Una notte per morire

The woman known for giving extravagant parties and answering door bells au natural in her youth plays an old, religious grande dame with no make-up and drab attire. Tallulah Bankhead, in her last screen performance, shows us one more time that she was a consumate actress when given the opportunity to perform. Every moment of hers is precious as she plays a woman that has driven her son from home by her excessive religious fanaticism and is now coping with his death. She is visited by a woman, played by Stephanie Powers, that was engaged to her son. The dialogue and interaction between Miss Bankhead and Miss Powers is wonderful as Bankhead cuts her speech off and hams it up almost in a sedate yet effective manner. Powers soon becomes a forced guest as Tallulah tries and "cleanse" her soul. Watching Tallulah read Biblical passages, sermonize on the evils of the flesh, and gently yet forcefully decay into a state of histrionics is delightful to watch. That woman could act! The rest of the cast is effective with Donald Sutherland in a satisfactory yet forgetable role as a dimwitted servant. Solid direction, claustrophobic settings, and good production values all add up to some good old-fashioned fun!

What inspired casting! The libidinous Tallulah Bankhead as a drab, sober, religious zealot! That alone is worth the price of admission. Thanks to Bette and Joan, the 60s era of Grand Guignol brought some of our favorite glossy "middle-aged" legends back to the somewhat less glossy cinematic limelight. Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters, Olivia de Havilland, Geraldine Page, Agnes Moorehead, and Ruth Gordon all took the Gothic plunge. The prerequisites? Simple. Look like hell and act like a mad bull in a china shop. So why not grand ol' Tallulah, dahling?

Here, the "Alabama Foghorn," as Fred Mertz once called her when she guested (hilariously so) on an episode of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour," is called upon to play the prim, tight-lipped Mrs. Trefoile, a wacko bible-thumper whose only child died a short time before. When her dead son's fiancee (Stefanie Powers) comes to pay an overdue visit out of respect, she makes a big whoops and tells the old lady that she is about to marry another man. And now the fun begins...

Urged on by her Maker (of course) to exorcise the young girl's demons and restore her purity (she wears that blasphemous red lipstick, you see) and, oh yeah, also to punish her (of course)for her mortal wickedness and ultimate betrayal to her dead son, the old lady (of course) imprisons the young damsel in her medieval-styled lair for a week's worth of (naturally) bible verse and repentance. But then the old crackpot decides she'd be better served if she (you know) takes it up a notch and makes her (of course) a sacrificial lamb instead. See, Trefoile finds out that the girl is still a virgin so (of course) if the girl's still a virgin, her soul can still be (you know) saved and, at the same time, she can be reunited with Trafoile's dead son in heaven, which better serves his memory. You know, kill, I mean save, two birds with one stone.

Seeing Bankhead cavorting around as a dowdy, highly repressed teetotaler while spewing passages from Revelations is an admittedly sinful pleasure. What's even better is that the old girl gets away with it. As bizarre and campy as one could hope for, Bankhead's Mrs. Trefoile is still all prickly seriousness and deadly menace, possessing a convincingly firm, fervent gait. She doesn't really play the joke. Moreover, she manages to slightly stroke audience sympathy with human shadings of loneliness and utter despair. The atmosphere is appropriately claustrophobic and suspense is built up expertly too, with every Bankhead entrance punctuated by creepy, stringy harpsichord music.

Fun too is watching Bankhead's Addams Family-like household run amok, especially Donald Sutherland as a mute, dim-witted servant -- a role I'm sure he'd love to erase permanently from his resume. Poor bruised and bloodied Stefanie Powers does yeoman's work here, gaining our sympathy from the onset and making a wonderfully feisty "straight man" to the Bankhead histrionics.

And just wait until the skeletons come out of the closet. Like you knew they would! Bankhead's final curtain in the flick is a great wallow. And speaking of final curtains, this was regrettably her last feature film.

This effectively creepy little Gothic horror tale is one of Hammer's finest psychological-thrillers, and a valiant attempt to duplicate the success of American thrillers like "WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?" and "HUSH..., HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE" featuring aging, flamboyant female stars in macabre, unusual roles. This film is a showcase for the talents of the great Tallulah Bankhead whose last film this was. She manages to be both amusing and terrifying at the same time. It's a blissful performance, and next to LIFEBOAT it's her finest hour on screen. A very young Stefanie Powers(then age 23) also comes through with a remarkably strong performance as the terrorized daughter-in-law. The movie also features Peter Vaughan as Bankhead's menacing handyman, and in an early role Donald Sutherland as an imbecile who also works at the place. The workman-like script was written by Richard Matheson, from the novel NIGHTMARE by Anne Blaisdell.

The story: A young woman named Pat Carroll (Stefanie Powers) pays a courtesy call on Mrs. Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead), the mother of Pat's dead fiancé. Pat plans to stay one night and be on her way. But Mrs. Trefoile has other ideas. She sees it as her mission to "cleanse" Pat and keep her pure for the day Pat will join her son in the afterlife. To accomplish her mission, Mrs. Trefoile locks Pat in an upper room of her crumbling mansion and preaches to her with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other.

Tallulah! That's all you really need to know about Die! Die! My Darling! Tallulah Bankhead's performance is so over-the-top, so wonderfully demented, so full of campy entertainment that she dominates every aspect of this movie. Stefanie Powers is good, but she and the rest of the cast are completely overshadowed by Tallulah. I just can't imagine anyone else (and that includes the likes of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford who were also part of the aging actress playing a crazed nut in a horror movie) in the role of Mrs. Trefoile - she's that good. I'll go so far as to say that Tallulah's performance in Die! Die! My Darling! is one of my two or three favorite pieces of acting from any horror movie I've seen. Amazing!

TALLULAH BANKHEAD, looking like a ravaged reject from a summer stock version of "The Little Foxes", delivers an appropriately over-the-top performance from this Hammer schlock that borrows from every madhouse movie ever made.

STEFANIE POWERS is the unlucky victim, a young woman who makes a courtesy call on the mother of her dead fiancé, only to discover that she's a religious zealot and a complete madwoman looking for sin in every fabric of Powers' too glamorous wardrobe and make-up. Not only is Bankhead mad, but her servants are enough to scare anyone within sight--including DONALD SUTHERLAND as a retarded man, and YOOTHA JOYCE and HARRY VAUGHAN as an unethical couple badly in need of cash.

Most unrealistic aspect of the story has strong-willed Powers submitting meekly to outrageous requests Bankhead makes upon her arrival instead of packing her things and leaving immediately. But when she fights back, she has to deal with Tallulah and her loyal servants, all of whom make for heavy combat.

Well photographed with some appropriately melodramatic musical flourishes to pump up the fright element, it nevertheless seems like a freak show by the time it reaches its harrowing conclusion. Not until the last moment, does the heroine get some much needed help from a boyfriend who returns for no apparent reason after Bankhead assures him that Powers has already left.

Summing up: Talllulah looks a fright but performs befitting the material--adding horror to the kind of role attracting overage stars in the '60s.