbed, self-destructive person. I really wonder what the director's message was. Why this film got a best actress Oscar is a mystery to me.

One comment on the IMDB characterizes this movie as a "gay icon," and many others call it "campy." Since some people don't seem to understand this drift of thought, I'll try to give my two-cents worth of interpretation. There is a certain kind of gay male sensibility that loves the kind of over the top humor that predominates in "Baby Jane." I never thought of this movie as a horror movie, though it could fit the genre. But, really now, horror depends on a certain level of credible realism, as in "Psycho" and all of Hitchcock's films. That's why it is scary. Even modern horror films with monsters, UFOs, etc, rest on the premise that these are real phenomena and the movies ask us to suspend our disbelief within the context of the movie.

"Baby Jane" is completely different, and that is why it is campy and humorous. Elegantly serving your invalid sister a rat for dinner is just too much! Over the top. Unbelievable. Outrageous. Histrionic. Bette's makeup, ditto. Joan's completely loving and devoted manner, ditto. In other words, in spite of its literal horror aspects, "Baby Jane"--in its details--is too ridiculous to believe. Only a demented sicko (Bette's character) could possibly come up with these ideas, and only an equally demented and deluded sister (Jane's role) could find Bette in any way lovable or redeemable. Both roles are such exaggerations, such extremes, that they are funny, hilarious in fact. Even the sadistic treatment by Bette of longsuffering Joan is absurdly out of kilter. One can only laugh at the histrionics.

Of course, so much of the camp aspect of the movie depends on our previous knowledge of both these famous actresses. Especially important, is the long history of venomous lines uttered by Hollywood's most superbly bitchy star, Mme Davis. "All About Eve," of course, is the locus classicus for Bette's campy, dishy humor. It is another gay classic, one described elsewhere on the IMDB as "every drag queen's favorite movie."

"Baby Jane" is definitely a 10 out of 10.

The key to understanding this, John Waters' most profound film, is a understanding of its Roman Catholic content and allusions. Divine's long interior monolog inside the church, essentially a long meditation on being different, the Way of the Cross, and the crucifixion scene are all keys to the film's message. Notice that the actors who play the Way of the Cross and crucifixion scenes are the same ones who played in the Carnival of Perversions which opens the movie. And who plays Christ? The heroin addict. Now Waters doesn't use these actors again just to save on budget. The meaning is clear: those people that you smug, suburban do-gooders rejected and made fun of are Christ and his followers. Remember that Christ didn't hang out with sanctimonious, middle class people, but rather with whores, fallen women, the sick, the rejected, the stigmatized, the sinners. Waters draws the parallels very clearly, but most people view the film in such a middle-class way that they can't see Divine and Waters' troupe of hippie- weirdos as allegorical Christ figures. The real giveaway to this interpretation is the actual text of St. Francis's late medieval Way of the Cross which Waters quotes verbatim in the film. And of course, did you ever think about the literal meaning of "divine." Poor, abused Divine's symbolic sacrifice at the claws of Lobstora is yet another variation of the Passion theme. A very literary film indeed.