Thoughts on Hush

 

via Giphy

"She was a stable girl!"

This appraisal of Martha Baring (Jessica Lange), delivered to her daughter-in-law Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) by Martha's mother-in-law Alice (Nina Foch), was when I became certain that while Hush would never be a good movie, I could at least enjoy it as camp. If you told me that this was the movie that made Ryan Murphy want to work with Jessica and Gwyneth, I would believe you. I had hoped to see Ryan's name in the credits, but Hush is actually written by Jane Rusconi from a story by director Jonathan Darby.

Unfortunately, my hunch was wrong. Hush comes close to being a hoot, but the decision to ultimately play it safe was a misstep. The movie was mostly filmed in spring 1996 and apparently supposed to end with Martha's death. According to a message board user who claims to have worked at Sony and saw Hush's orginal ending, Martha would have abducted her newborn grandson. She would have fled with him to the barn that now housed a nursery for the tot, whose conception she possibly orchestrated and whose delivery she induced. A fire would have broken out and Jackson (Johnathon Schaech) would have only been able to save the baby. Test audiences hated this ending, so instead Helen exposed most of Martha's schemes. For example, making young Jackson believe that he was responsible for his father's death.

I'll admit that having the villain burn to death is a cliche, but it also provides more of a conclusion than the one in Hush, which admittedly almost works. Jackson accepts the facts presented by Helen, many of which he could have confirmed himself a long time ago, then disowns Martha and promises to complete the sale of the family farm and horse breeding operation that's in his name. Helen delivers a long-overdue bitch slap to Martha before leaving with Jackson and the baby. We last see Martha whimpering in the kitchen. As far as Martha's concerned, she is dead. She's lost it all, but it's just not good enough for me. Hell, go for broke and have Helen somehow have been able to remove a few crucial nails with the nail puller that Martha left for Jackson Sr. to have landed on when he fell down a flight of stairs. Movies like this have to end with someone, heroine or villain, dying. Hush's ending feels more appropriate for a play.

An aside: Jackson Sr. discovered that Martha was having an affair, a plot element that deserved more attention. During the finale, Helen tricks Martha into thinking that Robin Hayes is still alive. I wish there was more insight into why Helen, who went to great lengths for her security and wants in addition to being a churchgoing Catholic, cheated. Did she feel ashamed? Did she feel untouchable in the sense that she didn't expect Jackson Sr. would want to leave her? Did she feel untouchable in the sense that he was neglecting her and she acted out from the hurt? Or was it simply that she felt entitled on the grounds of looking like Jessica Lange?

"You want my farm, my land, my boy! You want to take everything I have and leave me with nothing! ... You see what she's doing? (whispering) She wants to be me. (deranged laughter)"

Hush is not an essential movie. Rita Kempley, Washington Post, observed that it seemed to be an homage to the psycho-biddy genre. Martha's a composite of numerous compelling characters and/or personas from in and out of the hallowed halls of hagsploitation. Reviewers mentioned Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford (who Jessica would go on to play for Ryan Murphy), Blanche DuBois (who Jessica previously played on Broadway and TV), Regina Giddens, the Wicked Witch of the West and Faye Dunaway. I'll add Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, Shirley Knight in Endless Love, Olivia de Havilland in Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte and Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby to the list.

"All the good people in the film are bluebloods and all the proles are predatory. Helen's social standing isn't specified, but nobody in movies looks more effortlessly aristocratic than Paltrow."

-- David Chute, Los Angeles Times

Roger Ebert pointed out that most of Martha's machinations only work because Jackson doesn't behave like a normal person would. Granted, most people don't expect to distrust their mother, but Martha was being rather transparent with her methods. They include claiming to friends like Dr. Hill (Hal Holbrook) that Helen was having a difficult pregnancy and keeping Jackson from going to his and Helen's room. Martha's endgame involved killing Helen with a morphine overdose and manipulating a grieving Jackson. She would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for Jackson learning that Martha claimed that he changed his mind about selling the farm. People, if a scheme can fall apart thanks to small talk, it's not a good scheme.

