The Stuff is a comedy film disguised as a horror movie, that ultimately becomes a story about marketing and commercialism. Up from the ground comes a bubbling white creamy substance. Some guy stumbles upon it, tastes it, and decides that it's so delicious, he simply must sell it to others. The world loves it, but some people, a Texan detective and a kid in particular are highly suspicious. The detective is hired to find out what The Stuff is made of and a kid starts seeing this yummy dessert moving about his fridge and his family members become overly obsessed with its supposed healthiness.
People start showing clear signs of dependency on The Stuff and are turning into yogurt zombies called "Stuffies", encouraging everyone to eat The Stuff, because it's so tasty and good for you too. The Texan detective and his new child sidekick discover that there is no mixing or processing of The Stuff, it's just being mined out of the ground without even being tested.
The Stuff is pretty aggressive in large quantities and can attack at will. The detective sneaks into the factory where The Stuff is being distributed and plants a few land mines and blows up the geyser that the Stuff is bubbling out from. The Stuff is outed as a mind-altering bacterial substance and people vow to get rid of all of it.
In the end, when all seems right with the world, you see what looks like some kind of drug deal, and you learn it's a couple of Stuffies getting their fix and transporting it like a drug cartel. This has been a great cult favorite and also a great time capsule from the early 80s too. Entertaining but not to be taken too seriously either.
This is a true masterpiece of film. It has reached a high cult status and is just as scary today as it was when it was released in 1922. It's taken almost verbatim from Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", which didn't sit well with Stoker's widow who had never given away rights to the story. Therefore, she demanded that all references to "Dracula" must never be used and then she went a step further and decided that it was completely plagiarized and tried to have all copies of the movie destroyed.
Fortunately, she was unsuccessful at halting the movie entirely. Director F.W. Murnau changed a few characters' names, and slightly altered events, including the name of the movie to Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror. Instead of Count Dracula, we have Count Orlock. Even with the changes, this is without a doubt, an obvious adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel.
Rights or no rights, we have it today to enjoy and that's all that really matters. The part of Count Orlock was played by Max Schreck, who was a very eccentric person who actually thought he was a vampire in real life, who only filmed his scenes at night and traveled around in a coffin at all times. He ate bats and rats and pretty much freaked out anyone who had the disadvantage of being around him.
Due to his vampiric ways, the movie took much longer than anticipated, special sets had to be built on a ship because Max Schreck refused to film on a real ship. Despite the controversy about Max Schreck and the ongoing problems that plagued the making of the film, he delivers a bone-chilling performance. His appearance is so creepy looking, it literally gives me chills and has been scaring the hell out of people for almost 100 years now.
The filming of this movie and the antics of Max Schreck have been legendary for years and were used as the topic of a recent film called "Shadow of the Vampire" starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. Since it is in the public domain, we can, fortunately, see it on YouTube, both in its original Black and White and a very unnecessarily colorized version.
This was Ed Wood's second movie, but his first actual feature film. Glen or Glenda had a horrible reception and seemed more like a semi-autobiographical horror-themed documentary on transvestites, when it was originally supposed to be about sex changes.
I think with Jail Bait, Ed was just trying to make some money. Crime dramas were very big at the time and he thought he could cash in on it, then take the profits from that and make a sci-fi horror flick as was his usual M.O. Miraculously, a young Steve Reeves (Hercules) managed to make it into this little flick.
Crime drama wasn't really Ed's favorite medium, but he did the best he could with it. Not a bad story really. I mean, of course, it has all the trademarks of being an Ed Wood film... deplorable acting, totally improbable plots, and cheap sets. Speaking of sets, the ones used here are exactly the same ones from Glen or Glenda, (this being the first film following Glen or Glenda, I guess Ed thought he could successfully recycle sets without anyone noticing). It also had all the same actors which again just made it seem like Glen/Glenda was a murderer having plastic surgery to alter his/her face to escape the police or something, therefore watching them together is quite humorous.
