By 1973, when the Bette Davis horror/suspense vehicle Scream Pretty Peggy made its TV network debut, Hollywood’s obsession with pension-aged horror movie heroines was still running its course. It began with Davis’ infamous turn in 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? —the film that birthed the unlikeliest of unlikely exploitation subgenres: “hagsploitation.”
Of course, in 1973 any horror flick that wasn’t The Exorcist probably wasn’t going to get much publicity, so prime time TV might have been just the place for this tame but still intermittently creepy film, now with a fresh new life on Blu-ray. Although Davis is the obvious star of Scream Pretty Peggy, an art student named Peggy played by then-busy TV face Sian Barbara Allen is ostensibly the central figure here.
Peggy’s dating a freaky sculptor named Jeffrey who sits in his room producing devilish figurines, while his mother (Davis) hangs around the house boozing it up and expressing her displeasure with everything—including Peggy, who she obviously sees as some sort of competition for her son’s attention.
Jeffrey and Peggy have some sort of cosmic artistic bond between them, so this doesn’t bode well for their relationship with the deranged and devious mother. Although this turns out the be essentially a slasher flick, because of the obvious restrictions on graphic violence that come with a prime-time TV production, veteran horror director Gordon Hessler (The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again) relies more on atmosphere and suggestion here for the modest fright value the film has.
Compared to her work in other similar genre pictures, Baby Jane and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Davis is almost constrained here—only a few melodramatic outbursts to speak of. Whatever the case, though, Davis still delivers the goods and makes the most of the material she’s given. And although Scream Pretty Peggy doesn’t boast the same twisted derangement as the more well-known hagsploitation dramas, it’s still worth a look. Try pairing it with cheap Chinese takeout and a weekend home entertainment B-movie horror binge-watch including What’s the Matter with Helen? or Who Slew Auntie Roo? Optional for classic and horror film collections as well as Bette Davis or Halloween library programming.