Everybody remembers 1962’s What Ever Occurred to Child Jane? as a camp basic, however that film—which starred Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and kick-started the “psycho-biddy” horror subgenre—was additionally nominated for 5 Oscars. In 1972, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? didn’t rake in the identical acclaim, nevertheless it’s almost as ghoulishly entertaining, elevated by Shelley Winters’ daffy efficiency.
Launched the identical yr as one other notable later-career Winters flip (pro-tip: save The Poseidon Adventure to your New Yr’s Eve social gathering), Auntie Roo was truly the second psycho-biddy film Winters made with director Curtis Harrington; they’d teamed up on What’s the Matter With Helen? the yr prior. That movie gave Winters a co-star on equal footing in Debbie Reynolds, however Auntie Roo is the Winters present by means of and thru. The 2-time Oscar winner has no hassle commanding the highlight, figuring out when to chomp the surroundings but additionally discovering the vulnerability in her outsized character.
Auntie Roo’s backstory alone can be an excessive amount of for some actors to believably pull off, however Winters has no downside making you imagine she’s a wealthy American—as soon as a glamorous theater star, nonetheless keen on robes and tiaras—residing alone in a mansion within the English countryside, circa the Nineteen Twenties, who opens her house every year to native orphans for a Christmas social gathering. Different pertinent particulars: she had a younger daughter who died in a tragic accident some years prior, which she blames herself for, and her late husband was a well-known magician (we don’t study far more about him, which appears like an avenue that would have been additional explored… although we do get to see the room of spooky props he left behind). Additionally, she’s put numerous religion right into a shifty medium who comes over to conduct pretend séances and accumulate a hefty charge—which he secretly splits with the servants, together with a butler who hates his job virtually as a lot as he hates Auntie Roo.
It’s a lot, however Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? has extra so as to add to its kitschy Gothic melodrama scene-setting as soon as the children arrive, together with siblings who crash the social gathering as a result of the orphanage has deemed them not well-behaved sufficient for the outing. Christopher (Mark Lester, a well-known little one star after taking part in the title character in 1968’s Oliver!) and Katy (Chloe Franks) quickly ingratiate themselves with their hostess, and are allowed to indulge within the Christmas Eve-into-Christmas Day in a single day bacchanal of meals, presents, and watching Auntie Roo carry out ditties from her stage routine. Christopher specifically is obsessive about fairy tales, particularly “Hansel and Gretel,” and the movie is unsubtle about underlining the parallels, together with the gingerbread element on Auntie Roo’s house, her obsession with “fattening up” the youngsters, and having Christopher each recite the story to assist Katy get to sleep and run it by means of his thoughts in voice-over at opportune moments. Katy, in the meantime, bears a hanging resemblance to Auntie Roo’s much-mourned little lady.
We all know one thing’s off with Auntie Roo from the movie’s opening scene, which exhibits us—with a shrieking help from the soundtrack, so we all know how terrible it’s—that she’s eliminated her daughter’s disintegrating corpse from her coffin in order that she will be able to sing it nightly lullabies. And there’s no denying Auntie Roo makes some decisions because the plot progresses that talk to her personal disintegrating psychological state. However there’s additionally an oddly unsympathetic high quality to Christopher and Katy; we don’t study something about their lives earlier than the orphanage, however we see that Christopher has scrappy street-smarts that may’t fairly overcome his fantastical perception that Auntie Roo is actually the witch from “Hansel and Gretel,” and Katy has clearly discovered that whining and pouting are the quickest methods to get what she needs. That’s to not say you’ll want in poor health upon these kiddos, precisely—nevertheless it would possibly make you surprise if Auntie Roo’s inevitable punishment (the fairy-tale factor is a useless giveaway as to her destiny… as is the film’s personal title) feels overly harsh for her crimes.
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is streaming free with advertisements on Pluto TV.
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