Watch Queen Bee For Free

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This ultra-glossy melodrama, directed with surprising style and flair by MacDougall, plus superbly photographed and set, adds up to a marvelous showcase for Joan Crawford. She's given a great lead-up entrance and then makes the most of her every scene. And she's handed a great support cast to bounce her charisma off. Even squinty-eyed Lucy Marlow looks attractive in her Jean Louis costumes. Sullivan, Ireland, Betsy Palmer, Fay Wray (in a small role right at the beginning) are most deft and convincing. But it is Crawford's film. Such style, such elegance, such glossiness. Yes, with Queen Bee we are back in familiar Joan Crawford territory - one of those heated Southern melodramas played with all stops out by Miss C in settings of tasteful luxury. It's all very much a woman's picture and despite the fact that it's based on a novel, it's also very much a stage affair with most of the action taking place on and around the giant central staircase set that is often even more stunningly lit than Miss C herself. The direction has what you might call an elegant style and the director allows Miss C to dominate the action, giving her an effective entrance and several scenes which she can play in the grand manner as she lectures Lucy Marlow (whose face is almost invariably in shadow). Miss M is obviously an inexperienced actress and is unflatteringly photographed to boot. John Ireland is also not photographed attractively, whilst Barry Sullivan is forced to go through the film with an ugly scar on his face (though he is the only one allowed to match Miss C in the histrionic dept). Fay Wray has a tiny role that is confined to one scene. Photography is glossy and the production slick, though production values are no more than average by "A" standards.

This is a melodrama and is obviously written for one reason and that is to be a melodrama. The result is a one-dimensional and at times seemingly slow film as scenes of pure melodrama follow one after the other. Joan Crawford was the master of the genre and she is terrific in this one, even getting intimidatingly physical at times, and shockingly so. You gotta see these scenes as she goes completely over the top, they are priceless.It all takes place in one house, with the characters constantly interacting in close quarters, as if scorpions in a bottle. This really doesn't work as well as it should because the characters have little or no development and in some cases no background. For example, all we really know about Crawford's character is that she came from Chicago and she is meaner than hell. Fortunately all of the acting is outstanding. Barry Sullivan gives one of his best performances, its maybe his finest ever. He is believable as Avery, the suffering husband and father of the Queen Bee's two children. The acting in "Queen Bee" is so good that it overcomes any shortcomings, making this a film I would recommend. It is one of the classic late-Crawford "eyebrow movies" and not to be missed.

Oh, Joan, That hairdo, those eyebrows, hide the children. Someone said she looked like she was wearing 'warrior makeup'. But, we love ya, Joan when you're as bad as you can be. This was before the Joker in the Batman movies.Other reviewers have already laid out the plot but there are a few scenes that simply delight me. There's the one where a seated John Ireland has a telephone cord gently wrapped around his neck by Joan while she's on the phone.In another scene, she is talking to her young niece or whoever she is while semi-reclining on the sofa. Meanwhile Joan has her leg elevated admiring it and pointing her foot in her high heel shoe, somewhat distracted by its shapeliness, I guess.Then, while the young woman and Betsy Palmer are on the floor looking at blueprints of the house Betsy will live in, they don't hear Joan enter till you see her high heel shoe with its ankle strap stepping on the blueprints and ruining their fun.Another delightful moment is when Barry Sullivan, 'Beauty' is in his office pacing in front of his desk where Joan is seated out of camera range while he is trying to tell her he wants a divorce. It's a heavy, serious scene. The camera pans over to Joan who is admiring herself in her compact make up mirror in a wonderfully blasé, Joan Crawford way.These little moments are worth sitting through some of the tedious plot development. There is one scene where Barry Sullivan is having a long dialog with John Ireland in Sullivan's bedroom while he is dressing for a formal dinner. The dialog is one long shot while Sullivan is tying his bow tie, something we don't see in today's movies with all the quick edits. Today's actors don't seem to be able to do a long scene without cuts like in these old movies.I guess Joan didn't mind playing a character that was so nasty that the audience cheered her demise at the end of the film.

This film is all about Eva Phillips (Joan Crawford), the glamorous, spiteful, self-centered, vain, cruel, and overbearing matriarch of a Southern mansion, who makes life miserable for everyone in her orbit. The entire overwrought melodrama is one big soap opera.I couldn't identify with any of these sorry sobs. They emote, they quarrel, they whine, they speechify, they have no outside interests. Morose and brooding, all the characters are preoccupied with themselves and their own problems. Not surprisingly, the film's acting is theatrical and exaggerated. And there's a ton of dialogue. Yet, for a film set in the South, there's a curious absence of Southern accents.Most scenes take place indoors. That, combined with all that talk, makes the film seem almost like a stage play. The B&W cinematography is competent. I like those noir shadows; they render a depressing and melancholy look to the visuals that is totally in sync with the drab story. The drippy elevator background music is so 1950ish.A little bit of dolefulness in a film is okay. But in "Queen Bee" it just goes on and on and on. There is a neat plot twist near the end. But overall, this film is a real downer.There may not be any joy in this Southern mansion. But it's a movie to watch anyway, if for no other reason than to marvel at Joan Crawford's hammy performance, and to gawk at her caterpillar eyebrows.