Make A Scene Film Club returns with a chance for friends of Dorothy and their friends to get together and watch fabulous films with a new monthly mid-week screening at CULTPLEX.
This is a place to discover or re-discover those films that make up the queer and camp canon. Each month we’ll show our favourite movies with an LGBTQ+ theme or ones that have been taken to heart by the community.
For our first event of the year we’re showing the ultimate battle of the old Hollywood camp icons as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford clash in WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is an aging child star left to care for her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), also a former child actress. Stuck living together in a mansion in old Hollywood, Blanche plots to get even with Jane for the car crash that left her crippled years earlier. But Jane is desperate to keep Blanche imprisoned as she plans a new rise to fame, and tries to hide Blanche's existence from doctors, visitors and neighbors while she devises a way to get rid of her sister.
This 1963 horror comedy by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen, Kiss Me Deadly) is often labeled as a "hagsploitation" film, a genre that picked up towering female acting talent who struggled to get regular film roles despite their calibre and pitted them against each other in schlocky, over-the-top thrillers that had to be seen to be believed. This film also has a meta-narrative as Crawford and Davis hated each other in real life (as detailed in Ryan Murphy’s TV show Feud) and its influence can be seen to this day through Death Becomes Her to The Substance. Who can’t resist the draw of two divas who love to hate each other?
Of course it became one of the crown jewels of the camp film canon with the film becoming beloved by a queer audience, endlessly quoted by fans and referenced in The Simpsons and RuPaul’s Drag Race and we’re thrilled to be screening it as it deserves to be seen…in a room full of twisted film fans at our favourite cult cinema CULTPLEX.
This screening includes an introduction by Make A Scene Film Club's curator Gary James Williams who also is lead programmer for SCENE Manchester LGBTQ+ Film and TV Festival.
Please note: This screening is not a Make A Scene "way-too-interactive screening" meaning audience participation isn't encouraged! We do encourage you to stick around and mingle in the bar after the screening to discuss the film and suggest future screenings.
Make A Scene is Manchester's queer and camp film club, screening fabulous favourites and future classics since 2016. For more info head to: www.makeascenefilmclub.com
