“Misery loves family” – Tracy Letts may have popularised this sentiment with August: Osage County, but he certainly was not the first person to explore the tensions that simmer beneath the surface of an ordinary group of individuals bound together by their blood relation, but torn apart by their varying insecurities and personal grudges held against one another. As many of us know, there are few opportunities at which these frustrations and grievances are more commonly addressed than important family gatherings – whether celebrating or mourning, any dysfunctional family will likely find some sense of tension emerging, especially as the pleasantries start to fade and the annoyances are brought out, whether in snide comments or outright confrontations. This was the foundation on which The Anniversary was constructed, and where journeyman filmmaker Roy Baker Ward directs a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster (who was in turn working from the play of the same title by Bill MacIlwraith), which focuses on the three adult children of a particularly dastardly dowager converge in her home as part of the annual celebrations of her anniversary (although it isn’t clear what the anniversary is – whether it is a celebration of the day she and her late husband married, or an acknowledgment of the date of his death is not made entirely clear, purposefully so), only to once again endure the same psychological torture inflicted on them by the matriarch, who seems to relish in causing her children and their partners unnecessary strife through her mean-spirited abuse and tendency towards turning them against each other. A bitterly caustic but bitingly funny dark comedy about family tension, The Anniversary is quite a provocative film, but one that has many brilliant ideas, which are executed with precision and scathing wit by one of the more reliable filmmakers working at the time, which makes quite a substantial difference with a film of this calibre.

It is not a surprise that The Anniversary was produced by Hammer Films during that brief period in which they actively tried to expand on more than just horror films, casting a much wider net into other genres, while never losing their identity as a studio focused on the bizarre and macabre. In many ways, this story plays out like a horror film, at least on a purely theoretical level – a group of innocent people converge into a single location, while being terrorised by a sinister figure that slowly gets rid of them, one by one. The difference here is that all of these characters are part of the same family, and the villain is their own mother, and her efforts to get rid of the characters are less about killing them physically and more about destroying their will to live through psychological torture. The narrative often feels like it is propelled by some fleeting thought along the lines of seeing what would happen if someone made a slasher horror in which the villain was a cheerful old matriarch rather than some psychopathic murderer (although Mrs Taggart does exhibit many of those telltale signs of a true villain, and in all regards except for physical, she is a very traditional slasher villain, specifically in the stranglehold she has on her children and their partners), which is already a fascinating concept, albeit one that require the right calibration of story and tone to be successful, which is not a particularly easy task at all, especially when you are dealing with so many thematic strands, this entire film consisting of a plethora of ideas that come together to create something very strange but extremely entertaining at the same time. This is a psychological thriller in which the hook is family tension, and while it isn’t the most complex depiction of such hostilities, its approach is at least entertaining enough for us to get some sense of satisfaction in seeing these events transpire, which one can only imagine was even more entertaining when produced on stage.

The stage origins of The Anniversary are extremely clear, and Baker (as gifted a filmmaker as he may have been) doesn’t do much to step away from this, which is understandable considering there is nothing much you can do with this material outside of handing the reins over to the actors and asking them to take control. With the exception of a few small interludes into the wider world, the entirety of the film is set in the living room of a large manor occupied by the matriarch, who is holding a small party for her children as they celebrate an anniversary. A single setting is often viewed as a limitation for some films, but with the right director at the helm, it can be an opportunity to be very experimental, especially if the filmmaker has an understanding of how to use space to their advantage. A room is more than just four walls, and with the right amount of effort, it can be just as dynamic as the most sprawling epics, although on a much smaller scale. The fact that this is a play is inescapable, since the limited location and emphasis on dialogue are very evident, and unless the entire story was overhauled, these elements were essential. However, Baker does well with the material, and the adaptation of the original material made small but substantial changes to the text, allowing it to be slightly more complex on a cinematic level. Essentially, The Anniversary is a film that will appeal to those who get that sensation of perverse joy out of watching half a dozen despicable characters aim for the jugular, with the dense dialogue containing many satirical jabs that can be quite uncomfortable, but very entertaining in the right context, which is exactly why this film is so enjoyable, since it is handled by someone who has the right grasp on the material, so much that we don’t even notice the almost compulsory and very limited staging based on the style of the narrative.

Logically, we can assume the vast majority of people who are curious about The Anniversary are likely drawn to the film based on the presence of Bette Davis. By this point, there was nothing she could not do, and no one would be brave enough to go against her desire to act in the films that piqued her interest. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Davis was not afraid to be unglamorous (primarily because even at her most grotesque or bizarre, there was an innate allure and mystique that no amount of excess could ever obscure – this is why she is so brilliant in films like The Nanny and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, both drawing on her penchant for the absurd), and while the role of Mrs Taggart is very much within her wheelhouse, she is still challenging herself. This was the era in which she played many more villainous characters, which was a smart move because this coincided with a period where audiences were growing more disgruntled with traditional protagonists, and often found themselves drawn to villains, since they are far more entertaining and usually more creative in their composition, something that the New Hollywood movement (which was already well underway by this point) actively embraced. Davis is darkly hilarious and brilliant in the part – she’s not at all subtle, and she consistently plays to the rafters in a way that those who have attained the highest level of respect in their profession can rightfully demand, since they had achieved enough in the past to be allowed to go over the top on occasion. The rest of the cast is also very good, but they are regularly eclipsed by their formidable co-star, which seemed to be the point entirely – by the time The Anniversary ends, it is Davis and her sinister portrayal that lingers with us the most, everything else merely being incidental to the overall narrative.

The Anniversary is not a film that is viewed as an evergreen classic, and it has proven to be quite divisive, which always seemed to be the destiny for such a film – you essentially have a group of characters, none of them being particularly redeemable in any logical way, led by a legendary actor who is playing perhaps the most malicious character of her long and storied career (especially since she has nothing but disdain for her family, to the point where she gets pleasure out of psychologically tormenting them, which is all done for her amusement), which means that we never truly on-board with these characters, since none of them are all that likeable. However, this is not a film that was designed to inspire a sense of comfort or joy in the viewer – if anything, its very existence is a coup against conventions, since we don’t often find psychological thrillers in which every moment is filled with a sense of unease and repulsion, while still being bitingly funny to its core. Instead, what Baker is doing here is creating a film that functions as an exercise in perseverance, with the viewer being invited to immerse themselves in the lives of this family, peering voyeuristically into their anniversary celebrations and observing the extent to which they engage in torturing one another, and seeing how far we can go before we grow just as fearful and frustrated as the rest of them. It is a deeply strange and profoundly disquieting film, but one that is always on the cutting edge, employing a kind of perverse humour that won’t appeal to everyone; but to those who have a taste for the absurd, it is quite exceptional and always very entertaining. Darkly comical and jagged in a way that any work of pitch-black humour tends to be, The Anniversary is certainly not an event that any of us are inclined to ever forget.