One of my favorite character archetypes is the crazy old bitch because she’s a ticking time bomb of vindictive grump that will cloud up and rain all over the most angelic of creatures. And that’s what makes her so fun to watch. (I always think Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.) But when you make the crazy old bitch a mother with attachment issues, well, hell hath no fury like it. And in Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), Tallulah Bankhead is a violent little sourpuss driven to cultish worship by her dead son’s questionable purity. And you’d better bow down with her at the altar or else . . .
Right off the bat, you have to expect melodrama; the title has three exclamation points. And for all the campy violence the film delivers, ten or fifteen exclamation points wouldn’t be too much. A worldly young woman (Patricia) traveling with her posh fiance has promised to pay a visit to her dead ex-fiance’s mother. She makes the visit despite objections from her current fiance and soon regrets the decision. Upon her arrival, she finds a shrewish curmudgeon and widower running her own over zealous mini-cult in her home (Mrs. Trefoile played by Bankhead) with her motley crew of socially rejected servants. Upon discovering that Patricia has “betrayed” her beloved dead son Stephen by pledging her love to someone else, something snaps and she takes Patricia hostage in attic bedroom. Initially her goal is to show Patricia the error of her ways and make her a pure commit to the dead Stephen and thereby closer to the Lord. But Patricia’s strong will soon pushes Mrs. Trefoile to violence . . . and in the name of religious reform, of course. Quite a scenario, right?
This movie could so easily have lapsed into horror comedy kitsch, and there are moments of ridiculousness, no doubt. But at her core, Bankhead’s Mrs. Trefoile is terrifying and complex, and the careening sensibilities of her austere and maudlin matriarch carry this movie into the cultish divine. There’s her absolute control over the rag-tag band of outsiders in her service. Even the libidinous Harry, the most competent male servant on staff, can be snapped from the ravages of passion with one stern word from the diminutive dame. She holds fast to her past secrets and confesses her complexities with utter stinginess. She was an actress in her past life, a grand lady of the stage and probably some other environments, until Mr. Trefoile plucked her from that existence into a wholesome family life. She offers this clue to her psychosis only in hopes of convincing Patricia to repent her sinful ways. And in a moment of weakness, free from any prying eyes save those of the audience, Mrs. Trefoile breaks from her devotion to smear passion-red lipstick across her mouth and let her tresses snake around her uninhibited. There is an unapologetic sexuality fighting beneath that religious suppression, and in killing that spirit in Patricia, Mrs. Trefiole, too, can keep it all but dead deep within herself.
And then there’s her disturbing, mournful worship of her son. She keeps sporadic vigil at the locked, untouched room of her deceased Stephen. Her constant fretting and connection to him makes him as mysteriously present as many of the characters we see in the flesh. And while she laments the departure of Stephen’s earthly self, the circumstances could not be more perfect: his spirit will forever be virginal, at least in her mind. In sending Patricia to the grave in the same state, Stephen’s purity and reputation are forever, irrevocably untarnished. And she’ll do whatever it takes to make this happen. Starvation. Beatings at the hand of the very masculine female servant, Anne. Solitary confinement. And in the end, the climax comes, appropriately, in the basement of the house--where the basest of Mrs. Trefoile’s deceptions and manipulations come back to ultimately defeat her. And looking on is Stephen’s portrait, looming over the action like The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In the end, Patricia walks away in the arms of her fiance, but it is Bankhead’s Trefoile who is victorious. She’s larger than the picture, filling the story with an ominous presence even when she’s off screen. And every time poor Patricia delights in the worldly pleasures, no matter how small--a coat of lipstick, a bright red sweater, even an act of sexual love--Mrs. Trefoile will loom large in her mind’s eye, a deviant deity ever-present in her moral barometer.
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