The Nanny (1965 film)

The Fanes, Bill and Virginia, are about to welcome their ten-year-old son Joey back from the special school he has attended for two years, although it is not clear why he has been away. It is suggested that it was as a result of his younger sister, Susy, dying.  His mother, who appears to be neurotic and disturbed (she refuses to go with her husband to meet Joey), wistfully looks at photos of herself with her daughter.

Joey appears to be a disturbed and truculent child, who pretends to have hanged himself at the special school before his father arrives to collect him, deceiving one of the staff. He clearly hates and mistrusts the family's nanny (called simply Nanny by everyone throughout the film).  Once back home he proves himself to be sullen and almost uncontrollable, refusing any help from Nanny, whilst demanding everything be the way he wants it, including refusing to eat any food that Nanny has made or bought for him, and accusing her of trying to poison him. Joey also moves from the bedroom Nanny has prepared for him to a room with a strong lock and access to the fire escape. Although Joey wants Nanny to be dismissed, his father explains that she was Nanny to his mother and aunt (Pen) and has been with the family for many years and is therefore considered to be part of the family. Aunt Pen appears to get on well with Joey, although it is revealed that she has a very weak heart (from a childhood episode of rheumatic fever) and a shock or any undue excitement could kill her, a fact which seems to hold an unusual interest for Joey. Bill Fane is a Queen's Messenger who is away from home a great deal. He has to travel to Beirut and will be gone a few days; after he leaves for the airport he does not reappear in the film.

One day Joey sees a 14-year-old girl, Bobbie Medman, the daughter of a doctor living in a flat upstairs, going down the fire escape and strikes up a friendship with her. He demonstrates his unruly behaviour by dropping a flower box which nearly hits a milkman; he also places a doll upside down in a filled bath and then gets Nanny to go to the bath (supposedly to turn the water off), and when she does so and sees the doll she is greatly disturbed by the sight. It is clear that this is some reference to an incident in the past, as his mother is very angry with him for playing such a trick. Joey then tells Bobbie what he claimed happened to his sister. In his version, Nanny went out leaving him and Susy alone. During this period Susy, whilst trying to bathe her doll, lost her balance and fell into the bath, knocking herself unconscious. When Nanny returns, she runs the bath (without noticing the child and doll in the bath) and accidentally drowns her.

Joey continues to defy Nanny, and is particularly insistent that she does not come in whilst he is having a bath. When she cooks one of his favourite dishes, he refuses to eat it, but instead she spoon-feeds Virginia (who seems incapable of doing anything for herself, and is totally reliant on Nanny). Nanny also complains that Joey has been rooting around in her medicine box. When Virginia then falls ill with food poisoning, Bobbie's father arranges for her to go to hospital, and Nanny finds the cause of the poisoning - some medicine from her cabinet - under Joey's pillow, but he claims, without conviction, that he didn't do it but that it was Nanny. He refuses to stay in the house alone with Nanny, so Aunt Pen comes over to stay with him and Nanny.

Joey barricades himself in his room; at 01:30 Pen is woken up, and when she goes to the kitchen she finds Nanny, standing outside Joey's room with a pillow in her hands. Pen remembers that Nanny always disliked pillows, and it suddenly dawns on her that Joey is right after all: Nanny is trying to kill him. This realisation however sets off a panic attack, and she suffers a heart attack, but this time Nanny, instead of helping her as she did once before, watches her die as she relates what really happened on the day Susy died. She tells Pen that she received a call one day, and took a taxi to a run-down part of town, where she found Dr Wills and a woman called Janet, who is lying dead in bed. It transpires that Janet is Nanny's illegitimate daughter, who died during an illegal abortion. Nanny returns to the house in a daze, from which point her version of events matches that of Joey's earlier in the film, although in her mind she also sees Susy alive and well and having a bath, as well as drowned in the bath with her doll.

Satisfied that Pen is now dead, Nanny tries to enter Joey's bedroom, presumably to smother him with the pillow, but he is woken up as she is unable to enter quietly as he has barricaded the door. As he tries to escape through the window onto the fire escape, Nanny manages to grab him by the ankle, causing him to fall and hit his head on a trunk, knocking him unconscious. Nanny then attempts to drown him in the bath, but changes her mind at the last minute and pulls him out of the water, whereupon he runs off. The film ends with Dr Medman explaining everything to Virginia. Joey comes in and hugs his mother, saying that he will help her now with everything.

• Psycho-biddy

• The Nanny at AllMovie
• The Nanny on IMDb
• Bette Davis is The Nanny (TCM Movie Morlocks)
• The Nanny at the BFI's Screenonline