'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?' out on Blu-ray

• Screen legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford paired for the first, and only, time
• Their long-running feud played itself out both on screen and off as the film was being made
• The suspense film revitalized the careers of the Academy Award-winning actresses

Sibling rivalry has rarely been portrayed with as much palpable hate as it is in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The once-in-a-lifetime pairing of antagonistic screen legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford made Robert Aldrich's macabre 1962 suspense film a deliciously demented classic. The story of two reclusive has-been actresses locked in a bitter battle of wills in their decaying mansion revitalized the careers of Davis and Crawford, whose stars had faded in recent years.

The just-out What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Anniversary Edition (1962, Warner Bros., not rated,$15; Blu-ray, $35) celebrates the newly digitally remastered film. It comes in a 36-page book filled with photos and essays, and includes documentaries about the actresses and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.

It opens in 1917 with bratty vaudeville child star Baby Jane Hudson (Julie Allred) playing to cheering crowds while her doting father and jealous older sister, Blanche (Gina Gillespie), watch from the wings. Eighteen years later, Blanche (Crawford) is a major movie star while Jane, who once had a popular doll named for her, has become a besotted failure. Their lives change one night when a devastating car crash leaves Blanche crippled from the waist down. No one is sure who was driving or whether the wreck was really an accident. Years later, Jane is Blanche's caretaker and gets perverse pleasure in tormenting her helpless sister.

The aging Jane wears chalk-white makeup, blood-red lipstick and the same curly curls she had as a child. She harbors delusions of rekindling her vaudeville act and hires pianist Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono) to help her practice (screech, actually) her signature song, I've Written a Letter to Daddy. The shut-in Blanche is reduced to reliving her glory days by watching her old films on TV. Blanche becomes increasingly paranoid that her sister may be trying to kill her.

Jane grows more and more psychotic. She barely feeds her sister (unless you count the pet parakeet and dead rat served on covered plates) and is verbally and physically abusive. Blanche complains, "You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I weren't still in this chair." Davis responds venomously with the oft-repeated line, "But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!"

The movie was a huge success and was nominated for five Academy Awards (winning for best costume design), but that didn't improve matters between the stars. Their dislike for each other not only played out on the screen, but during the production and in catty interviews for years after the movie was released.

Crawford, jealous that Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress and she was not, actively campaigned against Davis among voters and told other nominated actresses that she would gladly accept for them if they couldn't attend the ceremony. A victory would have made 10-time nominee Davis the first three-time winner in the category (she had won for 1935's Dangerous and 1938's Jezebel). When Anne Bancroft was announced as winner for The Miracle Worker, Crawford gleefully swept to the stage to get the Oscar. Crawford, who was nominated three times in her career, had won best actress for 1945's Mildred Pierce.

The movie not only sparked a run of new roles for both actresses, it created a spate of suspense films featuring aging actresses. Aldrich had wanted to reunite Davis and Crawford in the 1964 psychological thriller Hush … Hush Sweet Charlotte, but Crawford declined. Olivia de Havilland was cast instead.

Also out on Blu-ray this week is another Davis film, 1964's Dead Ringer, in which she plays feuding twins where one fakes her own death, then murders her sister and assumes her life.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was remade for TV in 1991 with real-life sisters Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave as Blanche and Jane Hudson. Director Walter Hill will be remaking the movie with the blessing of the Aldrich estate. No word on casting yet.