Timothy Shary criticized films in this subgenre as being exploitative of older women, whose lead characters Peter Shelley stated must have the “airs and graces of a grande dame.” For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this film subgenre typically featuring an unstable elderly woman who has fallen from grace. This film subgenre is considered to have launched with the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
ANSWER: Psycho-biddy [or Grande Dame Guignol; or hagsploitation]
[10m] This 1950 Billy Wilder film has been described as a proto psycho-biddy film. This film centers around the aging silent film star Norma Desmond, who ends the film saying “I'm ready for my close-up.”
ANSWER: Sunset Boulevard
[10e] Psycho-biddy is a subgenre of this broader class of film. In her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, Carol Clover analyzed gender in this genre’s “slasher” type.
ANSWER: horror film
<Eva Wang, Other Fine Arts>