Mommie Dearest (1981)

Director Frank Perry simply sits back and lets Dunaway rip. He was either supremely untalented or he purposefully intended to sabotage her.

Wire Hangers!

Dunaway creates the benchmark for harridans the world over but never entirely loses sympathy for her subject. It's a constant blast of high melodrama and camp.

'No wire hangers -- ever!' That this apparently banal phrase has now achieved something like immortality is a reflection of the unbridled extravagance of Faye Dunaway's performance.

...relies almost entirely on Dunaway's histrionics to propel the story forward - resulting in a movie that's good for a few unintentional laughs but little else.

Really no dafter, perhaps, than some of Joanie's own Warner Bros melodramas; the trouble is, it thinks it's Art.

A peculiar hybrid: a high-camp Hollywood bio flick about child abuse, elevated substantially above its sordid material by Faye Dunaway's obsessively committed interpretation of legndary star Joan Crawford.