Die, Die, My Darling: a review (with amazingly no reference to the Misfits song)

How did this poignant little gem ever slip by me over the years?
This movie-- screen-play by Richard Matheson, based on a novel I've
never heard of-- supplies the viewer with ample chills, and not a
few chuckles along the way. The entire film is marvelously acted.
From the ever lovely and charming Stephanie Powers whose char-
acter Patricia Carroll goes from naive good humor to utter disdain and
revulsion with regards to her captor, Mrs. Trefoile, never once
truly giving in to her mad christian-tinged brainwashing tactics...
to the ever compliant and uptight servant woman, Anna, played
by Yootha Joyce (a kind of precursor character to the even more
sinister nanny, Mrs. Blaylock, in The Omen).

Then there is the delightfully creepy, Harry, Mrs. Trefoile's
groundskeeper, played by Peter Vaughan, who may be the only
actor in film history to make eating a block of cheese an utterly
repugnant act, full of deep, dark meaning. A small nod goes out
to the minor character, Joseph, played by Donald Sutherland, who
is mentally retarded, but essentially the only resident of the Trefoil
Estate who isn't demented in some way. Although the movie never
makes it clear (and I have not read the novel this was based on so
perhaps the answer is there), it seems possible that Joseph is Mrs.
Trefoile's only surviving son. Although tcmdb.com describes
him as the gardener, in their plot synopsis of the film.

Which leaves us with Mrs. Trefoile herself. Tallulah Bankhead's
character may well be one of the best examples of a psychopath
painted on film. Male or female. Her performance is stellar, and
although at times cartoonish, full and dynamic. Most of the time we
are disgusted by her, sometimes we laugh at her idiotic damning
logic-- most people don't realize just how rational the lunatics of
the world are, but it's a rigid, unadaptive kind of rationality-- but
in a few key scenes we are forced to confront a kind of pity for her.
Particularly in scenes where she's talking to her dead son Stephan,
the single absentee character of the film. And also most specifically
in a scene where we see her in a moment of weakness, the one
point in the film where she sees through her insanity and has a
twinge of guilt. She rummages through her closet and finds a
bottle of booze and drinks, and then applies lipstick while look-
ing at a hand mirror she had stashed away. Then quickly her

hideous madness returns and she wipes off the lipstick and

returns to her diabolical former state.

Throughout the film we get glimpses of Mrs. Trefoile's former
life. Through old photographs and giant paintings and posters
hidden away in her basement shrine to her "demonic past", we
see she was a beautiful Broadway actress of some success. But
since her religious conversion, she has banned these references,
including all mirrors (the source of all vanity perhaps) from the
rest of her home.

As with most Hammer films there is a constant assault of

cheesy background music, but in this movie it seems to work.

It is used with pleasing effect , echoing the playful mood

in the beginning stages of the film, as if what we have

here is not some descent into morbid madness but just a

playful, doris day-y romp in the english country-side.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Patricia can

no longer laugh away the vagaries of Mrs. Trefoile when

out comes the slender (oddly feminine yet somehow

even more sinister) pistol, preventing her from leaving the

house and returning to London to meet with her fiance'.

What begins here is a delicious pyschological game between

the two women. Patricia exhausts all angles in order to

claim her freedom: pleading with brutish Anna, offering

her large amounts of money, to no avail; escape attempts;

a fake seduction of Harry in order to brain him with an

oillamp (I think?) and get the keys to her car; pretending

to come to terms with Mrs. Trefoile's attempts to cleanse

her soul in order to catch her off-guard; writing a message

to her fiance' and trying to get Joseph to mail it for her.

The creepiest scene in the whole movie however is the

"spider catches the fly/mate" episode when Mrs. Trefoile

realizes that Harry has finally broken his pawn mould and

has become dangerous to her plans. With Harry brandish-

ing the knife he used to cut the block of cheese with, he

follows Mrs. Trefoile down to the basement, intending to

kill her, but Mrs. Trefoile is too wily for him. It is all a trap.

When they reach the basement she shoots him several

times with that odd (wish I knew the brand) all-too-black

gun of hers. Back to business then with redeeming poor

Patricia from her wicked life. But little do we know, her

murder of Harry will be her downfall, the fatal error in

this distasteful, but nevertheless, entertaining "chess "

game. She underestimates Anna's love and attachment

to Harry, even though he's a faithless scoundrel out

only for Mrs. Trefoile's money and Patrica's luscious

body. But who could blame him for that last bit, Steph-

anie Powers was quite the looker back in 1965!

A few final words should be said about some com-

parisons mentioned elsewhere with Psycho, Hitch-

cock's masterpiece (although I much prefer Vertigo

and the weird crime comedy, Family Plot, as well as

others). Stylistically, Psycho far surpasses Die, Die,

My Darling, no doubt, hitchcock's genius with a

camera could never be trumped by some relatively

unknown Hammer films director. (But there are

some rather lovely scenes in D.D.M.D. with ex-

quisite almost Dario Argento-esque use of color.

Yes, Im aware this movie precedes Dario Argento's

filmmaking career. Some proto-examples of his

otherworldly, irrational, pulsing use of colored

sets can be found in this movie, particularly in

the basement, where her shrine to her evil past

is.)

To my view, this movie is in no way a rip-off

of Pyscho, and such claims are at best cursory

analysis. With Pyscho we see a man who's ident-

ity has become a bizarre fusion of his own polite

and shy personality and the wild, jealous,

faintly incestuous personality of his dead mother.

He is two nuts in one, so to speak. With D.D.M.D.,

Mrs. Trefoile is Norman Bates in reverse. Her mad-

ness is not contingent on otherness, or being posses-

sed by any demon of her own creation, as Norman B

ates's is, but her's is hinged on a complete rejection

of her sinful past, an "all too literal", and prosaic,

madness. Her madness is a vacuum, while Norman

Bate's is monsterous populated universe.