Basically, the story is about a guy who commits a murder, then he himself is murdered. His murderer tries to blackmail the original killer's father (a prominent plastic surgeon) into altering his appearance to escape the authorities. The plastic surgeon thinks his son has only been kidnapped but soon learns that his son is dead. He performs the plastic surgery (at the guys' house, armed only with a scalpel and a tub of hot water) and when the police finally start to catch up with killer #2, it becomes a convenient time for the unveiling of bandages to prove that he's someone else. Amazingly, the father managed to completely alter his face to look exactly like his dead son that was wanted for murder. He's shot by the cops...the end.
As I said, this isn't all that much like most of Ed's stuff but still has that totally cheaper-than-cheap feel to it that we've come to love in all Ed Wood's movies.
Contrary to popular belief, "Chastity" was not Sonny and Cher's first movie attempt. Before Chastity, there was "Good Times". This movie is a relatively unknown attempt from Sonny and Cher that went practically unnoticed since the day it was released. At this stage of their career, they were looking to do something different aside from just singing to support their act and keep it alive and up to date. All kinds of musicians and bands were making movies as well, and this was their first attempt at doing the same, therefore it is the ONLY movie that stars both Sonny and Cher. It looks like it's gonna be a great comedy played by a famous duo, but it ended up coming out boring and depressing.
I think the folly of this film is that Sonny not only wrote it, but he also played all the major roles. Cher by contrast isn't allowed nearly as much screen time. And let's be honest, between the two, who would you rather watch?
Anyway, Sonny and Cher play themselves (painfully honest it seems). They are solicited by some weirdo director named Mr. Morticus (George Sanders, who committed suicide not long after making this pile of crap) to make a movie about Sonny and Cher because he rather "fancies them" and thinks they're "with it, man.". Mr. Morticus is a truly strange dude who has people wrestling and fighting in his office and stewardess-looking women who are delivering drinks and whatnot to everyone (a truly bizarre scene that is never explained).
Morticus and Sonny strike a deal that leads Sonny to believe that a sincere movie about their career is gonna be made, but Mr. Morticus tells the writers to just plagiarise "Rags to Riches" and merely change a few names around. Sonny and Cher hate it and Morticus gives them ten days to come up with something themselves using props from the studio.
The rest of the movie is Sonny trying to think of a cool movie theme (still thinking that they actually have a say in the movie's story). Sonny has a western-themed scene, a jungle-themed scene, and a sort of Dragnet with Girl Friday-themed scene. All are pretty boring as Sonny does most of the talking and singing, and Cher is just this stubborn spoiled side dish that gripes about anything and everything throughout the entire movie, but she does get to wear some of the wildest clothes I've ever seen, which I later learned had actually been designed by Cher herself.
Morticus hates all of Sonny's ideas (who wouldn't?) and still insists on the "rags to riches" story. They say "no", and he says "You'll never work in this town again, blah, blah, blah." Sonny and Cher walk out and happily stroll down the street. The End.
What can I say... in this movie, Sonny is stupid and annoying and Cher is just a complaining bitch the entire time. Painfully contrast to the squeaky clean image that they had at that time, which as we've since found out was anything but the truth, so maybe this was their attempt at telling the world about the real Sonny and Cher, so who knows.
As a funny side note: This film was directed by William Freidkin who famously made The Exorcist and Cruising. From Sonny and Cher to vulgar demon possession and leather S&M serial killers. A bit of a leap there Mr. Friedkin?
Wow, what a great movie! This film is very well known by now and has spawned a few sequels and even a star-studded comedy remake, all of which are definitely in contrast to the general definition of a cult film. But nonetheless, this movie has without a doubt gathered a HUGE cult following and its remake contains popular stars like Nicole Kidman, Mathew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Glenn Close, and Bette Midler. Even so, the original is far superior to its remake in both style, creativity, suspense, and depth of character. And despite the jokes that endlessly surround the premise, it's actually a really creepy story.
A growing family is tired of the city (and all the craziness that comes with it) and decides to move to the cleaner suburban outskirts of the city to raise their children in a more wholesome environment. They choose Stepford, a town that from the start seems a little off-kilter. For one thing, the housewives are extremely vapid, caring only about cooking, cleaning, and tending to their husband's every need with the utmost enthusiasm. When they talk, they sound like living TV commercials (If Shiny Clean Dishwasher soap were to ask me to do a commercial for them, not only would I do it, but I'd do it for free.)
