Somewhere between a community theater rehearsal of Hocus Pocus and a daytime soap opera suffering from an identity crisis lies Wicked Stepmother, the 1989 film that dares to ask: “What if Bette Davis was a witch—but also half-cat—and also visibly didn’t want to be in this movie?”
Directed (and written) by Larry Cohen, who gave us the glorious madness of It’s Alive and The Stuff, this film plays like someone owed a production company a favor and decided to pay the debt in clunky dialogue and botched tone. It’s not wicked, it’s not clever, and it’s barely a movie. The only spell being cast here is the one that puts the viewer into a slow, yawning trance.
Let’s begin with the headline: Why the hell did they drag Bette Davis’ old bones into this?
At 80 years old, frail, gaunt, and visibly irritated, Davis appears for roughly fifteen minutes before being transformed—literally—into a housecat (and later, a potted plant). She apparently walked off the set after shooting began, reportedly unhappy with the script, co-stars, and probably the craft services table. Her absence is explained mid-movie with a line of dialogue that implies she and her daughter share one body and switch places like tag team wrestlers from hell. This isn’t clever writing; this is desperation duct-taped into a plot twist.
So the film’s central character, the wicked stepmother herself—Miranda—is handed off to Barbara Carrera, who does her best to carry the remaining 70 minutes in heels and black lace. Carrera purrs and postures her way through magical hijinks with the charm of a Vegas lounge act that was bumped up from a 2 a.m. slot to 10 p.m. for a bachelor party. She tries, bless her, but she’s rowing a boat with no oars, no rudder, and a giant hole in the bottom.
Then we have Colleen Camp—yes, Clue‘s saucy Yvette, here playing Jenny, the suspicious daughter who returns home only to find her father married to this sultry, probably-satanic stranger. And listen, Camp is still hot here, but the movie goes out of its way to downplay it. She’s glammed down in high-waisted khakis, shoulder pads, and a frosted perm that screams, “I sell real estate on the side.” This is like hiring Dua Lipa and asking her to play a local librarian who never leaves the basement.
The “plot”—and we’re stretching that word to its elastic limits—centers on Miranda (Carrera) charming her way into a wealthy widower’s life and causing all manner of chaos while the adult children investigate her identity. There are magical mishaps, a cat that talks like Bette Davis, and a gardener played by Lionel Stander who looks like he wandered in from a 1930s boxing match. Every scene feels like someone is about to yell “cut” and apologize for wasting your time, but they never do. They just keep going.
Worse still, the tone whiplashes between sitcom laugh tracks and horror-lite tension with the finesse of a drunken juggler. One moment there’s a cartoonish bit with a possessed dishwasher, the next there’s a vague mention of a deadly past. Then a cat smokes a cigarette. Then someone gets turned into a potted ficus. It’s like watching Bewitched fan fiction performed by your local HOA.
But let’s not forget the movie’s greatest sin: being boring. For all its absurdity—body swapping witches, transmogrifying furniture, and whatever the hell Carrera is doing with that accent—the film has the nerve to be dull. It’s shot like a failed pilot for NBC circa 1987, with lighting so flat you’d think the DP was aiming for an infomercial aesthetic. The special effects? Let’s just say they make early Doctor Who look like Avatar.
As for Bette Davis, this is not how the Queen of Mean should’ve exited the screen. This is a woman who once ate scenery for breakfast, barked orders through clenched teeth, and reduced co-stars to dust with a single withering glare. Here, she’s under-lit, under-utilized, and finally replaced by a cat with a dubbed voice. She deserved a curtain call, not a comedic pratfall into cinematic oblivion.
One could argue Wicked Stepmother is a “so-bad-it’s-good” cult classic, but that would require it to be fun. It’s not. It’s a murky, confused relic of a late ’80s Hollywood that didn’t know what to do with aging icons or magical realism. The only reason to watch it is morbid curiosity or an obsessive desire to complete the Bette Davis filmography—like a cinephile collecting sins.
So what do we have in the end? A witch movie with no real magic. A cast with no real chemistry. And a director who once made a killer baby movie but now seems to be directing from a bar napkin.
If Wicked Stepmother is remembered at all, it will be as a punchline in the legacy of a woman who once owned the screen. Bette Davis walked off this production—but the real tragedy is that the audience wasn’t allowed to do the same.
