Starting in the early 1960s, a peculiar trend in motion pictures was born. Acclaimed older actresses who were no longer "leading lady" types found work in horror movies. These films provided them with roles ranging from that of the victim, to that of a murderess hag.

Almost no one was immune from this trend. The titles often had punctuation marks at the end of them. The plots more often than not, featured a twist ending, a device made popular by PSYCHO and Diabolique before it.

The movie that started it all was 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Directed by Robert Aldrich, the film starred two of the biggest heavyweights in the business, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

Crawford had urged Aldrich for years to find a suitable project for she and Davis to film. He came up with a novel written by Henry Farrell, and was delighted when both women agreed to star in the film version.

Although the two had dabbled in thrillers before (Davis in Another Man's Poison, and Crawford in Sudden Fear), this was the first true "horror" film they made.

When the project was first announced, many people thought that the two leads were out of their minds. After all, they had been two of the top stars in Hollywood for years, and had amassed twelve Academy Award nominations between them.

However, when Baby Jane was released, it turned out to be a huge financial success for all involved. Davis received yet another Oscar nomination, and so began a final a final phase for both in the genre. As the 60's went on, the films they appeared in became more and more exploitive. Although many others did similar films, Crawford and Davis are the two most closely identified with this cycle of films.

By far the most successful formula was to star two women in the same picture. Bette Davis took this a step further in 1964, when she made Dead Ringer. She played BOTH parts! In it, she was cast as Edith and Margaret Phillips, identical twins.

Resentful of her wealth, Edith kills Margaret and takes over her identity. The twist? Margaret had killed her husband Frank, and now it is Edith who has been sentenced to be executed! Dead Ringer was a solid thriller and another success for Davis.

That same year, she and Crawford were set to make a follow-up to Baby Jane. Robert Aldrich was to direct again using another story by Henry Farrell called What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?, with Davis playing the title character.

The name was changed to Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and Crawford was dropped from the production. Vivien Leigh was first approached to take on the part of Miriam. She refused, saying: "I could just about look at Joan Crawford's face at 7:00 in the morning, but I couldn't possibly look at Bette Davis'." (Leigh was one actress who would never go on to make a movie of this type.)

Olivia De Havilland got the role. She played the part to the hilt, trying to drive the character of Charlotte mad in the film. In the famous conclusion, Charlotte gets her revenge by dropping a huge flower pot from a balcony onto Miriam and her lover below.

While not as tight as Baby Jane, Charlotte featured some good moments including a gruesome beheading. Agnes Moorehead played a supporting role which won her an Oscar nomination. She would star in her own macabre film eight years later, 1972's Dear, Dead Delilah.

De Havilland was a cultured actress known for playing sweet ladies in her films. Yet she herself had appeared in something called Lady In a Cage earlier in 1964. That film contained some very violent moments and was banned in England at the time. The title was somewhat literal, for she played an invalid named Mrs. Hilyard, who's stuck in a private elevator in her house while menaced by a group of young thugs.

The group of hooligans include a woman and are led by James Caan in his film debut. Slowly, De Havilland's character goes from expressing fear, then outrage, and finally downright savagery. The actress took the part in hopes of depicting the violence of the era, and in fact Lady In a Cage was one of the first major films to do just that.

Joan Crawford would go on to make two films for William Castle. He was known for making movies with gimmicks, and these were no different. In Strait-Jacket, she played Lucy Harbor ("Lucy Harbor took an ax, gave her husband forty wacks..."), a woman who kills her husband and his lover when she finds them in bed together. Sent to a sanitarium, she gets out twenty years later and returns home. Of course, a rash of ax murders begin, and guess who's the suspect?

In 1965, Crawford had a small but pivotal role in Castle's I Saw What You Did. She played a wife who is murdered by her husband. When two girls who like to play pranks call the husband up at random and say the film's title phrase, he comes after them.

Crawford would make a few more fright films in the next couple of years, each one more and more indistinguishable. Among them was1968's Berserk! about a rash of murders at a circus, which she made for Hammer films.