Despite its oddities, this new couple manages to cope in Stepford. The kids are doing well in school, making friends. The husband joins the Stepford Men's Association. Only Joanna the wife is not content, believing that something is odd, but just can't quite identify it. Fortunately for Joanna, another couple has recently moved to Stepford. The two wives (Joanna and Bobbie) instantly bond and very much agree that Stepford is just plain weird. It's TOO clean, everyone's TOO friendly and the wives are all TOO sexy and gorgeous, yet they fawn over overweight ugly old men (their husbands).
Because all the men in town belong to the "Husbands Only" lodge Joanna and Bobbie try to organize a women's club. Only one other woman in town is interested, a wife that has only been in Stepford for a few months, named Charmaine. Anyway, after returning from a "trip" with her husband, Charmaine is now acting like all the other wives in Stepford. Cooking, cleaning, and wearing flowery aprons while dusting the house in heels (totally Donna Reed style). This is a tremendous contrast from the independent, free-thinking woman she was before who needed a recipe just to make ice. Joanna and Bobbie find this incredibly disturbing and can't understand how these transformations could possibly be taking place.
Then soon after, Bobbie asks Joanna to babysit her kids while she and her husband go on a "second honeymoon". When she comes back, Bobbie is wearing perfect beautiful makeup, her kitchen is so clean it's practically sanitized and she is all of a sudden madly devoted to her husband. After much questioning as to why Bobbie is now like all the other wives in Stepford who've suddenly changed, to no avail, Joanna freaks and stabs Bobbie in the stomach. Bobbie pulls out the clean, non-blood-stained knife and proceeds to go haywire like a short-circuited robot, opening, and closing cabinets, dumping cup after cup of coffee on the floor, repeating things like "How could you do a thing like that", "When I was just going to give you coffee", "I thought we were friends".
Noticing that it had been exactly six months after moving to Stepford that Charmaine changed and now that Bobbie has been in town for exactly six months and has now suddenly changed as well, Joanna realizes that she has been in town for almost six months herself, so naturally Joanna becomes frantic. She seeks help from a psychiatrist who ends up being the only person that believes Joanna's story. The psychiatrist advises her to get out of town now... take the kids and run. But when Joanna returns home, the children are nowhere to be found. She goes to the Men's Lodge to confront her husband and to get her kids, but the only person she finds there is the President of the Men's Association who basically tells her that she has no choice in this matter.
She runs and hides in a room, but to her amazement, the room looks just like her bedroom at home. There's even a replica of Joanna sitting at a vanity table brushing her hair. The replica has considerably larger breasts and completely black eyes (the assumption is that she's not quite finished with her replication process). A shocked Joanna is strangled by the replica and the next thing you know, Joanna is dressed all frilly and is obsessed with the grocery store.
Oh, did I mention that one of the members of the Men's Association used to work at Disneyland... making robots. The movie ends, but no further explanation is needed at this point because suddenly it all makes sense, the wives of Stepford are being killed off and replaced with sexier, husband-adoring, cleaning-obsessed, completely docile robots with no individual personalities. A film that came about when women's rights were being challenged more than ever by men who couldn't have cared less about their opinions, I'd say this film makes a rather profound statement. People tend to use this movie as the butt of many jokes, but I think they're missing the overall message that it's trying to convey. Was, is, and will always be a classic.
Some idiot is driving down a dirt road smoking a joint with his dog, supposedly attempting to deliver a few barrels of toxic waste, somewhere. So, in the first few minutes, the film already has all the hallmarks of a movie from Troma. Toxic waste, bad acting, and the appearance of being filmed with a home movie camera.
Anyway, the guy loses the barrel, and a fat redneck finds it and uses it for an alcohol still, therefore making toxic moonshine. One by one, these rednecks start becoming toxic zombies. Fortunately for the sake of inventing some sort of coherent story, there are a group of campers nearby that make for some tasty vittles.
This movie starts out quite comically with the stereotypical rednecks being their weird little country selves, but about halfway through the film it just turns into outright gore. Troma movies can be pretty gross, but this one is totally disgusting.
