Whatever Happened to Baby Jane(2006)

Pooper:
Blanche (Joan Crawford) tolerates the abuse out of guilt. She’s crippled because she slammed into a wall while trying to run down Jane (Bette Davis) with her car.

Long Ending:
Opening many years earlier, a young girl named “Baby” Jane Hudson performs at a theater. She is the pride of her accompanist father. Their mother watches from the wings and assures Jane’s sister Blanche that it will someday be her turn to bask in the limelight.

About twenty years later, Blanche is a major movie star and Jane is considered a talentless has been. Nonetheless, Blanche has struck a deal that for every movie made with her, another must be made with Jane. Despite Blanche’s graciousness, Jane is mean to her sister and constantly drunk. The sisters drive home one night and one of them (it isn’t revealed who) gets out of the car to open the gate. The other turns on the car and drives it to smash into the sister at the gate.

We jump ahead in time. Blanche is paraplegic and confined to wheelchair. She lives with Jane, who remains hateful towards her sister but feels compelled to care for Blanche due to what she did in the “accident.” They live off of the residuals from Blanche’s work as an actress, though Jane makes many dubious claims to ownership of the house.

Jane decides to secretly kill Blanche. Her plan is to impersonate Blanche to continue getting her checks, and then use the funds to restart her music career by reviving the songs she sang as a child star. It is revealed that Jane has learned how to mimic Blanche’s voice perfectly and taught herself to forge Blanche’s signature to further her endeavor. Jane hires an accompanist named Edwin (Victor Buono) to help her practice and falls in love with him.

Jane also begins torturing Blanche, pretending to poison Blanche’s food and also serving Blanche a rat and her pet bird for dinner. Jane manages to foil all of Blanche’s attempts to get help and eventually beats Blanche and ties her up in her room. It is also revealed that Jane suffers from amnesia and remembers nothing about the accident that paralyzed Blanche.

Jane’s plans unravel when their maid Elvira (Maidie Norma) realizes something is wrong, sneaks in, and tries to rescue Blanche. Jane panics and kills Elvira. Though Jane tries to hide the body, it is soon discovered by police. Later, Edwin drunkenly comes to call on Jane. Blanche manages to pull herself free and knock over a nightstand. Edwin hears the noise and finds Blanche trapped and tortured in her room. He flees the house to get the police and Jane takes a nearly unconscious Blanche to the beach (where Baby Jane used to perform for crowds on the shore).

On the beach the next morning, Blanche confesses to Jane that Jane was not driving the car that night. In fact, Blanche had asked Jane to open the gate and tried to run her down. Jane jumped out of the way while Blanche was paralyzed when the car hit the gate. The police assumed Jane tried to kill Blanche, and Blanche let amnesiac Jane assume it was true. Jane sorrowfully mentions they could have been friends and then goes to buy ice cream for the pair. She is spotted by the police and a crowd gathers as they try to arrest her. The crowd circles Jane and she begins to dance like she used to many years before as Blanche lies silently on the beach, her fate left uncertain.

Thanks Curt (Pooper) and Evan B (Long)