Last Night's Viewing

In one of my favourite of her movies, Bette Davis plays Mrs Taggart, the mother (and mother-in-law) from Hell who forces her 3 sons to join her in celebrating her wedding anniversary - despite the fact that her husband is long dead. The gathering is merely an excuse for the matriarch to humiliate and exert control over her grown children whom she fears could abandon her. Thanks to Mrs Taggart's 'unique' parenting style, each of her sons have grown up somewhat dysfunctional; Her eldest, Henry, is shy and submissive yet ventures out at night to steal female underwear from clotheslines to try on in private. Middle child Terry is a harrassed father of a growing brood whose wife, Karen, is pressuring him to escape to Canada, away from the influence of his overbearing mother. Yet Terry has always felt guilty for blinding his mother in one eye as an infant, and has been trying to compensate for it ever since and win her approval. Young Tommy is mummy's darling - until he brings home his pregnant fiancee Shirley, to whom Mrs Taggart takes an immediate and evident dislike.

The next hour and a half shows the guests being verbally torn apart by Mrs Taggart's vicious tongue - and one has to wonder how much Bette Davis, a woman renowned for her witty put-downs, actually had to act and how much came naturally. Her bitchy quips and outbursts are hilarious as well as shocking, and her outfits alone justify the purchase of this dvd. Incredibly 60s kitsch. The first get-up we see her in is a bright coral pink draped dress complete with matching nails, lipstick and eye-patch. She accessorises with a long cigarette holder and a string of pearls, naturally. When she takes her family out for dinner/public degradation ritual she is sporting a green brocade jacket, a chic neckscarf fastened with a diamond brooch to match her diamond earrings, and the ever-present eye-patch (this time a more understated black). For the entire course of the film, her perfectly styled coiffure never moves an inch, not even during the most heated argument, and her wicked mouth remains a startling slash of coral.

She is my hero.