Not much plot, really. Just colorful characters and lots of gore. Absolutely do NOT invest ANY time trying to understand anything in this movie, because it's just plain irrelevant. Just sit back and enjoy the humorous zombie make-up, cheap special effects, and non-funny one-liner jokes.
Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls is an unofficial sequel to Bride of the Monster. There are several references to "The Old Willows Place" (Dr. Vornoff's residence and lab that explodes in Bride of the Monster) and even Lobo, the kind-hearted beast from "Bride of the Monster" makes a reappearance (with much more gruesome make-up than before).
A Swami scam artist that bilks people into believing that he can channel the dead, recruits an actress to play a roaming ghost at night in order to frighten people. Unfortunately for her, a real ghost dressed in black is following her with the same intentions. As the Swami (whose actual name is Dr. Acula. (Dracula, get it? Of course, you get it, you just didn't want it.) holds his fake seances, he fools people with the weirdest tricks. One is a floating trumpet, a guy in a white sheet scuttles by every now and then with a very whimsical tune that plays as he shuffles by. There were also some other "floating" (obviously on a string) objects that I couldn't even identify. All of this weirdness doesn't even phase the people at the seance. These cheap theatrics never even strikes the seance members in the slightest as being strange or odd, they actually think it's "normal", although I use that term loosely. At the seance, there are even two attendees who are dressed as skeletons wearing cheap wigs.
Eventually, after committing an endless list of criminal offenses, the Swami isn't taken down by the law but instead by ghosts of the families that the Swami scammed. They crowd around him and the next morning, he's gone and the "ghosts" are now just a pile of bones on the floor.
This Ed Wood film came a little later in the game than most of his movies. You see, Ed didn't make movies, he made crap. Therefore he was broke and fit the perfect stereotype of the starving artist. And because he was so completely and utterly broke, he couldn't even afford to have this film developed. Decades later when Wade Williams bought the rights to Ed Wood's movies after they became known for being so bad they were good, he had the film developed so that we can now enjoy this classic that was almost nearly lost forever. If you loved Bride of the Monster, then Night of the Ghouls should definitely be sought out. I actually think it's one of Eddie's better pieces of cinematic doo-doo.
Another one of Ed Wood's classics in the can. This is officially Bela Lugosi's last movie. He is credited and seen briefly in one of Ed's later films called Plan 9 From Outer Space, but this is only because Ed happened to have some home movies of Bela and wove them (not so gracefully) into the plot.
Anyway, this movie is an attempt at a Sci-Fi thriller, but like all of Ed's other work, it turned out to be pure crap. Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela) has been run out of his native country and bought an old house out in the woods called "The Old Willow's Place". Armed with his muscleman slave Lobo (wrestler Tor Johnson) he plans to use nuclear technology to create his own army of "super beings".
A nosy newspaper reporter named Janet Lawton is investigating the legend of the monster at the Old Willows Place (technically we're never really told what the monster is... was it Lobo, the octopus that dwells in the ditch outside the house, or what Dr. Vornoff becomes after being zapped with his own raygun). The original title of this film was Bride of the Atom, which made much more sense in regards to the storyline, but was changed to Bride of the Monster so as to have a scarier-sounding title, even though the "monster" part of the title had not been fleshed out in the movie's plot.
Janet gets too close, gets kidnapped, is forced to dress like a bride, and is strapped to a table, apparently to be one of the first people that Dr. Vornoff plans to turn into a super being. Lobo saves her at the last minute and instead straps the doctor onto the table in her place. Dr. Vornoff gets zapped by his own machine and turns into something, not sure if it's a super being or if it went terribly wrong and made him into a monster. The only noticeable difference is that he looks kinda burnt, with messed-up hair, and is wearing huge black 6-inch pump shoes.
All throughout the movie, Ed tries desperately to match endless stock footage with his own footage but fails miserably. The doctor has a pet octopus, which at the end of the movie ends up eating the good doctor for dinner, but nevertheless looks faker than fake when compared to the stock footage of a real octopus. The same with a snake in a tree... a shot of a real snake and then a shot of a rubber one in a tree that doesn't even move.
