Queen Bee

Queen Bee
by Ranald MacDougall

Queen Bee
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer, Joan Crawford, John Ireland, Lucy Marlow
Director: Ranald MacDougall
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Georgian (Subtitled); Chinese (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures

Movie Reviews of Queen Bee

Movie Review: "She'll sting you one day"
Summary: 4 Stars

The South must hold the monopoly in bitter, fractured families. In QUEEN BEE, based on the novel by Edna Lee, every member of the Phillips family has their own axe to grind...and it all stems from matriarch Eva (played brilliantly by Joan Crawford). Eva manipulates everyone around her with precision skill. In a loveless marriage with alcoholic husband Avery (Barry Sullivan), Eva is also dallying with her cousin's fiancee (John Ireland). When Eva's distant relation Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow) comes to live with the Phillips clan, Eva's "sweet sting" soon infects her as well. The machinations continue as Eva twists the lives of her family members until they all shatter.

Joan Crawford lets the venom flow with her masterly performance as Eva, the queen bee of the title. Dressed in some gorgeous Jean Louis gowns and filtered through soft lighting, "La Crawford" commands the screen in every possible way. Notice too, how her voice changes from soft and honeyed when Eva is trying to get what she wants, to gruff and unforgiving when her temper snaps. The brilliant supporting cast includes Betsy Palmer as ill-fated cousin Carol-Lee, and Fay Wray as the jilted Sue McKinnon. Contract player Lucy Marlow, in one of her first lead roles, provides the innocent core of the story, yet our eyes remain riveted to Crawford. She was the ultimate Queen Bee!

The DVD includes the trailer plus talent profiles and vintage advertising gallery. (Single-sided, single-layer disc).

Summary of Queen Bee

"Any man's my man if I want it that way." The speaker could only be Joan Crawford, as a wicked man-eater terrorizing her Deep South household in Queen Bee. Crawford's the whole show in this campy 1955 melodrama, which aspires to be second-rate Lillian Hellman but doesn't even reach that level. Having trapped a wealthy Southerner (Barry Sullivan) into marriage, Crawford takes her main pleasure in making life miserable for the other women of the mansion. This is fun to watch for a while, but director Ranald MacDougall (he wrote Mildred Pierce for Crawford) can't get the pace moving, and the final comeuppance is all too predictable. Crawford was going into her final high-diva phase at this point in her career, all chalky makeup and yard-long eyebrows, and Queen Bee clearly points the way toward What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Star power prevails, however, and at least the picture summons up its share of unintentional laughs. --Robert Horton

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