This cycle of movies lasted a good ten years. 1965 saw Die! Die! My Darling! with Tallulah Bankhead. It was an excellent showcase for her. She played Mrs. Trefoile, an aging actress who is now a religious zealot. When her deceased son's ex-fiance, Pat Carroll (Stephanie Powers) decides to pay the old woman a visit, Mrs. Trefoile kidnaps her. Now newly engaged, Pat has no idea what's in store for her, as Mrs. Trefoile tries to cleanse the young victim of sin and evil.

Each time Pat tries to escape, she is subjected to all kinds of abuse. She's deprived of food, shot at, and in one gruesome scene, accidentally gets stabbed with a pair of scissors during a struggle. Finally, as Pat's future husband is closing in on them, Mrs. Trefoile takes Pat down to her basement where she plans to sacrifice her in a makeshift altar to her dead son. There are plenty of good moments and tense scenes between Bankhead and Powers. But Bankhead's performance is mesmerizing...a tour de force.

However, not all the movies that came after were as good as Baby Jane. 1966's Picture Mommy Dead starred Zsa Zsa Gabor of all people. It was about a girl who becomes possessed by her dead mother. When the father remarries, there is trouble between the stepmom and stepdaughter. The movie was undone by a bad script and was a waste.

One of the best Baby Jane-inspired films was Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? It starred two of the best character actresses around, Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon, and this time Robert Aldrich produced.

In this wonderfully dark and perverse movie, Page played Mrs. Marable, a widow left penniless by her deceased husband. She then hires a series of old women as housekeepers and kills them in order to collect their savings. (Mrs. Marable makes them dig their own graves under the pretense of planting pine trees, then knocks them on the head with a shovel.)

When one elderly woman named Miss Tinsley disappears, her friend Alice (played by Gordon) applies for the job in order to find out what happened. She too gets offed in the end, but when the police close in on Mrs. Marable, the widow discovers a shocking secret: her husband had left her a valuable stamp collection which would have made her a wealthy woman.

The killing spree was unnecessary! Aunt Alice featured a number of great moments between Page and Gordon, and had a terrific gothic atmosphere, with wonderful scenes filmed in and around the Arizona desert.

By the late sixties and early seventies, Shelley Winters had settled comfortably into a variety of interesting and colorful roles. She was Bloody Mama in 1970, and appeared as a lesbian drug lord in Cleopatra Jones (1973).

What's the Matter With Helen (1971) starred Winters and Debbie Reynolds. Yet another Henry Farrell scripted film, this one is set in the 1930's.

The two leads were cast as the widowed mothers who, after their teen sons are convicted of murder, flee to Hollywood and start a school for child actors under assumed names. As Adelle Bruckner (Reynolds), and Helen Hill (Winters) begin getting strange phone calls, they feel their past is catching up to them. Helen soon becomes unhinged with tragic results. The director Curtis Harrington would again cast Winters that same year in Who Slew Auntie Roo?, a modern take on Hansel and Gretel.

Occasionally, some men made movies of a similar style. Anthony Perkins got in on the bandwagon in 1970. He made a TV movie called How Awful About Allan in which someone is trying to drive him mad. Could it be his old girlfriend or his disfigured sister? The always excellent Julie Harris (1963's The Haunting, et al) co stars.

Although a number of these films are considered "camp" nowadays, there were some good thrillers that came out of this cycle. The actresses who appeared in these films paved the way for other famous names to take on roles in a genre once considered undignified.

NOTABLE GRAND GUIGNOL FILMS	YEAR
Berserk	1968
Dead Ringer	1964
Dear Dead Delilah	1972
Die! Die! My Darling	1965
How Awful About Allan	1970
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte	1964
I Saw What You Did	1965
Lady in a Cage	1964
Persecution	1974
Picture Mommy Dead	1966
Strait Jacket	1964
Two on a Guillotine	1965
Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice?	1969
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?	1962
What's the Matter with Helen?	1971
Who Slew Auntie Roo?	1971