The Killing Of Sister George (1968)

A popular TV soap opera actress (Beryl Reid) discovers her character is going to be killed off the show. The anxiety of the situation causes dissension in her domestic life with her younger lover (Susannah York) and she becomes more abusive and neurotic. I'm not sure that the 1964 Frank Marcus play would ever have transitioned successfully to film but who on Earth thought Robert Aldrich (THE DIRTY DOZEN) was the right man to direct a film about an alcoholic lesbian actress trying to save her career and hold on to her girlfriend? Aldrich doesn't display much sensitivity toward his three lesbian protagonists (Coral Browne as a predatory BBC executive is the third one) and indeed the domestic scenes are directed in the style of his WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? with Reid and York standing in for Davis and Crawford. Browne's seduction of York (which is not in the original play) is filmed like a horror movie with the viperish Browne and the trembling York looking more like a vampire and her victim than any sort of mutual sexual attraction. The best parts of the film deal with Reid's (who's very good) apprehension at losing her standing as an actress rather than the clunky gay bits (the all girl bar sequence is laughable though not for the reasons intended). With Patricia Medina and Ronald Fraser.