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MauritiusToday.com - Shopping Mall - The Killing of Sister George
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $17.50
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Beryl Reid, Susannah York, Coral Browne, Ronald Fraser, Patricia Medina
Directed By: Robert Aldrich
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: X (Mature Audiences Only)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 0013131057232
Format: Color
Label: Starz / Anchor Bay
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Starz / Anchor Bay
Release Date: 2000-02-22
Running Time: 138
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Theatrical Release Date: 1968-12-12
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Editorial Reviews:
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"Sister George" of the title is Britain's best-loved soap opera character, played by actress June Buckeridge (Beryl Reid). Buckeridge has become so identified with her character--a sweet old Miss Marple-ish nurse who putters around her quaint little village on a motor scooter--even her friends call her George. But outside the studio she's a hard-drinking, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed lesbian living with an immature young thing she's nicknamed "Childie" (Susannah York, who makes her memorable entrance in a sheer baby-doll nightie). At her worst Sister George is an abusive monster (in a moment of rage she forces Childie to eat the butt of her cigar), but beneath the bluster is an insecure television actress. When the studio decides to kill her character off and an executive makes a play for Childie, the soap star desperately clings to her young lover. Director Robert Aldrich, best known for his tough action films and gothic thrillers, brings his fierce vision of human nature to Frank Marcus's play. In its best moments the film simmers in angry suspicion and helpless frustration, brought to life by Reid's vivacious performance, but other scenes are overlong and stage-bound and would have benefited greatly from judicious trimming and tightening. The caricatured portrayals of lesbian life have aged rather poorly--an inevitable sign of the times--but this acidic show biz drama still carries a hefty emotional punch. --Sean Axmaker
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Still Wonderful
Comment: THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE"
Still Wonderful
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
1968 seems so long ago and even stranger than that is the idea that a movie made about lesbians back then still holds its own today. When "The Killing of Sister George" hit the big screen back then, the public was not quite ready for it. Nonetheless, even with a lesbian plot, the reviews were good. Taboos were shattered on the screen when Beryl Reid played June, an actress and lesbian, portrayed a nun on a soap opera. Her world falls apart when it is decided that the nun must be killed off. As she searched for another job, she became abusive to her lover, Alice (Susannah York) and she begins a spiral of self-destruction. The film, at the time, was given an X rating because of its sultriness and frankness but time has made all of that look tame by the standards of today. Once controversial, the movie is still a reflection of the times and it was the first major Hollywood to show a lesbian who was at peace with herself.
Entertaining as the film is, there is a great deal more significance when we consider how brave the moviemaker was to have created a movie like this almost 40 years ago. It is cynical. Objectionable and a great deal of fun, it is landmark film because of both the subject matter and the bravura performance of Beryl Reid. Reid is a virtuoso and she holds the entire movie together. Her identification with the character she plays is simply miraculous to watch.
The film is much like a drawing room drama, small and tidy. The sets are interiors and the movie does not move from location to location. The choice of lesbian subject matter is a reflection of the director's, Robert Aldrich's, like for outsiders. It seems that the decision to make this movie was not based on eliciting sympathy for the lesbian life style but rather to create controversy. "The Killing" is entertaining and the dialogue is wonderful but this is not a sophisticated view of lesbianism--it was not until much later that Hollywood would come to regard us as people.
Even today, the movie maintains its relevance. It is a long film but it is never tiring and never boring. Emotions are held in tact until the gut-wrenching last scene of the film. If you like gritty, clever, slightly humorous drama, this is the movie to see.. Even if it is a bit dated these days, it should not be ignored in the canon of gay film.
The sex scene has been discussed over and over again. Its real value lay in the fact that it shows a power shift between the characters.
When the movie first appeared it was considered to be "ne plus ultra" in coarse homophobia but time has changed all of that. This is an important film because of the performances and the subject matter and anyone who wants to have a good handle on queer cinema must see "Sister George". There is one scene that was shocking then and is still somewhat shocking today and that is what happens in the Gateways Club, a notable lesbian bar.
