Wicked Stepmother (1989)

 So "The Stepfather" (1987) has been on Shudder for a few months, but I noticed that it was getting a TCM Underground showing at 1:00 AM here Central time so I decided on recording it for a revisit next week. After it, Turner Classics showed as a double feature with it Larry Cohen's Wicked Stepmother (1989), the notorious final film of Bette Davis. What made this film so infamous is that Davis was barely on the production for a few days before leaving in disgust due to not liking the script or Cohen's direction. So Barbara Carrera was brought in as a second witch, getting to occupy a family's home when Davis's witch takes her place in a black cat named Pericles. Carrera is certainly sultry enough, although her sexy dance on the pillar of Lionel Stander's home for spying PI Richard Moll is outrageously campy. Carrera seems inspired to go the extra mile to make her Priscilla a catty seductress trying to gain the desire and lust for Colleen Camp's beau, David Rasche. So, the obvious curiosity and allure towards the film is Davis' presence, no matter how slight and quick it comes and goes. I think I read she was in the film approximately eleven minutes. It feels much shorter than that, quite frankly. 

Davis died in 1989, the same year this was released and she looked skeletal and skinny, smoking almost the entire time (if not the entire time) on screen. When she pops another cig between her lips, really taking a drag, Davis bellows smoke like a chimney. I LOVE Bette Davis, but seeing her in the film so ill and aged, just smoking up a fierce storm, it left me haunted. I really felt like she was "Fuck it, I'm dying so I'll just chainsmoke and live what life I have left without a care in the world." Her voice is gravel and ash, and it seemed like every bit of dialogue Davis had was released with a bit of tired exhaustion. But still, her presence pops off the screen even if the role is embarrassing for one of the greatest actresses in the history of Hollywood and film. Cohen's film tries (and sadly fails) to make up for her loss once she moves to the cat and Carrera enters the picture. I wonder if the audience of the time was expecting Davis to return at some point, perhaps disappointed when she never returns. Because I can only assume the audience expected her to re-emerge and Carrera to return to the cat.

All of the special effects except Stander and Camp's house breaking apart (the tree roots effects are terrible) and maybe the "smoking cat" are just painful. I am a big Cohen fan, but this film is a trainwreck. There is just no other way to describe it. Camp and Rasche are more than capable of making even the worst of dialogue palatable with their animated performances. I think they try so hard, especially when Rasche is under Carrerra's spell and Camp is fighting off cat allergies and trying to concoct her own hocus-pocus witchcraft. One scene has Camp looking into Davis' window, falling into the roof of a car, suffering whiplash. Davis grilling a big hunk of bony meat in the backyard while patiently and calmly enduring Camp's hysterical reaction to marrying her father (Stander, who is happy in the marriage, enjoying his new wife's steak dinners, marathons of game shows, and growing hair from where he's bald) was odd but fascinating to watch to me...Davis of fifty years prior would have ripped Camp apart. Still, even as Davis is elderly and seemingly wasting away (she was always vocal about how much aging sucked), that screen star power is undeniable. 

Carrera urges Stander to go on a game show and is able to convince the producer of the studio to put him on...and Stander, through her magic help, wins! Laurene Landon as the game show model cracked me up because in the Maniac Cop films she is such a tomboy badass...as the model, Landon keeps trying to pocket dollar bills from a pot, her hand swiped away by the jovial game show host (Bob Goen, mostly known from Entertainment Tonight), and when Stander gets questions right, eventually winning, she basically mounts him, getting quite kissy-face with him! But Landon in that dress with the hair done up, she's sexy as all hell.

Seymour Cassel has a store with witchcraft information Camp needs (and he offers his knowledge to her), and Evelyn Keyes (who had only been in a spattering of films or television since the 50s, notable for her classic films of the golden age in Hollywood) is a witch herself, offering a special school to teach civilians who pay her $750 bucks! It is Keyes who provides information on the cat and two witches alternating human and feline form, taking turns. Keyes is actually probably in the damn movie more than Davis! The advertising and marketing did seem to make sure to let audiences know Davis was headliner, but how could folks watching "Wicked Stepmother" not feel cheated? 

Tom Bosley (of "Happy Days" and "Father Dowling Mysteries") is a LA cop trying to tell his superiors (or anyone who will listen) that a witch caused a family's shrinking size, found in a shoe box in their home after she departed their residence. Eventually, at the end of the film, in a major cringe bit of (not) special effects, Bosley and his taxi cab are shrunk in size while driving in bad LA traffic. It was Cohen's attempt to leave us tickled, but I found it to be quite ugh. Camp and Carrera in dueling witchcraft is Cohen's attempt to vomit a lot of chaos onscreen, hoping some of it might exhilarate the audience. Again, Camp and Carrera give it their all, I certainly won't dispute that. Stander, as the oblivious and manipulated pops, grins ear to ear for most of the film, enjoying the benefits of what marrying a witch (or being assisted by Priscilla) brings him. I liked the LA locations that take us outside suburbia with Camp and Moll on streets as traffic is definitely felt. Moll, in one cringe scene, pretends to be a Japanese gardener...it doesn't age well; think Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", just not nearly as long. Moll, in his Sam Spade office, with a black paint-coated bird figure on his desk, pops out his camera a lot but never really captures any evidence that actually compensates for what Camp pays him. 1.5/5

Camp throws water on Carrera and Carrera mocks her with the Wicked Witch of the West "I'm melting! Melting" routine, responding with the film's best line: It didn't work, did it, Dorothy? This is reality, not MGM!

This or Davis telling Camp to call her mama. Oh, and Davis flirting with Rasche amused me.