The Anniversary Reviews

Bette's in full on camp bitch mode here and having a hell of a good time, if you're in that mood too you'll have a fine time.

A very good friend is gnashing her teeth over my having reviewed 999 movies and not yet making it to 1000.This is for you Lisa!

The Anniversary is one of Bette Davis' most campy,viscious roles. The dialogue is razor sharp,clipped and maniacally melodramatic like only Davis could have done. As the matriarch of an affluent family,Bette maintains a death like grip over her three highly emasculated sons,controlling and manipulating them through,blackmail,guilt,deception and dialogue that symbolically castrates them over,and over again.

The occassion is a her yearly mandatory "party" wherein she and her broken children "celebrate" her marriage to her late husband.

Bette has center stage as she forces her three adult sons and two of their ssignificant others,to go through a highly ritualized series of events,in honor of her late husband. Within tthis "festive" event,her character delights in emotionally torturing all,with tthe coldness and cruelty of a maternal Mengele.

She allows for occassional momentary relief for her victims and then, like a cobra,lashes out and destroys any sense of peace and security during the "party"-loving every minute, watching them squirm and assume the fetal position. One might say that Norman Bates mother,was probably a kinder gentler version of this character.

Film noire fans MUST see this film,as well as those who mourn the lost art of dialogue in the movies.

It was good but a little creepy at the same time. Typical Bette Davis movie that she made when she was older.

This film is amazing! Bette Davis is flawless as the overbearing, bitchy matriarch of a dysfunctional family. The dialogue includes so many classic lines!

You've seen 'The Anniversary', right? This screamingly funny film from Hammer Films and Roy Ward Baker, based on a stage play, is full of campy costumes and set design but razor sharp dialogue and more than a few twists and turns.

This is a fantastic film, ms davies plays a total bitch who every year brings her family together [who all hate her] to commemorate the death of her husband and goes on to torture them emotionally ,knowing they want her money, she glows in this film, a real classic along the lines of baby jane,

Despite the low production values, if caustic one-liners are your thing, then you'll love this film. Bette Davis offers her usual tour-de-force performance as an over-bearing mother playing with the lives of her family for her own amusement.

Bette Davis is in fine wicked form! Finely produced, good cast, wonderful to watch. I liked the writing. It is Bette's show all the way. Great fun to watch her be so nasty, no one does it better than her!