And as a final flaw in the movie, Dr. Vornoff's residence/laboratory explodes at the end for no reason and the explosion is stock footage of an atomic bomb that would have destroyed half the globe, yet everyone near the house isn't even blinded as they look upon what's become of a mad geniuses work. True crap, and is therefore strongly recommended for all cult fans.
Orgy of the Dead was one of Ed Wood's last films. And if you thought Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 was bad, this farce makes them both look like masterpieces. Towards the end of his life, Ed Wood had already been a raging alcoholic for years and had begun making monster/nudie films. Basically lightweight porn with a vague monster theme.
This movie has no plot at all and only the bare bones of a story. A young couple is traveling down the road and runs out of gas near a cemetery. Day instantly becomes night as we move from an outside shot to a studio shot (one of Ed Woods's favorite continuity goofs). They are tied up by a werewolf (you can actually see the actor's whole neck because the mask is too small).
The infamously incorrect self-proclaimed psychic (and Ed's favorite drinking buddy) Criswell rises out of a coffin and gives some kind of speech about the creatures of the night, blah, blah, blah. He is obviously reading from a cue card, as his eyes move back and forth. He even moves his head back and forth a little too. It also appears as though he has on enough makeup to be able to carve your initials in it. He is then joined by some Vampira wannabe that looks like Elvira's younger sister, who doesn't seem to have much to offer other than a few meaningless lines and several closeups of her breasts.
Throughout the rest of the movie, the captive couple is subjected to striptease after striptease, by heavily endowed females jiggling around to a "spooky" soundtrack. Each girl comes out "dressed" as something different. There's the Voodoo girl, the jungle girl, the skeleton girl, the mummy girl, etc. They come out half-dressed to begin with, and "dance" around until all clothes are a distant memory. One after the other, like Halloween at a strip club. Then it abruptly ends when the couple unties themselves and escapes. I truly believe that there's something out there for everyone, so if you like large-breasted strippers on Halloween... then this film is definitely for you.
May is a pathetically lonely child whose only friend is a doll named "Suzie" that is special and isn't supposed to be taken out of her glass display case (gee, what fun). She also has a lazy eye and has to wear an eye patch to school, ensuring that she will definitely have no friends. May grows up but still has no friends (except Suzie, whom she talks to all the time).
Tired of being alone, she continuously seeks love and friendship. So one day she spots Adam, specifically his hands to which she has an unnatural attraction. They have a date or two until he discovers just how weird she really is. She stalks him for a while until she overhears Adam telling a friend about how he successfully dumped "that nutcase".
Distraught over Adam, May takes an interest in Polly, a coworker of May's at the veterinarian hospital where she works. Polly has been hinting that she likes May for some time now and May starts to take an interest in her, specifically her neck. Polly seems sincere about having a relationship with May... that is until Ambrosia (Betty Grable on steroids) comes along and soon Polly's interest in May simmers down. Every time something goes sour in May's life, we hear the cracking of Suzie's glass case in the background, symbolically representing the cracking of May's sanity.
Hurt by someone for the second time now, May desperately craves love, so she volunteers at a daycare for blind kids. This works out fine until May brings Suzie to the daycare for show and tell. An accident happens and the glass case gets broken and every child in the place gets shredded with broken glass (remember, they're blind kids, they see and discover their environment through touching), thus disastrously ending her new hobby as a caregiver.
After some time, May is seen sitting on a city bench when some punk named Zero drops in. As opposed to his punk appearance, he's actually an overly polite nice guy. May is again searching for that one person that won't screw her over and will be her friend. Unfortunately, May had killed her cat a few days prior and stuffed it in the freezer, so when Zero goes looking for ice cubes, he gets a surprise. He calls May a freak and says that he'd never be her friend. This is the last straw and May finally snaps. She kills Zero by stabbing him in the head with scissors (something I've wanted to do to several Christian politicians).
May finally catches on to the phrase "If you can't find a friend... make one." She decides that she needs more parts, so on Halloween, she dresses up like Suzie and armed with scalpels and a beer cooler, she sets out to collect all the parts she needs to make her "perfect new friend". She goes on a killing spree, collecting Adam's hands, Polly's neck, and Ambrosia's legs. Nobody notices anything peculiar about her behavior because it's Halloween.
