One of the most important moments in the history of Hollywood was when Robert Aldrich, the gifted journeyman director behind some of the most successful films the industry ever produced, decided to step aside from making blockbusters and instead opted to make a trio of films that are starkly different in terms of story and topic, but share a few distinctive traits, particularly in how they orbit around older, morally-ambiguous women who border on outright villainy. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is appropriately well-loved and regarded as some of the best from this era. Still, the subject of today’s discussion is the oddly brilliant and deeply unconventional The Killing of Sister George, in which Aldrich works from a screenplay adapted from the play of the same title by Frank Marcus, which tells the story of June Buckridge, a beloved actress who is known across the country for her role on a long-running soap opera, where she plays the part of “Sister George”, a mild-mannered, congenial nurse in a quaint British hamlet who embodies the spirit of conservative British values and righteousness. In reality, the woman behind “Sister George” is actually a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking alcoholic lesbian who grows increasingly paranoid when she hears rumours that her character is to be killed off, which plunges her into a state of existential despair that forces her already fickle life to unravel in spectacular ways. A wickedly funny film that is unquestionably one of the most ambitious and brilliant works that Aldrich ever directed, The Killing of Sister George is a neverending barrage of bizarre moments and hilariously sardonic scenes that build to one of the most unsettling conclusions in film history, and proves to be an exceptionally entertaining film that will appeal to those with a penchant for the absurd and hysterical, both of which are essential to the foundation of this play and its brilliant, subversive film adaptation.

There are several elements of The Killing of Sister George that are radically ahead of their time, starting with the premise. The film functions as a scathing indictment on the fickle nature of the entertainment industry, particularly in how it revolves around an actress who has made her living on television, but despite her popularity falls victim to studio interference, which threatens to rob her of her livelihood, with the only justification being that she has run her course. Anyone who pays attention to the way Hollywood functions will see this is still common practice, so to see this reflected in a film produced over half a century ago is quite remarkable, if not deeply unnerving. This is the foundation of the film, which presents a fascinating and hilariously irreverent character study that draws on the concept of duality. There is a lot of resonance in the idea of someone being an angelic, endearing presence on screen, but behind the scenes actually proving to be quite monstrous and despicable – and we’ve seen countless examples of beloved entertainers being revealed to be less-than-pleasant behind closed doors, which is the premise on which The Killing of Sister George is constructed, and which Aldrich delights in exploring, since as an industry veteran himself, he most certainly came into contact with a few examples of these people throughout his career, and the cynicism and scathing remarks peppered liberally throughout this film come across as deeply authentic for a number of reasons. The idea of alter egos and concealed identities, which have been used consistently throughout the history of literature, are perfectly complemented by the specific milieu of this film, since there’s something very intriguing about the idea of a cherished public figure turning out to be a controversial figure, and this film makes sure that it consistently reiterates this idea throughout the story, which explores the two different sides of the titular “Sister George”, showing both facets of the character in vivid and sometimes quite disturbing detail.

There is something to be said about keeping a film like The Killing of Sister George as authentic as possible in terms of certain elements, and we see this in the casting of Beryl Reid as the titular protagonist. It has been well-documented that the role in this adaptation was originally offered to Angela Lansbury and Bette Davis, and while it is tempting to imagine what these incredible actors could have done with this deranged and brilliant role (especially Davis, who had appeared in both of the aforementioned camp masterpieces that Aldrich directed), Reid was undeniably the right choice. She was not nearly as well-known, and even by contemporary standards, this is her only truly notable role in terms of major recognition. Yet, she had originated the part on stage, and as a result, she had spent countless evenings developing the character and understood “Sister George” better than any major star who would have been brought on to play the role. Rather than learning the character and her eccentricities, Reid simply has to adapt her to the screen, and she does remarkably, turning in one of the very best performances of the 1960s, and one that warrants being discussed much more widely than it has been in the past. Very rarely have we seen an actor commit so entirely to such a bizarre role, and there isn’t a moment in The Killing of Sister George where Reid’s performance is anything less than totally and wholeheartedly spellbinding. Sinister but deliciously deranged in a way that we simply cannot ignore, her work in this film is spectacular, and she proves the merit in giving lesser-known or journeyman actors the chance to lead these films. She’s joined by Susannah York and Coral Browne, who occupy the other major roles and bring a lot of brilliance to these challenging characters, matching Reid in terms of showcasing the slightly off-kilter energy of these women who grow to become her adversaries. The central trio is terrific, and helps anchor The Killing of Sister George as something much deeper and more complex than we would expect based on a glance at the premise.

