They Annoyed Bette Davis

This gallery is unavoidably spoiler-heavy, so my way of dealing with that is to warn you, and to not say what films the images come from.

           

I think Bette’s homicidal tendencies onscreen are part of her appeal. In a way it’s surprising it took her so long to start manslaughtering on a really large scale. With Bette, we sense right away that the normal rules for character and actor alike need not apply. (In very few of the above films is she actually punished legally for her killings, though often other methods are used to appease the censor.) And audiences male and female responded with excitement because they could vicariously enjoy behaviour that they could never approve of.