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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
'Any man's my man if I want it that way.' The speaker could only be Joan Crawford, as a wicked man-eater terrorizing her Deep South household in Queen Bee. Crawford's the whole show in this campy 1955 melodrama, which aspires to be second-rate Lillian Hellman but doesn't even reach that level. Having trapped a wealthy Southerner (Barry Sullivan) into marriage, Crawford takes her main pleasure in making life miserable for the other women of the mansion. This is fun to watch for a while, but director Ranald MacDougall (he wrote Mildred Pierce for Crawford) can't get the pace moving, and the final comeuppance is all too predictable. Crawford was going into her final high-diva phase at this point in her career, all chalky makeup and yard-long eyebrows, and Queen Bee clearly points the way toward What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Star power prevails, however, and at least the picture summons up its share of unintentional laughs. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - "She'll sting you one day"
The South must hold the monopoly in bitter, fractured families. In QUEEN BEE, based on the novel by Edna Lee, every member of the Phillips family has their own axe to grind...and it all stems from matriarch Eva (played brilliantly by Joan Crawford). Eva manipulates everyone around her with precision skill. In a loveless marriage with alcoholic husband Avery (Barry Sullivan), Eva is also dallying with her cousin's fiancee (John Ireland). When Eva's distant relation Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow) ... Read More
Rating:  - Crawford's fire-breathing characterization was too strong to die. It returned from the dead in MOMMIE DEAREST
From the moment Joan Crawford makes her grand entrance into this overblown penny dreadful, wearing just the gown a female impersonator would have chosen and asking "Well, do I look fairly human?" it's clear why this is the movie most beloved by the star's fans as well as by her detractors -- and for exactly the same reasons. There's not an inch of film wasted on anyone but Crawford, who vamps around her mansion in hostess gowns, fur stoles, and opera gloves while she cuts the rest of the cast down to ... Read More
Rating: - Joan is the best B......
Joan Crawford proved in "Queen Bee" she was capable of playing the best villiness in motion pictures. From the moment she comes on the screen she owns it as well as all of her co stars. Crawford makes the film as a ruthless woman who destroys everyone around her in the South. The film was written by her "Mildred Pierce" scripter Ronald Mcdouggal who captures the coldness that Crawford can transfer to the screen. One is amazed at her performance and even her daughter Christina fled the movie theatre halfway ... Read More
Rating: - Joan Crawford at her conniving, devious best . . .
Joan rules the roost and this movie as Eva Phillips, whose sharp tongue tears her family apart one by one. She's married to Avery (Barry Sullivan)--or Beauty as they call him (despite the ugly scar on his face)--he's turned to drink because of his bitch of a wife. Avery's sister Carol Lee (played by a perky blonde Betsy Palmer, preparing herself for her later stardom as Jason's mother in 1980's "Friday the 13th"--"Queen Bee" is a horror flick of a different kind)--anyway, Carol Lee is in love with Jud (John ... Read More
Rating: - Unintentional Laughs, but all old movies have that
I had to watch this film after reading Christina Crawford's "Mommie Dearest". Christina wrote "I went to see my mom in 'Queen Bee' and I hated it. She wasn't acting, she was being her true self in that movie, that's exactly how she was at home when she was drinking and at her very worst." Well, yes, Joan's character was pretty insane in the movie, but she wasn't into physical abuse, she was mostly into psychological abuse. I enjoyed it. Sometimes it is good to watch a silly old film.
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