Sunday Viewing: “Die! Die! My Darling!” 1965

Patricia Carroll has come to England to marry her fiancé, Alan. Upon arriving in England, she tells Alan that before they can be married, she feels that she must pay her respects to the mother of her former fiancé, Stephen Trefoile, who was killed in an auto accident. Alan isn’t too keen on the idea, but Patricia gets her way—borrowing his car and driving out to a secluded English village.

Patricia arrives at Mrs. Trefoile’s house and finds it to be the remains of a once great estate that has fallen into considerable disrepair. Mrs. Trefoile, herself, has much the same quality. Obviously, she had been a great beauty, but that beauty had since faded. Mrs. Trefoile invited Patricia into her home—a dusty, angular place complete with a bitter maid and her lascivious husband and a mentally challenged fellow named Joseph.

At first, Patricia finds Mrs. Trefoile to be slightly eccentric, but when the woman insists that Patricia must stay overnight, she soon realizes that there’s more than just eccentricity afoot. Mrs. Trefoile is not just a devout woman, she’s a religious fanatic. However, she tends to take her biblical interpretations a bit too far. There are no mirrors in the house, Patricia is forbidden to wear make-up, the food is inedible and Patricia and the staff are forced to listen to biblical readings for hours at a time.

Mrs. Trefoile has no intention of letting Patricia ever leave. In fact, she wants to maintain Patricia’s “purity” so that she and Stephen can be reunited in Heaven. When Patricia tells Mrs. Trefoile the true circumstances of her son’s death, Mrs. Trefoile is more determined than ever to make sure that Patricia is worthy of her son. Thus begins a nightmare of torture and weirdness for poor Patricia. At the hands of Mrs. Trefoile—who has a good many secrets of her own—Patricia suffers strange and brutal treatment. When Patricia is told by her captor, “Then, you must die. Die! My darling,” that’s when the fun really begins.

Mrs. Trefoile reads aloud from the Bible while holding a
gun on Patricia--as one does.

Die! Die! My Darling! is a British Film produced by Hammer Pictures. In the U.K., it was released under the title Fanatic in 1965. The film stars the incomparable Tallulah Bankhead as Mrs. Trefoile. Miss Bankhead was a renowned stage actress who made her career creating roles which Bette Davis would later play in films. It’s rumored that Davis’ Margo Channing from All About Eve is based on Tallulah Bankhead—a rumor to which Tallulah responded by simply saying, yes, and “weren’t we wonderful in the film?” Bankhead, of course, was better known for her wild behavior and party-girl ways as well as her many romantic adventures. She was a grand dame, and, given that the 1960’s was the era of “Grand Dame Guignol” films, Tallulah was not about to let Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Olivia de Havilland be the only “Scream Queens.”

The role of Patricia went to Stefanie Powers who forged a deep friendship with Tallulah though she later recounted cheerfully that during some of the torture scenes, Miss Bankhead took some liberties by putting her hands in places they shouldn’t have gone.

Fanatic was directed by Silvio Narrizano who found Tallulah to be difficult initially, but managed to work well with her. The picture was filmed in 1964 at Elstree Studios in London and on location in Hertfordshire. The cast also included Yootha Joyce as Mrs. Trefoile’s loyal maid, Anna, Peter Vaughan as the lecherous Harry and a very young Donald Sutherland as the hulking simpleton, Joseph.

This is certainly not Dark Victory or The Little Foxes. However, there’s something to be said for the image of a Technicolor Tallulah with a gun, licking a knife and dragging Stefanie Powers around by her hair. It’s strange and wacky in that way that only 1960’s thrillers can be. Being that this is the season for strange and wacky, there’s something bizarrely enjoyable about the whole thing. Die! Die! My Darling! will keep you entertained if only because of the sheer strangeness of it.