Hill might have the same name as a Rosemary's Baby character, but he seems to be innocent. Martha has just one accomplice. Her neighbor Hal (Richard Lineback), who I initially assumed was a creepy farmhand, met Helen when she first visited and then attacked her back home with a knife. Martha needed to get Helen willing to live in the country rather than New York City. Disturbingly, Hal never is punished for the attack, which included his stealing Helen's locket. Containing a picture of Helen's late parents, the locket is found in the nursery. I wish they'd have gone a step further and had Helen discover it now had a picture of herself, making her realize not only that Martha orchestrated the attack but that she was planning Helen's death.

Similar to the red herring with Hill, Martha avoids a taboo. Sure, she flirts with Jackson on New Year's Eve, watches him have sex with Helen, cleans off his shirtless, muddy body and declares that her grandson is her son, but Martha never fully expresses incestuous feelings. Her interest in Jackson and the baby is apparently based on furthering the family bloodline. Martha is so fixated on the idea of the baby being a boy that I started wishing that Helen gave birth to a girl, or had been played by a non-white actress. Instead of being a racist, Martha is a crazy Catholic. It will never not be creepy for a menopausal-age woman to interfere in a younger woman's reproductive experience. It's suggested that Martha tampered with Helen's diaphragm, although she later claims that Helen got herself pregnant.

"Who do you think you are, an alley cat dropping your litter by the side of the road?"

All this and a few moments of Debi Mazar as Helen's best friend.

"(Helen's doctor in NYC confirms the baby's alive) That was pretty smart, telling him you were pregnant."

"Yeah, most men run when they hear that. ... Bad joke, bad joke, I'm sorry."

On reflection, I have to give Hush a Not Recommended grade.

Thoughts:
-- "An angel in the kitchen and a devil in the bedroom. Now that's what I like in a man."

-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $13.6 million on an unknown budget (I can't imagine reshoots are cheap), this opened at No. 5 and came in at No. 109 for 1998.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "So awful it doesn't even qualify as a B-movie," Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times. "Nothing works, and almost nothing pays off," according to Chute.

-- Critic's Corner, Jessica: "The wicked witch of the bluegrass," Todd McCarthy declared in Variety. "All (she) succeeds in doing is presenting Martha as a dictionary of Southern genteel mannerisms gone bonkers," Holden wrote. Chute: "(Martha's) weirdness is so overt that it strains credulity. ... Lange never does get a chance to cut loose." Ebert was okay with that, saying that Jessica's restraint in playing Martha allowed for "a little pathos to leaven the psychopathology."

-- Critic's Corner, Gwyneth: "I can sort of understand what Paltrow was doing," Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote in Entertainment Weekly. "(She was) young and still green; this was shot before Great Expectations, etc." Either way, Holden found Gwyneth's performance to be "flat, utterly charmless."

-- Critic's Corner, Johnathon: "(He acts) as if he were making a toothpaste commerical," Holden sniffed. That diss reminded me of the moment in Magic Mike XXL when Ken talked about auditioning for a laundry detergent ad. Chute: "Schaech is from the Victor Mature-Peter Gallagher class of bland handsomeness."

-- Awards Watch: Jessica got a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actress, losing to The Spice Girls.

-- Fanservice Junction: Gwyneth's obvious body double when Helen races back to Jackson's bed after accidentally greeting Martha while naked, plus Jessica in a slip and Johnathon getting hosed off by Jessica.

-- Speaking of water, I'll conclude by mentioning my favorite scene, Martha and Alice talking while the latter is in an old school hydrotherapy tub. Before Martha turns up the cold water (to induce a heart attack?; don't worry, Alice lives), the insults fly. "Who pays your bills here, Alice?" "Why, you do, with the money Jack left you." "Is it cheap here?" "I don't know. Cheap is something you'd know more about than I would." Martha demands that Alice answer her questions. "I am. You just can't see my finger." Martha responds by lifting the canvas and taking in the old lady's naked body. "Oh. Isn't time a terrible thing, Alice?"

-- Next: Dark City. On deck: The Big Lebowski.