Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

lost-in-limbo Don't know what I can say about this one… other than it's a complete utter mess that's hard to make sense of this oddity. It's like the curiosity of a car crash, as you simply can't take your eyes of the damage. Cult Director / writer Larry Cohen's "Wicked Stepmother" does look well produced (a budget over 2 million) until we get to some really cheap, kitschy special effects (fluoro lighting) that flooded the back-end of the feature. Technically its sound, up to that point. But this production while heavy-handed and campy, really had trouble with a lot going on behind the scenes namely with star billing actress Bette Davis, where she would eventually walk out of the presentation. Her character turned everything upside on the screen and also behind it. This left the filmmakers trying to fill in the gaps by reworking the story (witchcraft, the occult and game shows) and by the end product it truly shows it's made on the spot feel. Many random occurrences, incoherent story threads and bemusing performances. It wasn't as bad as I last remembered it and I remained entertained (always keep a look for movie references), but there's no doubting it's a chaotic shamble. Even if for the wrong reasons at least it was an amusing shamble. There's quite an interesting cast to boot as well; Colleen Camp goes about things in animated fashion, Barbara Carrera manipulative steams it up as Davis' replacement (yep that's right --- also lets not forget the smoking cat), David Rasche, Tom Bosley shows up as an open-minded detective, Richard Moll is diverting as a bumbling private eye and in minor, but key cameo roles are Evelyn Keyes and Seymor Cassel. Cohen regulars Laurene Landon and James Dixon also have small parts. Not particularly humorous (well laugh out loud) and the pacing makes it feel much longer than it actually is. Don't know if would have been much better, still would have been interesting see to how it was originally intended to be, but this silly comic outing remains a disjointed, witless comedy of mayhem and errors

midge56 I got a kick out of this movie. It is a campy comedy satire. These other reviews are out of line. They are inappropriately trying to compare Mad Magazine to Shakespeare. Mad Magazine is enjoyably humorous entertainment but is in a completely different category than Shakespeare. This movie is cute and funny like one of Leslie Nielson's comedies. It is a low budget film but has a campy appeal and a lot of cute humor. This film also has a notable cast. It not only has Bette Davis, but it also has the glamorous Barbara Carrera (of James Bond film fame and costarred with JR Ewing on Dallas) and Evelyn Keyes (Scarlett O'Hara's sister Sue Ellen on Gone with the Wind) and Tom Bosley. These reviewers seem to think Bette was blindsided by some evil director. Bette read the script before she decided to do the movie. She had plenty of experience on how to turn down films. She was emaciated from cancer and at extreme age and hampered by lingering problems from strokes. It was quite obvious that she was dying from cancer. Her film options were limited at this point. She knew this when she accepted the role but her expectations were also unrealistic.She loved acting in films and this was the only offer she had at the time. She was a great actress and had been treated as Hollywood Royalty. But Bette didn't understand that you can't walk into Motel 6 and expect to find the Waldorf. She was accustomed to great directors, great producers, professional crews and high budget productions and set herself up for disappointment by expecting the same levels of professionalism from low budget productions. Thus, when her expectations were not met, she left the production which placed undue hardship on them since she had not completed filming her role. Our reviewers are also forgetting that you can't compare a low budget campy film to a production like Jezebel. These are unrealistic expectations and unfair to the movie.Her expectations of the highest levels of professionalism in film had always created the potential for conflict and disappointment for her during her career when film productions which did not measure up to those standards which included her expectations of the attitudes and behaviors of other members of the cast, crews, directors, producers, etc. Bette was offended by unprofessionalism. However, like the reviewers who made hateful comments about this movie, she had similar unrealistic expectations.I'm glad the director was able to salvage Bette's performance by reworking the movie. I'm sure it would have been much better in quality if he had a better budget and didn't have to work around Bette's unfinished filming. There was room for improvement, but I still enjoyed it. It was cute and it gave us an opportunity to see some of Bette's final scenes of acting. It was a window into the latter moments of her life.There is some bad acting in this film by Colleen Camp who played the daughter. Her acting was grossly overdone with downright absurd hand gestures and bizarre, loud, obnoxious overacting. It reminded me of Jim Carey's bizarre physical antics, gestures and facial expressions with nonsensical overacting. Colleen was the one who ruined this movie and her bad acting looks deliberate. If you watch closely, you can see how she went out of her way to overpower and ruin the scenes and lines for other actors. Watch what she does while other actors are trying to say their lines. She purposely tries to ruin the scene and drown out the other actors. No one could be that bad by accident with the exception of Richard Moll (also in this movie). If the two of them had been recast, it would have been an immense improvement. Just about anyone could have done better. That is my only complaint with the director, that he did not fire Camp and Moll. But at least Moll did not try to deliberately destroy the scenes of other actors like Colleen. He only ruined his own scenes, which could easily be edited out.As for the writer... he couldn't make up his mind whether Priscilla and Miranda were the same person or two separate entities. It kept changing back and forth and you have to wonder if there was any sobriety while he was writing that dialogue. This could have easily been fixed. In fact, with a little creative editing, these dialogue errors as well as Colleen and Molls bad acting could be edited, cleaned up and trimmed down to reduce the damage they did. A little creative editing and CGI effects could fix all of the problems and then re-release it.As long as you don't have unrealistic expectations and understand this is a low budget satire which had to salvage the movie from a partial, incomplete filming of her role, it is actually an entertaining movie. "Low Budget" is often misused as a dirty word in movies but it is not the fault of the director or cast that they were unable to obtain better funding. It does not mean it is a bad movie. It only refers to what they were able to afford in sets, actors and equipment where the story might be quite good.This is a cute movie which is no worse than Chevy Chase's movie "Modern Problems" or Goldie Hawn's movies or John Ritter's movies or Tom Hanks in "The Money Pit," etc. Those were all satires which did not have high budgets. Comedies rarely get high budgets. So, if you like campy satires and don't have an HUA problem, you might enjoy this cute and campy film. I know I did.

dinkydober Thank God the Divine Miss Davis had enough sense to kick off before it was finished. It was horrible! The Whales of Agust was a bit better. Lilian carried that movie. Miss. Davis was in it only to prove that she hadn't given up yet. This movie proved the ship was going down, and the lifeboats all had dry-rot! I give it 4 stars! Old ladys are a force to be reckoned with, and Bette proves that she was a wreck!But, She has given a stand performance for a woman of her age, smoking habits, clips,clichés under wire supports(my gawd, where did that bra system come from?) All in all, it's Bette at her best at 89(or so?)At having suffered two strokes, four husbands, a carload of ungreatfull kids, and the fact that she was a Yankee, It's not that bad. Her marker on her grave says it best, "She did it the hard way". This film was Viagra at it's hardest! But, Bette was still able to pull it off....

brandonsites1981 One of the most troubled productions in cinema history, resulted in Bette Davis walking off the set after just one week! The film has a young couple shocked to learn that their ailing father has just gotten married to an evil witch (Davis). Lame humor, poor scripting, and cheap production design are just a few of its problems. Feels like more of a TV movie then an actual theatrical release, and a very bad one at that. Sadly Davis' final film.Rated PG-13; Mild Violence, Sexual Situations and Profanity.