In 1927, Big Sam Hollis (Victor Buono) – the patriarch of a Louisiana plantation – has discovered a married man (Bruce Dern) is planning to elope with his only heir, Charlotte. Big Sam pressures the adulterer to end the relationship with his daughter, which he does during a party at the plantation. Shortly thereafter, the hand and head of Charlotte’s lover is lopped off with a butcher’s knife.

Picking up nearly 40 years later, Charlotte (Bette Davis) lives alone at the fading plantation, attended to by her sarcastic maid Velma (Agnes Moorehead of Bewitched) and a slick Southern doctor (Joseph Cotten). Although she was never charged with murder, Charlotte has been deemed a Gothic fruitcake by the town.

The state intends to demolish the Hollis plantation to make way for a road, so Charlotte summons her younger cousin Miriam, played by Olivia de Havilland. The demure Miriam attempts to convince her wacky cousin to pack up and vacate, but Charlotte refuses, feeling the plantation is the last link she has with her late father and lover.

Soon, weirdness is afoot at the plantation. Charlotte hears eerie music and voices, sees a butcher’s knife and severed hand, and Miriam discovers her dress has been slashed. Charlotte is administered drugs to calm her nerves, and Velma becomes suspicious of Miriam’s motives.

Directed by Robert Aldrich, from a screenplay by Henry Farrell and Lukas Heller, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte was a follow-up thriller to Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?. Most of the cast and crew of that box office hit were retained, and the film echoes the same Gothic tone, including a spooky title song. Joan Crawford was even cast as Miriam, but dropped out in mid-production under mysterious circumstances, likely not wanting Bette Davis to upstage her again.

Despite a few moments of eeriness, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte has the same problem that most hastily assembled sequels, prequels or remakes do. It’s technically proficient, with terrific lighting by Joseph Biroc, and uses sound very effectively to build mood, with the clinging of chandelier glass or dogs barking at something on the edge of the dark plantation.

The nervous editing and unstable camera angles are imaginative, and the script includes a fairly believable backstory involving a gruesome crime of passion long suppressed in the antebellum South. But by and large, the story is forgettable. It took me three days just to finish this and send it back to Netflix.

The brutal violence of the prologue recalls Psycho, but nothing scary occurs at any point in the 134 minute running time after that. Instead of placing the focus on Davis as she loses her grip on reality, as Roman Polanski did in Rosemary’s Baby, the script turns Charlotte into a drugged out victim barely conscious for many scenes.

The final act, where Charlotte’s enemies conspire to make her crazy, is almost right out of the French thriller Les Diaboliques. Aldrich gives away his mystery far too early, killing the suspense. Shot in the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens south of Baton Rouge, this is diluted product to put it kindly. Mary Astor gave her final film performance as Charlotte’s longtime nemesis.