Wow! This Hammer movie is excellent. And very different from their more famous/standard horror stuff. A very powerful film.
This mid ‘60s movie is black and white, for starters. And visually strong. It’s set in a culture – a rich family with a live-in nanny – that most of us commoners will find rather alien.
Bette Davis is the titular Nanny.
On first glance, the family is rather dysfunctional: Mr Fane (James Villiers) is a terse emotionless civil-servant, his wife Vergie, a hysterical wreck, and their young son, Joey, fresh back from a two year stint in a psychiatric home for chilluns, appears to be morbidly psychotic.
Bill Fane is pater-unfamilias, plummy voiced Queen’s Messenger, always off around the world. It transpires Virginia’s near crazed state is due to their daughter, Joey’s younger sister, drowning, for which Joey is blamed. Hence his sojourn in the crazy-kids home. Oh, and Joey hates Nanny, as well.
When he gets home from the nipper’s nuthouse, it’s open war between them. At least on Joey’s part. The film’s whole set up is very good, because we know something’s very wrong. But we don’t know quite what.
The first thing you think is, why do they still employ this particular nanny, if it causes so much trouble in the family? They explain that by saying she was the nanny of Vergie and her sister Pen (played by Jill Bennett), and has been with the family ‘forever’.
There’s an incident with mummy, around food and poisoning, and once again, the issue is, did Joey do it, or was it Nanny? And therein lies the crux of the movie’s interest.
It’s disturbing stuff. Filled with hysteria and cloaked psychological manipulation. The child actors, Joey (William Dix) and Susie (Angharad Aubrey), and upstairs neighbour, Bobbie (Pamela Franklin) are superb. As are the adults. Bette Davis gives a great performance.
It’s not a barrel of laughs, and it’s quite dark. But it’s a great film. Hammer goes Hitchcock, perhaps? Highly recommended.