Good movie but grossly overrated

Excellent adaptation.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is a British film which stars Bette Davis as a nanny for a family living in London in which a young boy has been sent away for supposedly killing his sister. The boy is due to be released after two years and return to his family home and under Ms Davis' supervision.The boy vehemently protests his innocence and insists that instead it was the nanny who committed the terrible deed. Is he right? Or is the nanny indeed guilty?There's already the almost unspeakable taboo of a child killing another child within this film which gives it a grittiness right from the get go. The household in question is steeped in Gothic tension even though it is in fact light and airy. No Baby Jane mansion here.There's also the stifling formality of English life at this time. There are so many manners and formalities at play that are overwhelmingly suffocating and claustrophobic. Within the film there is also a delicious generation gap which underlines this and presents a tangible 'Old vs new' scenario. The boy in question, Joey forges a friendship with a 14 year old girl who lives in the same building. She dresses like a hip 60s girl, all white lipstick and black eyeliner. When we see within her bedroom Joey gazes up at a Beatles mobile she has hanging from the ceiling and at one point we see her reclining on her bed reading a copy of the girls magazine Jackie which has a pin up of Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones on its back cover. Beautifully acted (especially Ms Davis of course whose character has a pair of the ugliest eyebrows ever captured on film) and elegantly directed, this is one of Hammer's finest films.Of course this would only have been made with Ms Davis if Hollywood wasn't casting the very best stars of yesteryear anymore. Every cloud has a silver lining. What was Hollywood's loss was very much Hammer's gain.

After a young girl tragically dies in the bath, her family sends her older brother away to an institution- fearing he was responsible for her death.However, upon his return home, he is adamant that the nanny did it.As close calls continue and mysterious poisonings become the norm...both the nanny and the boy lay the blame on each other.But the film is constructed in a way, as to heighten suspense, and keep you in the dark as to who the true culprit really is.Though, the original incident may very well have been an accident that both played a part in (unbeknownst to the other). Everyone blames the boy, because he's a bit of a sh*t disturber. But does that make him a cold-hearted killer? Perhaps, he is just the perfect scapegoat...In the end, this is a classic psycho-biddy (a sub-genre of thrillers from the 1960's, where older women go senile and turn deadly). And it's really well made. The acting is great. The cinematography is excellent. And it puts you, as the viewer, in the detective seat The Nanny is an expertly suspenseful thriller, that will keep you guessing...even when you think you have it all figured out.Great film.7 out of 10.

A creepy nanny and a precocious kid butt heads, while a mother seems to be heading for a nervous breakdown, and the father simply leaves town. Of course it's more than it seems; we meet the bratty boy being taken home from a sort of lock-up for troubled kids and the doctor is out on the porch saying stuff like "Darn, never did manage to cure that little blighter.". Mom has refused to go, dad's attitude (before dashing away) seems to be punish-punish-punish, and only Bette Davis, as the Nanny, seems nice. No she doesn't. She doesn't seem nice. There was something I didn't like about this smiling old girl right from the get-go, Pamela Franklin eyes--sorry, Bette Davis eyes--or no Bette Davis eyes.Speaking of Pamela Franklin, she's the one spot of good cheer in the film, playing the young upstairs neighbor to the little fellow brought home, and actually managing to have a few normal conversations with said terror-tyke, once they've met on the fire-escape of the building. These are the moments of calm, though the boy is always fast with a sassy remark. Yes, he's non-stop detestable. He's got nothing but horrid accusations against that poor nanny, and even before we get an idea of why he loathes the sweet cheery old helper of the household, he's razed the entire premises with nothing but antagonistic, vile behavior. No wonder they packed him off years ago. Mother constantly multi-tasking crying and headaches, with breaks only for zoning out in bed. Visiting auntie--somewhat cooler than the mother but slowed down by a bad heart--not quite able to soothe all the never-ending tension.Of course the power of Bette Davis is such that no matter how unrelentingly bratty and vile the kid is, the smiling persecuted Nanny is scarier. I didn't care how nice and tolerant she was being; it's Bette Davis, so that kid's onto something. And when the cracks start to appear in this Nanny's outer shell of humility, one wonders if her apron should be checked for knives or throwing-axes. Is any kid with an unreasonable fear of Bette Davis really so maladjusted?And we learn what happened to get the boy shooed off to a home for boys who elevate naughty to a fine art, all those years ago. And we find out why family pictures have a sweet little girl in the frame--but, funny, there's no little girl running around the house anywhere. And it all goes from unsettling to panic-inducing, before you can say poison, or smothering, or heart medicine, or head-pushed-under, or noose, or Boy who Cried Wolf, or not.Terrific film for those who like highly stressed-out households where murder accusations pile up faster than the wastebaskets, and there's an implicit guarantee that someone living there has a bullseye on his or her back. It seems like the sort of family where a band of sadists perpetrating a home-invasion one night might bust in there only to find that the inhabitants have all finished each other off before the invaders even got in...or if still alive, were so busy tearing pieces out of one another that the home-invaders felt ignored and sort of fifth-wheelish.I leave it to you to sample this nasty scrap of psychological horror, and find out if the nanny in question is a nice, loyal, cheery old soul harassed by a heinous little bugger of a child, or, well, kind of a bad nanny as nannies go. I confess she seemed like someone who could lose it and go ballistic at any moment, but it's Bette Davis, and strange thoughts can enter one's head in that case.Recommended to me by: Fangoria Magazine # 300, featuring a List of the "300 Best" Horror films (2011). Write-up on THE NANNY done by Michael Gingold/MG (fine pick for the List, MG, especially amongst the non-gory yet admirably distressing entries).

No, it's not an annoying sitcom from the 90s, but a creepy 60s thriller from the masters of British Horror. Probably director Seth Holt's most famous film, "The Nanny" of 1965 is a different, but highly suspenseful thriller from the great British Hammer Studios. While the Hammer Stuidos are best known for their stylish Gothic Horror films, they also produced a bunch of tense Hitchcockian thrillers, of which "The Nanny" is probably the most widely known. After the success of Robert Aldrich's "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" (1962) and "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" (1964), the aging Bette Davis had established herself in the Horror/Thriller genre, and "The Nanny" definitely is a film that strongly relies on this great leading actress.Having spent a longer period of time in a special boarding school for disturbed children after his baby sister's mysterious death, 10-year old Joey is released to go home to his parents' house. The incident has left his mother with clinical depressions and hysteria, and his father is constantly busy. From the moment he is picked up from the boarding school, the boy shows extreme animosity towards the nanny, refusing to eat anything that she cooks and accusing her of trying to poison him. The nanny reacts with kindness to all his accusations. However, there is something uncanny about this constantly friendly and devoted elderly lady...Bette Davis delivers a truly chilling performance in the role of the superficially friendly but sinister Nanny. 10-year old William Dix is also amazingly good in the lead. The film is creepily shot in black and white and the storyline bears several interesting twists. One of the film's greatest assets is the fact that it manages too keep up the suspense, and even the mystery about who is telling the truth. The twists are unpredictable, and it isn't clear until the film's climax whether the nanny is evil, or just the victim of a disturbed boy's morbid fantasy. Overall this is a truly suspenseful and sometimes disturbing thriller that should definitely not be missed by my fellow Hammer fans. Personally, I still prefer Hammer's Gothic Horror films, but "The Nanny" definitely is a film that all lovers of suspense should appreciate. Highly recommended.