Hush Hush… Sweet Charlotte is a gem of a drama (almost film noir in some respects) of a film headlined by two amazing performances by Bette Davis, who reunites with director Robert Aldrich, and Olivia de Havilland.
Hush Hush… Sweet Charlotte
— The Limited Edition Series —
(1964)
Genre(s): Drama, Crime
Twilight Time | NR – 133 min. – $29.95 | October 18, 2016
Date Published: 10/27/2016 | Author: The Movieman
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PLOT SYNOPSIS
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Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte finds director Robert Aldrich and star Bette Davis in fine Gothic form, following up on their smash-hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Here Davis plays a mad if wealthy old bat who, rumor has it, brutally murdered her married lover some decades earlier. When her decaying plantation house is threatened with demolition, she calls on a poor cousin (OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND) for help, a decision she soon begins to regret. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.5/5 |
| There’s a fair amount of features included as well as the usual 8-page booklet.
First up is a pair of Audio Commentaries, one with Film Historians David Del Valle and Steven Peros, the other with another Film Historian, Glenn Erickson. Hush Hush, Sweet Joan, the Making of Charlotte (21:47; SD) is an interesting retrospective featurette on how the movie came to be and the relationship between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Bruce Dern Remembers (12:50; SD) has the actor looking back at his role. Wizard Work (4:43; SD) is some kind of promotional featurette on the director, Robert Aldrich. Last up is the Original Theatrical Trailer (2:56; SD), a Teaser (1:25; SD) and some TV Sots (1:38; SD). |
VIDEO – 4.5/5 |
| Hush Hush… Sweet Charlotte is presented with an AVC encoded 1080p high-definition transfer in its original 1.85 widescreen aspect ratio, all courtesy of Twilight Time. The video quality is pretty darn good with the darker aspects looking stark while keeping sharp detail and it was pretty clean with no noticeable instances of artifacts, aliasing or other flaws. |
AUDIO – 4.0/5 |
| The movie comes with an impressive and robust trio of tracks: 2.0 Stereo, 2.0 and 1.0 DTS-HD Master Audio and, honestly, while switching back and forth, didn’t notice a significant difference other than the mono track audio comes exclusively through the center channel. Any of these would be satisfactory providing clean dialogue levels throughout and some fine depth when the score (from Frank De Vol, which is included as an isolated score track) would kick in. |
OVERALL – 3.5/5 |
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Overall, Hush Hush… Sweet Charlotte is a gem of a drama (almost film noir in some respects) of a film headlined by two amazing performances by Bette Davis, who reunites with director Robert Aldrich, and Olivia de Havilland. This Blu-ray released by Twilight Time isn’t half bad with some good features (ported over I believe) and well done video/audio transfers. |
Check out some more screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.