It's disgusting how a fourth-rate, cheap, exploitative soap opera of a movie like this can erase the entire oeuvre of a truly gifted, truly remarkable film star such as Joan Crawford. Written by an envious little brat with no beauty or talent who hated her glamorous mother for having what she could never have, this movie and the book it's based on appeal to the lowest instincts of the human character. We love to hate celebrities, we love it when the powerful and talented fall, we love tawdry stories of abuse perpetrated on helpless victims by the powerful, we love stories about horrible mothers, and especially about horrible WOMEN. Regardless of Joan Crawford's apocryphal flaws as a mother (which are not corroborated by her other children), she was a richly talented star, and anyone can gain a hundred times more entertainment from watching any one of her movies than by watching this dreck. People who blame Dunaway's horrible performance on the fact that she was merely mimicking Joan Crawford herself are dead wrong. One only has to view Crawford on screen or in interviews to clearly see this. Dunaway alone is responsible for her ludicrous scenery-chewing performance, the awfulness of which is the main thing that pulls this film out of oblivion into camp notoriety. I normally wouldn't care enough about such a worthless movie to write about it, except that it has all but ruined Joan Crawford in the eyes of audiences, who often know the star only by this movie. I blame the stupidity of audiences who continue to support this movie as much as the movie itself, Christina's book, the script, the directing, or Dunaway's performance. But of course trash is drawn to trash.