As an entertainment industry satire containing one of the very best performances of the 1960s, The Killing of Sister George is quite terrific, but there’s many other layers to the film, particularly in how it is unabashedly queer in a way that was borderline revolutionary at the time. Marcus’ play was written and produced in 1964, whereas this adaptation went into production in 1968, and in the time between, homosexuality was finally decriminalized in the United Kingdom, meaning that films based around the queer community no longer had to rely on inference and implication, and could instead exist on their terms, using the correct terminology rather than expending too much of their energy on hiding the reality of their narratives. Even the original play is starkly different in how it mostly implies the sexuality of its characters more than it directly states it, which is what Aldrich aimed to change now that he was essentially granted the chance to tell the story in explicit and direct terms. This is not the encouraging, wholesome examination of identity and sexuality that perhaps many would expect to be one of the major queer-based films to come about in the aftermath of this legal shift. Instead, it’s a sardonic and sometimes quite dark examination of desire – the relationship between “Sister George” and her much younger live-in girlfriend takes a sinister turn when we realise that their entire life is spent playing a perverse game of cat-and-mouse, where their psychosexual urges result in the frequent manipulation of one another. Aldrich is very smart to not revile these women based on their sexuality, and the characterization of the three central characters proves that the protagonist’s behaviour is not because she is defined by a supposedly deviant sexual identity, but rather that she has allowed her desire for fame and power to inflate to the point of being dangerous to those around her, and where he clear delusions of grandeur have led her down this path of self-destruction. Queerness is a subject with which a lot of art has had a contentious relationship, but Aldrich and his cohorts work well to remove the stigma, and we soon come to learn that the main character’s sexual identity, while defining to a certain extent, is not the only quality that is worth exploring, nor the one aspect on which the film intends to focus.

The story at the heart of the film, as well as the magnificent performances, is is only the start of the aspects of The Killing of Sister George that make it so incredibly engaging and compelling, and in following the two aforementioned entries into what has been dubbed “biddy horror”, Aldrich clearly had a general idea of what he wanted to achieve in terms of tone and style, which was to create a peculiar dark comedy that adhered quite closely to the steadily growing sensibility usually labelled as camp (a tricky term, and one that doesn’t exactly fit this film, but does come close to being an appropriate descriptor), which would not appeal to the widest of audiences, but rather align with those who had an appreciation for this kind of off-the-wall, strange style of storytelling. What we soon come to realize is that nothing much actually happens in this film – despite running nearly two-and-a-half hours, it is essentially a lot of time spent around a woman slowly losing her grasp on reality as she comes to realize that she is about to be fired from her job, and the fact that the film doesn’t even begin to attempt to expand too much on this idea, and instead revolves almost entirely around this very trivial concept, is perhaps the most hilarious aspect of them all. This is a clear example where genre and tone make an enormous difference in how a story is perceived – had The Killing of Sister George been either a broader comedy on one end of the spectrum, or an entirely straightforward, unfurnished melodrama on the other, it would not have been nearly as effective. Instead, its tendency to amplify the absurdity and heighten the hysterics, to the point where it exists at the perfect intersection between self-aware satire and excessive melodrama is integral to the overall identity of the film, which certainly benefits from such an approach, even if it can sometimes be dense to the point where its appeal isn’t immediately obvious.

The Killing of Sister George is the kind of film that will be an absolute delight to some, and a bewildering jumble of tonal inconsistences and over-the-top hysterics for others, and both are perfectly valid and appropriate responses to what is very clearly a dense and excessive dark comedy that is as daring as it is provocative, which was the entire purpose of the film as a whole, and the primary reason it works so well, but remains quite divisive. Much of the success has to do with how the film tells this specific story, and the underlying themes that accompany the narrative, elevating it into something much deeper and more profound, while still not losing the vaguely revolutionary spirit of the narrative. The gender politics and underlying commentary on queerness present in The Killing of Sister George is obviously not perfect, but for a film made in the 1960s, and right after a major change in legal policy, it does exceptionally well to introduce these ideas, and its refusal to actually blame the darker aspects of the story on something as simple as sexuality, but instead pursue a more nuanced exploration of the titular character’s growing madness, is certainly admirable, if not genuinely subversive. For a film produced at this point in the past, its difficult to not look at it is a vaguely revolutionary piece of cinema – both the story being told, and its unabashed tendency to challenge conventions of both form and content is the foundation for a wickedly entertaining, deeply off-centre dark comedy that is as entertaining as it is disturbing. Lavish, excessive and profoundly strange, The Killing of Sister George is a landmark film of 1960s satire, and one of the most deranged films of this era, helmed by someone who clearly saw the value in this kind of eccentric filmmaking, which becomes the root of a film that is as entertaining as it is disturbing, a combination that perfectly embodies every intricate theme presented throughout this delightfully strange production.