In 1968 the film opened doors and it is still one of the great lesbian films and should not be missed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Comment: The Killing of Sister George (1968) is Robert Aldritch's masterpiece: one of the most harrowing films ever made on the subject of show business and masochistic relationships. Cynical yet painfully human, it is far superior to his much more well-known Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Beryl Reid, Susannah York & Coral Browne are magnificent and their performances pack an intense emotional wallop. The fact that the movie's principals are lesbians likely prevented people from appreciating the film for its immense merits. Beryl Reid stars as June Buckridge, an aging, overweight actress who plays Sister George, a beloved character on a hokey British soap opera about village life. Susannah York is Alice, or 'Childie' as George refers to her, George's younger, live-in lover who likes to play with dolls and act coy. Their complex, love-hate relationship provides the crux of the film, while George's career hitting the skids in conjunction with increasingly outrageous behavior and growing alcoholism moves the characters towards emotional and personal disaster. Coral Browne gives the performance of her career as Mrs. Croft, the BBC executive who vies for the affections of Childie over George. One particularly memorable scene showcases George & Childie attending a local lesbian bar as Laurel & Hardy, with Mrs. Croft coming over to deliver George the bad news that she has been removed from the show. The notorious sex scene between Childie and Mrs. Croft is both explicit and remarkably restrained and psychologically revealing. Note must also be made of Patricia Medina's sensitive performance as Betty Thaxter, the owner of a local house of prostitution and a personal confidante of George.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sister George of the Jungle
Comment: Beryl Reed singlehandedly saves this movie. She manages to take a character that could have so easliy slid into camp caricature and make her an actual human being. At all times she projects the humanity in George, even when she is acting like a schreechy seven year old with ADD: boozing it up, being needlessly abusive to her girlfriend, huffily walking out on her TV show (even though she's in a precarious position on it). She's shrill, foolish, self-destructive and a bit mean, but Reed manages to make her also charming and sometimes even sweet.
Not that the ham-handed direction by Aldrich helps. We're presented with mega-closeups of Reed and especially Coral Browne that seem designed to make them look as bad as possible. Not that he does better by the heterosexuals in the cast: the people involved in her BBC program are presented little better than circus freaks, or predatory animals in the big bad TV jungle.
In some ways, the movie is hilariouly dated. We are treated to a long sequence in might have been an actual lesbian bar- which is presented as if it were the most shocking think in the world. It seems rather sweet, looking back at it 30-odd years later, and about as threatening as a high-school sock hop.
There is one sex scene that would most likely be rated light R today, other than that, this is an overlong TV movie. Worth seeing as a historical document to the time when merely the fact that Lesbians exist was enough to be "shocking"!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Watchable for Susannah York and a bit of the naughty at the end, but that's it
Comment: It's my own fault, I guess. I knew there was a provocative angle to "The Killing of Sister George," but because of the title I thought that in addition to the naughty stuff we'd be getting a murder mystery of some kind. So it all sounded good... a little mystery, a little sex, what more can one ask? Alas, there's no murder mystery: the title refers to Beryl Reid's actress character worrying about whether or not the "Sister George" character she plays on a TV drama is going to be killed off. Okay, but there was still the provocative stuff to save the day, right? Well, here things are sort of problematic, too. Anyway, here's the good and bad about this strange little drama.
GOOD: The movie only seems endless. It's actually a good bit shorter than the three hours it feels like (it clocks in at a shade under 2 hours and 20 minutes). That means that if you start the movie now, in three hours you can say to yourself, "Thank God, I'm already 40 minutes past the ordeal of that movie."
BAD: Beryl Reid's over-the-hill actress character is reprehensible and grating. This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she's a lesbian. It does have to do with the fact that she's abusive, whiny, and shrill. Uggh.
GOOD: Susannah York's character is likable, pretty, and interesting.
BAD: Susannah York's character is the only female character in this movie who is likable, pretty, and interesting. A quick aside on this topic: I swear, I'm sure that lesbian women don't like to be uniformally portrayed in the media as sultry model types, but I can't believe that they appreciate being uniformly portrayed in the opposite extreme, as they are here. For example, with the exception of maybe (maybe!) one or two quick walk-ons in the scene set in the lesbian bar, every woman in that long bar scene looks like a man. There's no other way to put it. Sorry, guys... no "The L Word" here.
GOOD: It's nice that the moralism is kept to a minimum and there was no need on the part of the film makers to have any of the lesbian characters commit suicide or meet some other type of major tragedy. Beryl Reid's character doesn't turn out too well in the end, but that's only because she's a creep, not a lesbian.
BAD: The movie betrays its roots on the stage, with several long, talky, stage-bound sequences. That sort of stuff may be fine to watch live, but in a movie some judicious trimming should have been performed. Many scenes are endless.
GOOD: There is one fairly hot and erotic seduction scene at the end of the movie, thankfully involving Susannah York's character.
BAD: You have to sit through the first two hours and fifteen minutes of the movie to get to it.
I guess that "The Killing of Sister George" must have seemed like pretty "adult", edgy stuff back in 1968, perhaps making people not mind as much that they had to sit through the many aspects of the movie that aren't very good: in the end, after all, they could say that they saw the movie that was the talk of the town. Now, alas, you'll likely tell yourself that you saw a whiny, talky, fairly dull movie that has one or two elements (Susannah York and the one sex scene at the end) that keep it from being a total headache-inducing experience.
To end on a polite note, the DVD features a clean, sharp widescreen image. There are no extras, however. Not one. But don't worry, after watching this you won't be seeking any extras out. Oh, well... so much for ending on a polite note.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Female Orgasm
Comment: This movie contains the best
female orgasm ever seen on the silver
screen!!.
It makes 'When Harry met Sally' look
like the sound of music (!!).
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