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Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and what you're about to hear is a free episode of Flashback, the Slate Plus podcast that I co-hosted with Vanity Fares film critic K. Austin Collins.

Usually this podcast is behind the Slate paywall, but because of extraordinary circumstances and so many people being stuck indoors listening for things to listen to, we decided to make this week's episode free. So you can test out flashback and see if you like it. Every two weeks, we revisit an older movie to talk about what it meant in its time and what it means now. And all of the films that we choose are available to stream or rent online, usually in various places. So we encourage our listeners

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Flashback Slate's podcast about older and classic movies. This time around, we're going to be talking about whatever happened to baby Jane, the 1962. I guess we'll call it a psychological horror film, yes? Sure. And joining me here in the Slate Studio, as always, is Kay Austin Collins, Vanity Fair's film critic. Hey, Kim. Hi. How's it going? Uh, pretty good, except that you picked the sickest shit that we've talked about yet for this show. Um, a childhood favorite of mine. I want to hear actually about that, first of all. Let's get psychoanalytic right now, because on our way into the studio, you were talking about how this was sort of a family bonding experience in the Collins household to watch baby Jane yeah I mean it just is one

of those it is a camp classic and first of all Betty Davis I think is someone that my mom and my

grandmother both really loved and so I saw films like all About Eve fairly early in my life. And then,

you know, once you recognize an actor, if you're just walking past the TV and they're on the

screen, you're like, oh, what is this? And this is one of those cases where you walk by and it's like,

what is this? But also just, I think it's partially because my grandmother has multiple

sisters. They bicker a lot. My mom has two brothers and she's the only girl and she's the oldest,

but they bicker a lot. And I'm the only child. So I'm the only one of these people who doesn't have

siblings. But the sibling thing and my family is real. It is very real. And I get the feeling

watching older people be squabbling siblings. Yeah. And I think that this is sort of like,

not cathartic, but I think they just all enjoyed it because it's like them. It's not them.

They don't torture each other, but it is them in the sense that they just always bicker.

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