THE NANNY (1965) Review

In 1962, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was unleashed upon unsuspecting audiences. The movie was a box office smash and a critical darling, it was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, and rejuvenated the careers of its stars, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. It’s a great flick, as creepy as it is tragic, and its two leads give arguably career best performances. Despite this, however, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is perhaps best known as the film that kickstarted the so-called ‘Psycho-biddy’ subgenre (also known as ‘Hagsploitation’ and ‘Hag-horror’), which “conventionally feature a formerly glamorous older woman who has become mentally unbalanced and terrorizes those around her”. Following Baby Jane’s success, a slew of imitators would make their way to the screen with varying degrees of success, and while most of these films would become more or less interchangeable from one another, for me there is one Baby Jane imitator that has always stood out; Seth Holt’s 1965 psychological horror, The Nanny, produced for Hammer Films during their ‘mini-Hitchcock’ phase. The Nanny bags itself Bette Davis herself in the titular role, and, despite its somewhat underappreciated status, is a legitimately good and tense little movie, with an exceptional performance from Davis, and a proper gut-punch of an ending that, I reckon, still holds a lotta weight!

The film follows young Joey, played by the surprisingly good child-actor William Dix, who returns home after spending two years at a school for emotionally disturbed children, having been sent there for supposedly drowning his younger sister, Susy. That’s quite a heavy set-up in and of itself, but there’s a lot more going on in The Nanny than merely creepy kids with sinister secrets. We soon learn that Joey has a seemingly irrational hatred of middle-aged women, a hatred that brings the boy into conflict with the family’s nanny (Bette Davis). The film begins relatively slowly, with Joey inexplicably refusing to eat meals prepared by Davis’ title character, and moving to a different room to the one she readied for him. However, as the film progresses, we discover that it was, in fact, the nanny herself who was responsible for poor Susy’s death — in a sequence that is both tragic and horrific in equal measure, even by today’s standards — and that the child’s distrust and antagonistic behavior toward her is a result of her actually trying to kill him too, presumably in an effort to prevent the secret from getting out. When Joey plays a cruel prank on the nanny (involving a doll in the bathtub, which causes her to flashback to the incident that led to poor Susy’s death), her mental state begins to rapidly deteriorate, and it’s not long before her murderous and psychotic tendencies are brought to the fore.

For me, there are three main factors here that make The Nanny work so damned well. The first is that it sustains the mystery relatively well. It’s not so much that we as the audience believe Joey is guilty — in fact, we demonstrably don’t, with Davis’ presence alone post-Baby Jane clearly ensuring that we’re aware of her villainous position within the narrative — but rather that because we know the nanny will inevitably snap at some point, the flick expertly places us in Joey’s shoes. As such, we share his frustration and terror at the lack of help he is afforded by the adults around him, none of whom believe him. Moreover, this means the mystery becomes not who is actually responsible for poor Susy’s drowning, but instead what actually happened, and just what is it that Davis’ character up to? It’s an effective narrative device that ensures the whole flick is drenched in a continuous sense of dread and uncertainty, only heightened by the fact that at it’s core are two children, one of whom is already dead.

Which brings me nicely to the second key aspect in the film’s success. The incident at the center of all of this — Susy’s drowning — is to begin with explored almost exclusively through the characters. We don’t actually see what happened until around the movie’s mid-point, meaning that our imaginations are forced to run wild. On top of this is the fact that both of Joey’s parents, James Villiers’ father character, Bill, and Wendy Craig’s mother character, Virginia (or ‘Virgie’), are clearly — and, of course, understandably — deeply affected and disturbed by the loss of their daughter. While Bill appears to have thrown himself into his work, meaning he disappears for long stretches of time, ‘Virgie’ has bouts of uncontrollable grief, and Craig’s performance is genuinely upsetting at times. The toll this takes on young Joey, who is also then wrongly blamed for the death himself, adds to the horror, and makes his actions througout the film not only understandable, but sympathetic. That the movie then manages to follow through on the horror when we finally do see what really happened, is impressive in its own right, but I cannot even begin to explain how upsetting and horrible I find this moment. Everything from Holt’s masterful direction — he keeps things fairly conservative, but there is a legitimately fantastic piece of cutting between reality and fantasy when the nanny discovers Susy’s body in the tub that is so effective in its simplicity that when I first saw this I audibly gasped — to Davis’ captivating performance is working in tandem here to create a truly sinister, utterly horrifying, yet entirely engaging viewing experience.

And that brings me to the third and final factor in the movie’s success; Bette Davis herself. Baby Jane may have seen her earn an Oscar nom, but as far as I’m concerned it is The Nanny that is her most exceptional performance. She is as emotionally volatile, unpredictable, and scary as she is strangely sympathetic and sad. She spends the first half of the film expertly delivering a quiet and uncertain insidiousness that keeps us on the edge of our seats, never completely certain if she really is the villain we all know and suspect she will turn out to be, while in the flick’s second half she unleashes a legitimately frightening and unhinged persona. I believe her here, and it’s genuinely scary. There is a sense that she is capable of anything, and as her actions grow more and more horrific and violent, so too does Davis’ performance become wilder and more manic. It’s an absolutely exceptional piece of acting that deserves way more credit and recognition that it is currently afforded.

I first saw The Nanny when I was around 14, and it has stuck with me ever since, but it was upon rewatching it after having had my children that its effectiveness really struck home. As far as I’m concerned, this is a masterpiece, with every single part of the movie working together to create a near perfect whole. The direction is exceptional, the script tight, the narrative upsetting, engaging, and scary all at once, and Davis at the center of it all makes for a masterful piece of cinema that not only deserves to be seen, but should be compulsory viewing for fans of psychological thrillers, ‘Hitchcockian’ narratives, and the ‘Psycho-biddy’ subgenre alike. Plus, it’s subject matter is still shocking now, with the decision to make sure it is the children who are at the heart of the movie ensuring that it still packs a punch all these years later. If you haven’t seen it, you should absolutely seek it out right now! If you have seen it, you need to watch it again. It’s just crying out for re-evaluation and recognition. Fantastic, upsetting, frightening… brilliant! More than worth you time! 5/5