Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

[bigshot]

I've been a sucker for horror thrillers with question titles since I was a kid... Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? but I had never seen Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? I bought the Kino blu-ray blind, but I'm really glad I did. It is a lot of fun. It's Hansel and Gretel being held captive by the evil witch. What could be more fun than that?

All of these films have over the top female leads, and this one stars the ultimate monster bee-yotch... Shelly Winters. Boy! Is she great in this film. She flickers back and forth between frailty and threatening rage, and even manages to hold it together to put on an overripe vaudeville act in one scene. Her performance is much more controlled than in Poor Pretty Eddie, but it's just as bizarre. Gotta love Shelly Winters!

The supporting cast is great too, particularly Ralph Richardson as an elderly ineffectual bunko psychic. Michael Jackson's dream boy, Mark Lester plays the angelic Hansel to Winters' witch in the gingerbread house, and the script even allows him to be a little wicked which is nice.

A lot of the fun comes from the situation... a big old spooky house that used to belong to a magician, complete with weird magic props, secret doors and hidden chambers. And of course the dead child in the small coffin in the secret nursery! The British studio influence (Shepperton) adds a layer of class to the tawdry proceedings.

The sound and picture are wonderful. Very much like watching film, not video. As I watched it, I was reminded of the spook show double features they used to play at the Alex Theater in Glendale, CA when I was a kid. This is the sort of movie I would have eaten up like ice cream when I was 12.

It would be fun to screen this film as a double feature with Night of the Hunter, because there are a lot of similar themes and action, and both films star Shelly Winters in opposite roles. The ying and yang of Shelly Winters!

This one is well worth getting.