Flowers in the Attic is a 1987 American psychological drama film directed by Jeffrey Bloom and starring Louise Fletcher, Victoria Tennant, Kristy Swanson, and Jeb Stuart Adams.

Its plot follows four youngsters who, after the death of their father, are held captive in the attic of their abusive grandmother's sprawling estate by their cruel and manipulative mother.

Producers were disturbed by his approach to the incest-laden story, and Jeffrey Bloom ended up with writing and directing duties.

After the sudden death of their father, teenagers Chris and Cathy Dollanganger and 5-year-old twins Cory and Carrie are forced to travel with their mother Corrine to live with her wealthy parents, who disowned her years ago.

Corrine's mother Olivia, a religious fanatic, takes in her daughter and grandchildren on the condition that the children must be sequestered in a locked room, so her dying husband Malcolm will never know of their existence.

Chris and Cathy remove the hinges from their locked door to occasionally sneak out where they discover that their mother has been living a life of luxury and dating a young lawyer, Bart Winslow.

Though he intends to fully beat her to death, Cathy stops him and says that they should tell their grandfather the truth; they had once found him sleeping while investigating their mother's absence.

V. C. Andrews herself demanded, and eventually received, script approval when she sold the film rights to producers Thomas Fries and Sy Levin.

[5] Veteran actresses Louise Fletcher and Victoria Tennant were cast as the Grandmother and Mother, respectively, while the four children were played by newcomers Kristy Swanson, Jeb Stuart Adams, Ben Ganger, and Lindsay Parker, respectively.

Jeffrey Bloom had a young Sharon Stone audition for the film, but he could not convince the producers to give her the part of Corrine, the mother.

Louise Fletcher wanted to get deep inside her role, so she called Andrews one night to ask about the motivation of her character in the film.

Andrews was given a cameo as a maid in Foxworth Hall, scrubbing the glass of a window after Chris and Cathy attempt to escape from the rooftop.

Bloom stated that, after filming was completed, the producers approached him to refilm a new ending, and one of the many ideas was that the siblings accidentally kill Corinne during their escape.

Castle Hill, a Tudor Revival mansion in Ipswich, Massachusetts, served as Foxworth Hall and was the main location at which nearly all interior and exterior scenes were filmed.

Bloom's original early cut of the movie was screened to a test audience in December 1986 in San Fernando Valley, and it was met with negative reactions, mostly because of the scenes of incest between Cathy and Chris.

This was done not just to remove "sensitive content" but also to make it shorter to secure more theatrical screenings, as well as the addition of the infamous new ending that writer and director Jeffrey Bloom hated and refused to film.

[7] According to Bloom in a 2010 interview, nudity and scenes of incest were not cut out solely because of negative feedback from test audiences, but also because the studio and the producers wanted to secure a lower rating.

[8] Kristy Swanson stated in a 2014 interview that there was a test screening which had all scenes of incest included, but after the audience found them to be uncomfortable, they were cut out.

Producer Sy Levin also mentioned that one of the cut scenes had Chris watching Cathy through the crack of the door while she was taking off her clothes and getting into a bathtub.

Also, test screenings of the film in San Jose and Ohio, after re-editing, were said to include another alternate ending, but no further details were reported.

Despite interest from fans, no uncut version of the film was released, nor was Bloom's original director's cut, and it is not known if the deleted footage still exists.

[9][10] According to Bloom, the original ending consisted of: Briefly, the surviving children interrupt the wedding ceremony and dramatically confront Corrine.

[11]Flowers in the Attic opened theatrically in the United States on November 20, 1987,[1] debuting at number 3 at the national box office.

Andrews' novel of incestuous relationships and confined childhood always has been a superb candidate for a film treatment, but director Jeffrey Bloom has taken narrative and squeezed the life from it.

"[15] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post said, "it is slow, stiff, stupid and senseless, a film utterly lacking in motivation, development, and nuance, and further marred by embarrassingly flat acting and directing.

"[16] Time Out London wrote that "as fantasy stripped of all the metaphorical trimmings, the sublimely ridiculous plot is more likely to reduce an audience to laughter than to tears.

A review published in 2012 on the website Basement Rejects gave the film four and a half stars out of ten, and stated, "Flowers in the Attic is in the so-bad-its-good category.

"[33] Another adaptation of Flowers in the Attic aired on the Lifetime network on January 18, 2014, starring Heather Graham as Corrine, Academy Award-winner Ellen Burstyn as Olivia, and Kiernan Shipka and Mason Dye as Cathy and Christopher.

[34] Subsequently, a television film sequel based on the next book of the series, Petals on the Wind, premiered on the Lifetime network on May 26, 2014.

[35][36] It starred Rose McIver as Cathy and Wyatt Nash as Christopher, replacing Kiernan Shipka and Mason Dye from the previous film, respectively, and Will Kemp as Julian Marquet, and Heather Graham as Corrine and Ellen Burstyn as Olivia Foxworth, the latter two reprising their roles.