While watching Lee Daniels' new movie, "The Deliverance," I was struck by the three lead actresses, Glenn Close, Andra Day and Demi Singleton, by how believable they were as a troubled, but close-knit, family. In one key scene, Close, the matriarch, tends to her adult daughter's hair, played by Day, and in turn, Day tends to her pre-teen daughter's hair, played by Singleton, while they all half-watch "Valley of the Dolls" on TV and chat about their day. It's a brief, near-throwaway scene, but it felt so real, so casually lived-in, that it almost seemed documentary-like - but much fuller, juicier, as much of this movie is before the horror kicks in. This one haircare scene, I think, exemplifies why "The Deliverance" works so well, even with its minor missteps. The actresses, especially Close and Day, give masterful, but not showy, performances; they're relaxed in their characters' skin in a way few actors are. Likewise, Daniels' filmmaking has a tangible, even vivid, authenticity, and his clip from "Valley of the Dolls" is a sly tip-off. Buckle up, he's saying, because things will soon go flying off the rails, but in a good way.
It's safe to say that Daniels, Close and Day are genuine artists, but is "The Deliverance" a so-called Hag Horror movie? I really hope it's not dismissed that way. Genre labels, I think, matter. The term Hag Horror, as you might know, originated after the release of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" in the early 1960s, denoting a new, mostly junky sub-genre of B horror movies featuring purportedly has-been Hollywood actresses over 40. They served a dual purpose, providing work for game, sometimes very desperate, older actresses, while satisfying the bloodlust that "Psycho" had whetted in audiences at the turn of the decade.
But I would never dismissively refer to "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" as Hag Horror, since its star, Bette Davis, was an artist - obviously - still working in peak form, and its director, Robert Aldrich, was himself a sly master of Southern-fried Hollywood film-noir. There's nothing "junky" about the movie, a still-effective brew of chills, black comedy, and Davis herself, who gave a jaw-dropping, pre Warhol-ian performance, or the spikiest Brechtian turn you've ever witnessed. When she entered a scene, her crafty, coded self-awareness - of her own winged theatricality, of her status as a Golden Age Hollywood actress and the history it carried - was an integral part of her performance. No mere camp display, she stood within the character and just outside of it, which gave the movie a wonderfully fraught, destabilizing, and yes, horrifying, kick. Forget "Sunset Boulevard," her performance both shows and italicizes. This is the real sordid underbelly of Hollywood.
"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" made bank. And so Hag Horror was born. Thereafter, and continuing throughout the 70s and early 80s, it was a genre where mostly talent-free directors and frantic older actresses - yearning for an Oscar nomination just like Davis - hoped to strike gold. Money-wise, they frequently did, especially with their heavy rotation on the drive-in circuit. And struggling indie distributors, like American International, used them like a lifeline to stay afloat. Some featured Davis, who was exploited mercilessly in movies just barely above shoddy, like "Scream, Peggy, Scream" and "Wicked Stepmother." Joan Crawford, Davis' co-star in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" eagerly leaped onto the Hag Horror band wagon, continuing to give the exact same silent movie-style performance she'd been giving throughout her entire career - eyes wildly telegraphing her thoughts, the herky-jerky movements of her body seemingly prompted by thumping stings from an accompanying Wurlitzer organ - though now it was coarser, even joyless. These latter movies by Davis and Crawford can certainly be regarded as exploitation Hag Horror movies, especially since they primarily exploited the actresses.
There's transitory fun to be had while watching a lot of Hag Horror, especially if you watch only selected clips, since many of them, watched in their entirety, are amateur-ish, lumpily paced slogs. They're camp, of course, since most every filmmaker truly seemed to believe they were making a straight horror movie, but lacked even the bare-minimum of skills to accomplish that. And given the newly permissive era, each tried to one-up one the other with artless splatter violence, which gave them an air of grim decay that's demoralizing. With Hag Horror, the likes of Tallulah Bankhead, Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon and Shelly Winters drowned in the bottom dregs of a movie industry which no longer cared about their talent, since they were over 40, but was excited to use them as cheap, marked-down commodities worth squeezing for a few more dollars before their deaths.
Some of them were almost viciously gory, like the near-unwatchable "Blood and Lace" with Gloria Graham. Yet as quickly as this genre sprouted, it vanished, largely since older stars were later promised a newly revived career if they appeared for chump change on TV shows like "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island," only to bitterly complain when no big offers came thereafter. In many cases, the paltry fee they were paid wasn't even enough for them to re-qualify for their union's health insurance.
Still, the reputation of the movies rose from the mid-80s onward, since they were shown round-the-clock on TV, their goriest bits excised. The result was that an impressionable child could watch Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" in the late-afternoon, with Bankhead at the height of her powers, and then "Die! Die! My Darling!" on the Late Late Show, where Bankhead was older, bloated from alcohol abuse, appearing desperate, as she was - for money, at least - and in harsh, brutally unforgiving, shoddy lightning. For some, these were the first horror movies they ever saw, so as they grew older, the affection they felt for them grew, too, and the camp humor - born of the sometimes mentally-weakened older actresses straining for big effects given the empty-headed scripts - became a wink-wink bond between connoisseurs of trash. Hag Horror had cemented itself as a respected genre alongside other sub-genres, like Blacksploitation, though I'd argue that the later earned respect not by cruelly debasing its primary performers, but by introducing vibrant Black actors who were given too little work in whitewashed Hollywood, and by employing, in many cases, vanguard Black filmmakers.
Still, the Hag Horror theatrical genre was dead as time wore on, though it was revived, unsurprisingly, by Hollywood's greatest trash recycler: television. Producer Ryan Murphy, with "American Horror Story," employed a slew of older actresses in the fast-paced and gory anthology series, the most prominent, of course, being Jessica Lange. Unlike Hag Horror stars of the movies, she was able to parlay her appearances into lauded, award-winning and prestigious TV movies and roles on Broadway. The others haven't been so lucky. By the time "American Horror Story" reached it's "Freak Show" season, the strain had begun to show. The series had never been big on coherence, delivering the goods mostly by way of a solid premise and a flashy introductory episode, along with a sheen of would-be hipness with unconventional male nudity, overly-caffeinated, frantic camera work, and broad, self-aware winks at its audience with their numerous references to Hag Horror movies and horror classics, like "The Exorcist" and "Carrie." We're all in on the joke, the series seemed to be saying. But there was something all too familiar and all too depressing about seeing a talent as towering as Angela Bassett playing a three-breasted carnival freak in a minor role. From there, there was nowhere for the series to go but down - and it's gone there, sinking so low that its latest entry, "Delicate," starred Kim Kardashian.
Which brings me back to "The Deliverance." Is Glenn Close being exploited? I don't think so, especially since Daniels, a visually gifted director, gives her complete rein to explore and develop her character, with a script which allows for broad effects, yes, but also depth, nuance, and - this is the kicker - credible reality. Like "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" "The Deliverance" may lead to many lesser and shoddy imitations, but it's not Hag Horror. Surprisingly, it's the horror, in the movie's last 20 minutes or so, which doesn't quite stick the landing, if only because Daniels doesn't seem to be invested in it. He's not a sleazo making the moves on you, like Ryan Murphy, and though there's an unforgettable moment when Close utters a line about her daughter's genitals - which Close fully commits to as only she can - he's not a smooth operator out for short-lived jolts. Like Aldrich, he's a genuine talent working with truly talented - and not desperate - performers. Hag Horror wishes.
Photo Credits: Netflix, American International, Paramount Pictures, Getty Images, Columbia Pictures, Cinerama Releasing
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