Gaslight (1944)

Paula (Ingrid Bergman) attempts to start her life over after the strangulation murder of her aunt, who was a famous opera singer. While in Italy to study to be a singer, she falls in love with her music teacher's pianist, George (Charles Boyer). They marry and move into the house that her aunt owned -- the same one where her aunt was murdered.

It isn't long before strange things start happening -- the lights going up and down, small items coming up missing. George starts accusing Paula of being forgetful, then it escalates to her being accused of being mentally unstable. A detective (Joseph Cotton) takes an interest in Paula that is fueled by her aunt's unsolved murder. Meanwhile, Paula teeters on the edge of a mental breakdown.

A well-acted story, but the criminal was obvious early on to me. This film won Oscars, including a Best Actress statue for Ms. Bergman. George Cukor, who was known as a "woman's director" for how well he worked with actresses, directed the movie. This movie saw the debut of Angela Landsbury, who turned 18 years old during filming. She plays a maid named Nancy who seems to have many boyfriends and an attitude towards Ms. Bergman's character. Dame May Whitty is a nosy neighbor who live across the way.

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964)

In the 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed that actresses who were big in the 1930's and 1940's were attempting to revive their careers by appearing in psychological thrillers and horror films. This film featured grand dame Betty Davis as Charlotte, a faded Southern belle who had been implicated in the murder of her married lover years before. She lived in the old plantatation that had been owned by her wealthy dad (Victor Buono), along with a feisty housekeeper named Velma (Agnes Moorehead). Charlotte spends her day hiding indoors when she was not firing her shotgun at construction workers who wanted to tear down the house to build a new road. The foreman (George Kennedy) doesn't take to being shot at too kindly.

Enter her cousin (Olivia de Haviland) who returns from Europe supposedly to help poor old Charlotte out, along with a doctor (Joseph Cotton) who knew both of the women for years. Suddenly, weird things start happening, upsetting Charlotte's already thin hold on sanity. Meanwhile, a reporter starts asking questions about the decades old murder of Charlotte's lover, and he digs up long buried secrets held by the town.

Originally, Joan Crawford was supposed to play the role that Olivia de Haviland got. There were rumors that Crawford and Davis had bad blood between them, and they had barely made it through the filming of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962). Agnes Moorehead looks really unglamorous in this movie, a big change from her role as Endora on the TV classic "Bewitched". Joseph Cotton was in the classic Citizen Kane (1941) and also appeared as a suspected serial killer in A Shadow Of A Doubt (1943). Mary Astor, who was in The Maltese Falcon (1941), is also in this movie, which would be the last one she did before she passed away. Bruce Dern (Coming Home) is the unlucky suitor who is allegedly killed by Charlotte early in the movie.