Die! Die! My Darling!
by Silvio Narizzano
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Maurice Kaufmann, Peter Vaughan, Stefanie Powers, Tallulah Bankhead, Yootha JoyceDirector: Silvio Narizzano
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-12
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Die! Die! My Darling!
Movie Review: nasty, vulgar thriller from Hammer Studios
Summary: 3 Stars
DIE! DIE! MY DARLING! (aka "Fanatic") was Hammer Studios' most offbeat thriller. Operating like a bizarre cross between "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "Carrie", it gave legendary Tallulah Bankhead ("Lifeboat") her final big-screen hurrah; and co-starred Stefanie Powers as the young woman in peril.
Pat Carroll (Stefanie Powers) decides to take an afternoon to visit the mother of her dead one-time fiance?, Mrs Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead) at her run-down house in the English countryside. What starts out as a pleasant housecall soon dissolves into a nightmarish ordeal as Pat is taken hostage, the aim to "cleanse" Pat's soul in order for her to be reunited in the next world with Trefoile's son. Soul cleansing apparently involves being tied up in an attic for several days, starved, tortured, beaten and preached to by Bible-thumping Trefoile--Mrs Margaret "Carrie" White would be so proud--and her small, scrappy band of helpers (Yootha Joyce, Donald Sutherland and Peter Vaughan).
It's a nasty, gritty thriller; full of sweat and menace and entirely different from other films being made by Hammer during this period, which tended more towards glossy Victorian-era thrillers. Mrs Trefoile is a dream role for any actress with camp sensibilities, and Ms Bankhead delivers appropriately. Stefanie Powers is a worthy adversary, although her strange pseudo-British accent in the initial scenes is quite distracting.
A must for anyone who enjoys Hag Cinema (ie: movies like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", "The Anniversary", "Trog", "Strait-Jacket").
Summary of Die! Die! My Darling!
An elderly religious fanatic whose son was killed in an auto wreck several years ago kidnaps her dead son's former fianc?e and keeps her locked up in the basement in order to cleanse the girl's soul, making it fit to be reunited with her son in heaven. Stars Stefanie Powers (TV's "Hart to Hart") and screen legend Tallulah Bankhead in her last film.In the tradition of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Hammer Studios drew aging Tallulah Bankhead out of retirement to play the fanatical matriarch of Die! Die! My Darling! (in Britain the film was simply titled Fanatic). Stefanie Powers, fresh from a string of juvenile and ingenue roles, plays her first adult, a thoroughly modern (and sexually liberated) woman who steps out of her time and into Bankhead's decaying mansion, a bit of southern Gothic nestled in the rural England countryside. Her courtesy call to the mother of her deceased lover turns into a cat-and-mouse thriller as the dotty, scripture-reading old lady dedicates herself to "cleansing" the befouled girl in memory of her son. Richard Matheson's smart screenplay (from the novel Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell) gives Powers a scrappy character, defying Bankhead and struggling to escape at every turn, while Bankhead's increasingly deranged campaign is given a delicious dimension with a marvelously schizophrenic backstory. Director Silvio Narizzano tends to overplay his hand at times and at one point steals a scene right out of Psycho, but he happily makes the battle of wits the central focus, letting the gothic elements stand as flourish. Peter Vaughan costars as a sleazy, salacious caretaker who can't keep his paws of their captive and Donald Sutherland has a small role as an idiot odd-job man devoted to his bizarre little family. --Sean Axmaker
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