Control Freaks Beware


This was a totally awesome movie and I read in some place that this movie (along with Mildred Pierce) captured Joan Crawford as she actually is...very controlling. Well, I should say as she was...There was a lot of moments in the movie that I was slapping my forehead and sighing because I couldn't believe how Harriet treated her niece and her Husband...not to mention the maid. Any true Joan Crawford fan needs to see this...but you have to look very hard for it. Rare.

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I've loved this Joan movie since I was a kid. She reminds me of my aunt! For years this movie wasn't on video. Then I believe it came out finally in '96. Now I understand it's hard to find. Not to mention so are tapes. Once very available. Boy I'm getting old. In '93 they had a great showing if this on TNT. Now you never see it on tv.

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I know...some of the best movies I incidentally saw on television and never saw again like Gena Rowlands & Bette Davis in Strangers: A Story of a Mother and Daughter and Bad Ronald. TV is selective. Still us hunters still can find the good stuff.

You tell lies like that, you won't go to heaven when you die.--The Bad Seed

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TCM is showing this movie right now and I am a big Joan Crawford fan; however, I've never seen this one. So far, it's great!!!!!!!

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enjoy it, super rare that they are even showing it!

what'll i do without a photograph to tell my troubles to?

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They said it was the first time it had ever been on TCM.

I think this ranks (almost) right up there with Mildred Pierce. Wonder why they never show it, or why it's not on DVD. Glad I DVR'd it...I'll watch it several more times.


No, no..."cruelty." I always think that has a nobler ring to it.

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This movie was some pretty scary stuff. The glint in her eye when she's ordering her underlings around and obsessing over the house was pretty unnerving.

To be fair to Joan Crawford though, it was her talent that made this movie work not just the similarity to her life. Watch her play a completely sympathetic character like in "Autumn Leaves" where she is a sad spinster or the woman caught between two men in "Daisy Kenyon", and she is just as effective. Crawford had a lot of range and the "evil" characters she played were in the minority. She could do it all.

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I completely agree with you...her range was much more than most people though.


No, no..."cruelty." I always think that has a nobler ring to it.

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this was the first joan crawford film i ever saw...anyone one know if it out on dvd?

Thunderbirds Aren't Slow

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this is showing now (along with some other JC flicks) in Nashville area on what I think is called "GetTv" channel.

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I caught Bad Ronald as a midday movie once, watched it mainly for Kim Hunter without her monkey makeup on, which I don't think I had seen her in anything else, or didn't realize she was Zira.

It watched rather like a typical seventies movie, totally dragged out until the last five minutes, but it was interesting and interestingly done, not overly campy or badly done or anything.

Harriet Craig just finished airing on Antennae Tv. I thought I had it on disk, but I must have watched it on youtube, which it doesn't seem to be there anymore.

I bought Straitjacket and Queen Bee. They all watch the same, don't they?

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I saw Queen Bee for the first time around last Christmas and I enjoyed it, but after seeing Harriet Craig for the first time, Queen Bee seemed kind of soft - not soft as in soft-in-the-head, which she definitely was, but it was Harriet Craig-lite.

JC as HC is the real deal.

Strait Jacket was a hoot, too - really really bad, yes, but hilariously bad.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

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