Once home, May sets to work "making" her new friend (May has a knack for sewing). With all the right parts being sewn together, May now has the perfect friend. One thing is wrong though. May's new friend has a fabric head (I guess May never liked anyone's head enough to use it) and therefore this new friend cannot see May. She tries putting her glasses on it to no avail. It appears that one last sacrifice is needed to bring life to May's perfect friend. She gouges out her good eye and puts it on the "quilted cadaver". Then... the arm moves slowly up to May's crying face and strokes her hair, comforting her.
Creepy as hell to say the least. I suppose the installment of life into this new "friend" is symbolic of May going off the deep end and no longer being sane, not that she was all there, to begin with. This is probably one of the newest films to be awarded cult status. Released in 2002, it was slow to catch on but it has gained a huge cult following in a pretty short amount of time. It's very well done, has very good acting, especially on the part of Angela Bettis who plays May, and has become one of my all-time favorite films. Maybe because loneliness is a powerful emotion that I think most people have suffered from at some time in their life and can surely relate to. But as we learn from May, if you can't find a friend, make one.
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane has gained a huge cult status, despite having a large budget, two Oscar-winning actresses, and was a massive success when it was released... all of which are traits that would be really hard to include in any kind of cult film, but this one achieved it with ease. I think the reason it's gained a lot of cult status is that this was intended to be a suspense/drama and turned out to be incredibly (and quite unintentionally) funny. Unintentional humor is usually a large part of what makes a cult film. Another aspect that makes this movie great is the off-screen antics of the film's two main actresses. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were both in constant competition for the coveted title of Queen Bitch of Hollywood, a feud that had been growing between them for years before "Baby Jane" was even conceived.
Both actresses were practically fossils when they made this movie and were considered very low profile and almost non-hirable. One director even stated, "I wouldn't give a wooden nickel for those two old broads." But director Robert Aldrich saw it differently and had struck upon a great idea... take two actresses who literally hated each other's guts and put them both in a movie where their characters also hate each other's guts. Absolutely brilliant!! That hatred for each other fueled some of the best acting ever put on film.
The story goes a little like this... In 1917 Baby Jane Hudson was the child star to end all child stars, singing and dancing her way across America's heart. But then she went and committed the worst crime that a child star can do... she grew up. Fast forward to 1935, Jane's sister Blanche has now become an extremely successful actress and Jane's career has been in the toilet for quite some time. One night, the two of them are returning home from a party, we see one sister get out of the car to unlock the gate and the other sister hits the gas and flat-out runs her down. Fast forward again to "yesterday"... Blanche is old and in a wheelchair and Jane is her resentful caregiver. Basically, two old biddies living in an old Hollywood house, both have been out of the spotlight for years, one was a star for a few years as a child, and the other sister was a much more successful actress as an adult for a much longer time.
For years, the hatred and resentment between them have been greatly building, until Jane is quite fed up with what she considers to be the sacrifice of her career for the sake of caring for her sister. The insinuation is that Jane ran Blanche down (just to be a bitch, I guess), resulting in her being a cripple in a wheelchair, so out of guilt she takes "care" of her sister. Jane begins to treat her sister Blanche increasingly badly and we soon learn that she also appears to be losing her grasp on reality.
When they begin showing some of Blanche's old movies on television (before we had VCRs) Jane is terribly jealous and her abuse towards Blanche becomes bizarrely inhumane. She takes the phone out of Blanche's room, is keeping flowers and fan mail meant for Blanche for herself, and she even cooks Blanche's parakeet and serves it to her for dinner. Having no other way to cope with the situation, Jane is also now a raging alcoholic.
The loonier Jane gets, the more desperate Blanche becomes, after all, it's gotta be pretty scary to be dependent on someone who hates and resents you, cooks your pet parakeet, serves dead rats for dinner, is forging your signature and stealing from your bank account, and is, by all means, becoming a complete lunatic who in her mind lives only in her childhood past when she actually had a shred of respect and attention.
All while slowly starving her sister to death (Blanche didn't find the cooked parakeet and dead rat very appetizing), Jane is also trying to revive her childhood act as "Baby Jane Hudson". Acting and dressing like she did when she was a child star, which of course looks totally creepy on someone who is now in her late 60s.
