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Show '-in Movie Review 'Stabbing Color' New Twist By LARRY FEITZ Two years ago Bette Davis and Joan Crawford Craw-ford got together and made a horror movie called "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" which was, much to the surprise of many people peo-ple in Hollywood, one of the big hits of the year. The film, though not great, had appeal because it brought back to the screen two of Hollywood's most colorful personalities in a type of story that possessed, to some degree, at least, some merit of originality. HOLLYWOOD, however, never one to let a good thing pass by unexploited, has given us so many similar films since then, all starring aging glamour queens, that any appeal or originality orig-inality they once had has since vanished. After "Baby Jane," for instance, there was "Dead Ringer," in which Bette Davis knocked'-off knocked'-off her identical twin sister; then there was "Straight-Jacket," in which Joan Crawford cavorted about chopping off heads; next came "Lady in a Cage," in which Olivia De Haviland fell head-first down an elevator shaft; and finally final-ly we had "Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte," in which Bette Davis dropped a 500-pound urn on Olivia De Haviland and her lover. TO ADD to this succession or grimness we now have "Die! Die! My Darling!" which differs from its predecessors only in that it is filmed in "stabbing color" and stars Tallulah Bankhead, the fourth actress to join these dreary ranks. This is the rirst film she has made in over 15 years, her chief mode of expression being the New York stage. In her films, which in- 5a elude "A Royal Scandal" and "Lifeboat," she has usually played an Auntie Mame-type char-r, qo acter, similar to the "real life" image she pro- jects. In "Die! Die!" little has changed except for an added wrinkle or two. i a 3 IN THE MOVIE we encounter her as religious fanatic who kidnaps her deceased Ar son's ex-fiance (Stefanie Powers), and proceeds,. to "purify her from sin" in her isolated and rambling old house, peopled, of course, with the-?o usual weird servants and mentally defective relatives. This purification includes stabbing Por'':s Stefanie in the breast with a pair 0 scissors, dropping her through the roof of a greenhouse,-hurling greenhouse,-hurling her down a flight of stairs and beating and knocking her about a great deal. J ALSO, THERE is a rape scene in thev. midst of all this, for those who require even more excitement. Sturdy little Stefanie, how-T ever, manages to come through it all in hghti46; spirits, and at the end as she limps away with-her with-her boyfriend, Tallulah stands wimpering in?, i the cellar over a painting of her son within a knife in her back, placed there to her greats; discomfort by an angered cook. Obviously, the entire movie is banal non-gji sense from start to finish, but even so, there, is something quite likeable 'about star Tallulah. I doubt if anyone could top her, for instance, when she bursts into the attic, waving a re- volver and bellowing with a roar like a toppling. oil derrick: "So! After all my kindness this. is what I find you doing, behind my back! With imagination, the line could replace "Come up and see me sometime." J |