YMMV / Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

• Award Snub: Bette Davis did not get an Academy Award nomination for the role. Neither did Olivia de Havilland for her drastically against type performance.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Miriam finding her dress slashed the night she arrives does get a follow-up later when she accuses Velma of doing it. But with the plot to drive Charlotte insane, it seems quite vague what the slashed dress was supposed to accomplish - Miriam never accuses Charlotte of doing it and it's so long before it's mentioned again it may as well not have happened.
• Ending Fatigue: Miriam and Drew are revealed to be in cahoots while there's still forty minutes to go, and around the time Charlotte is led to believe she has shot Drew, the film just goes on and on. Then Drew is revealed to be alive, and then the film has to reveal another detail about Jewel Mayhew. That makes about ten minutes of denouement altogether.
• Fanon: That Charlotte is being committed to an asylum at the end. The film never states where she's going when she leaves the house, but the fact that she's not being dragged out suggests that it may not be to an asylum. It's entirely left open. Legally if she's being evicted from her home to build a bridge, she should be given compensation to find a new one - and that's where she could be going.
• Ham and Cheese: Agnes Moorhead clearly knew she was in the next Psycho Biddy hit, and so focused on Chewing the Scenery as much as possible.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • For such a campy horror film, the ending is surprisingly moving. Charlotte leaves her house, facing the press and the onlookers with dignity - leaving behind the music box that John gave her all those years ago. She's given a letter that finally confirms to her who was responsible for the murder, giving her some measure of closure. She looks back at the house one last time as she's driven away. It's a Bittersweet Ending but possibly the best one Charlotte could have hoped for.
  • Charlotte opening up to Harry Wills. He's the first person in the film to be open and honest with her (apart from Velma that is), and she is able to speak to him cordially. It's an Odd Friendship but you can tell that Charlotte is pleased by it. The fact that Harry doesn't hide that he's there to talk to her about the murder, and Charlotte is able to talk about it in turn helps a lot.
• It Was His Sled: Just about everyone knows that Miriam is the film's antagonist. The fact that she's got an evil smirk on the poster doesn't help.
• Narm:
  • Agnes Moorhead's extremely hammy mannerisms and exaggerated accent as Velma make her scenes unintentionally hilarious.
  • The very obvious dubbed in lines "my dress, it's been slashed" and "what happened to the mirrors?" over the respective incidents, as though audiences wouldn't understand what had been done without Miriam pointing it out for them.
• Narm Charm: Bette Davis's performance as Charlotte is as over-the-top as Baby Jane Hudson, but still manages to work. In the scenes where she's hamming it up, she still makes you feel sorry for Charlotte.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Miriam is a very low key villain but still manages to be quite terrifying, particularly around the time she murders Velma and makes Charlotte think she killed Drew. It was even more terrifying for audiences who were used to Olivia de Havilland playing wholesome Ingenues in throughout her career.
  • The dance sequence is both this and a Tear Jerker.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Just about everyone knows this film from its famous Troubled Production and the subsequent firing of Joan Crawford. It made up several episodes of Feud.
• Padding:
  • When Miriam arrives, there's a rather long few minutes of Velma and Drew deciding who's going to carry which of her bags in.
  • Miriam finding her dress slashed to set up an ominous atmosphere and possibly fool the audience into thinking there's a ghost when there isn't but doesn't make much sense in the grand scheme of things.
  • The packing women talk about Charlotte - one thinks she's insane and the other doesn't.
  • As Miriam bumps into Jewel Mayhew in town, from across the street Harry Wills told who they are in an unnecessary extra bit.
• Special Effect Failure: When Charlotte shoots a bulldozer, a ricochet from the Hanna-Barbera sound effects library plays.
• Tear Jerker: Seeing the effects of Miriam and Drew's Gaslighting, compounded with her life-long grief, make Charlotte's story rather depressing.
• The Un-Twist: The fact that Charlotte is not shown committing the murder at the start makes it extremely obvious that she wasn't the killer. But the trope is subverted by not making Miriam the killer; she merely witnessed the murder and blackmailed the true killer, Jewel Mayhew.
• The Woobie: Charlotte's entire life has been one long Trauma Conga Line. The man she fell in love with was forced to break her heart and then was murdered later that night. She spent her whole life alone in her house believing her father had murdered John. Then Miriam and Drew try to make her think she's going mad. On top of that, she's being forced to leave her home so it can be bulldozed.

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