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.

Richard Just the fact that it's Bette's last film is worth releasing it to DVD, maybe there is some extra's that the director has of Bette. I admit it's not the best movie but it is a little campy and fun to watch. And I respect Bette for acting up until she died. also Colleen Camp is awesome and did a lot of cool movies in the 80's...'Valley Girl' & 'Clue' anyways...I'd buy it if came out on DVD...of course I'm a Bette Davis fan and to all the the negative people making comment's "She'll take a tumble on you, role you like you were dice until you come up Blue...She's Got Bette Davis Eyes" ....well the movie is worth seeing for her alone and I to wish she was in it more but at least they kept her scenes and it's funny with some of the cracks like the Joan Crawford picture & when she's on the phone and there's a huge picture of Bette from the 1940's on the side of the wall. those are timely stuff knowing this was her last film.

preppy-3 Wow was this BAD!!! Bette Davis (in her last film role sad to say) is a witch who marries Lionel Stander (wisely walking through his role) and invades his house which he shares with his adult children (Colleen Camp and David Rasche). Things "comically" spin out of control. Then Davis disappears (she wisely left after a week of shooting) and is replaced by sexy Barbara Carrera. With Davis gone this officially became unwatchable--I turned it off after an hour.Before this "Burnt Offerings" was Davis' worst film--this is 100 times worse! I admit she does have a fun opening line--"Call me mom!" but she looks terrible. Her speech is slurred because of one of the strokes she had and wears a terrible red wig. Davis was obviously very ill when she did this. Still, despite it all, she manages to make the most of her small screen time. All the dialogue is terrible with tons of unfunny comedy but Davis bravely makes the worst lines sound quite funny. And there is a somewhat funny visual joke revealing Camp's former mother was Joan Crawford! It's a shock seeing Davis looking this terrible and--basically--the film is just dreadful. MGM released THIS? Also when Carrara takes over it actually gets worse. She is very beautiful--but no actress.I only saw this because it was Davis' last film. I wish I hadn't. A total bomb. AVOID at all costs!!

Rainsford55 Sadly this film has been trashed over and over. But Bette Davis actually saves this movie from being totally forgotten. It was our last opportunity to see her act before her passing in Oct 1989. She doesn't look anywhere near as bad as she thought she did; in the scene where she meets her new step-grandson, she looks very effective in her white ensemble.It has it's funny moments, Bette is both dry and witty in her principal scenes and I'd love to see it out on DVD. I gave it 8 out of 10. No problems with the production design nor direction. Cohen made a courageous attempt to put together a quick fix storyline after Bette Davis walked out after one week's filming and I salute him for giving Bette a final opportunity to appear on screen. She's wonderful in her too few scenes. A complete riot. If only it could have been completed, this would have been quite a comedy.Thanks to the cast and crew for working on this film after the difficulties. If they hadn't, we'd never have seen the scene's Bette did film.I liked it!