In a desperate attempt at reviving her childhood career, Jane places an ad in the newspaper for a partner to help recreate her act exactly as she used to do it when she was a kid. She meets Edwin, who also thinks she's a nut, but a nut with money. He's obviously just after the cash, therefore he indulges her looniness for the sake of making some money off of her.
Blanche's helper, maid, and friend Elvira comes to find out why Blanche can't be reached on the phone (Jane ripped it out of the wall) and why Jane won't let her go upstairs to Blanche's room anymore. She finally has enough of Jane's bullshit and pushes past her and runs up to Blanche's bedroom, and upon opening the door, she finds Blanche hogtied to the bed with her mouth taped shut. She tries to help, but unfortunately, Jane clobbers Elvira over the head with a hammer from behind and kills her before she can help Blanche. That night, Jane dumps Elvira's body.
A day or two later cops come questioning Jane about Elvira's disappearance, so Jane panics, grabs her barely conscious sister, and heads for the beach. While lying on the beach, Jane plays in the sand like a child while Blanche lies there dying in the sun.
A wonderful twist ending occurs (which I normally wouldn't tell people, but what the hell, it's my blog). As a dying confession, Blanche reveals that it was actually her that was driving the car that fateful night, and not her sister Jane. Blanche had a hatred for Jane ever since they were little when Jane was getting all the attention. Apparently, Jane had been a real bitch to Blanche at a party that they had just returned home from and it was Blanche that was driving the car, and not Jane who was actually the one unlocking the gate. In a rage, Blanche tried to run Jane down with the car, crashing into the gate, snapping her spine, and crippling herself in the process. She managed to crawl out of the car and up to the gates and when the cops arrived they naturally assumed that Jane had done it. Jane was apparently too drunk to know what had happened and ran off. When Blanche tells Jane all of this, we get one of the best lines of the entire movie... "You mean, all this time we could've been friends?".
By now people are noticing a dying Blanche while Jane twirls around, having finally reaches the brink of pure insanity, so pretty soon the cops arrive. The movie ends here and we're left with the assumption that Blanche gets the help she needs within minutes of losing her life and that Jane is finally carted off to the funny farm where she seriously belongs.
As I stated before, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis deeply hated each other so there was definitely some awful tension going back and forth off-camera (which greatly enhanced their performances on camera). A few examples: Joan Crawford was the CEO of Pepsi-Cola at the time, therefore Bette Davis had Coca-Cola (Pepsi's biggest rival) machines installed everywhere. There's a scene where Jane is kicking the crap out of Blanche, and they had to use a dummy because Joan Crawford didn't trust Bette Davis to not actually kick her. In a scene where Jane is dragging Blanche out of bed and into the hall, you can tell that Bette Davis is really having a hard time carrying and dragging her, this is due to the fact that Joan Crawford hid several heavy weights under her dress so that she would be much heavier when they had to do the scene, then kept purposely ruining the scene so that Bette Davis would have to repeatedly carry a MUCH heavier than normal Joan Crawford over and over. I could go on and on, the trivia for this movie is just as fascinating as the movie itself. Director Robert Aldrich was surprised (and no doubt very relieved) when Bette Davis opted to do her own make-up for the film which is really very frightening. He stated once that he would literally be too scared of Bette Davis to purposely make her look that bad. This truly is a great movie and despite all the elements that would normally keep a film from being considered cult, it has now really become a true cult classic. An entire miniseries was even made called "Feud" starring Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford and Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis that chronicles the tumultuous filming of the movie and the endless friction between its two bitchy stars.
The Stuff is a comedy film disguised as a horror movie, that ultimately becomes a story about marketing and commercialism. Up from the ground comes a bubbling white creamy substance. Some guy stumbles upon it, tastes it, and decides that it's so delicious, he simply must sell it to others. The world loves it, but some people, a Texan detective and a kid in particular are highly suspicious. The detective is hired to find out what The Stuff is made of and a kid starts seeing this yummy dessert moving about his fridge and his family members become overly obsessed with its supposed healthiness. 
