Syl I love Shelley Winters in this film as the demented Auntie Roo, the widow of a British magician. In this film, she plays a haunted troubled woman whose daughter died in a terrible accident. She wants to be a mother again and finds herself drawn to a girl who resembles her own late daughter. There are lot of interesting scenes and Shelley Winters is a scream in this film with her part. You feel sorry for her but despise what she's doing to Katy and Christopher, young British orphans, who end up being Hansel and Gretel in this story. The ending was kind of disturbing and the kids reminded me more of the boy in the Omen film at times. It's a first rate cast with Shelley Winters, Ralph Richardson, Judy Cornwell, and Marianne Stone just to name a few well known British actors in the cast. I would like to see it again especially since I missed the beginning portion of it. I found it terribly entertaining even a good Halloween movie to show.

dbdumonteil The first part is as delightful as the cakes,the sweets ,the lollipops and the gingerbread men which the good lady serves to the orphans she welcomes for her Christmas party in her Gothic desirable mansion.This mysterious woman,with a racy past ,was married to a magician (remarkable scene when the two children venture into the old house full of magic props where once more,we are told that children are not necessarily devoid of cruelty.After a seance in the dark with a charlatan medium,Roo (Winters)is quite sure that one of the orphans is her late daughter ,who rose from the dead. She wants to keep her in her house but her brother (Mark "Oliver" Lester ) is not prepared to accept it.He tells his sister about Grimm's sinister fairytale "Hansel und Gretel" in the gingerbread house.The first hour is brilliant:the Christmas atmosphere is perfectly captured.The crepuscular quality of the film is tangible .Few other films of the seventies offer so many associations of guarded privacy and locked rooms,in such dreamlike darkness.Shelley Winters is outstanding particularly in that short scene when she goes from tears to a good laugh.The film obviously loses steam in the last thirty minutes.Winters begins to overact to make up for the poor third of the script which is at once repetitive ,dull and predictable.We do not need Lester's voice over to understand that the children are Hansel and Gretel in the witch's den..As Freud and Bruno Bettelheim showed,fairy tales have an hidden meaning which the children unconsciously comprehend but the demonstration is pretty low brow.Watch it anyway:its incredible several moments make it all worthwhile.Like this?Try these...."Les amants criminels" François Ozon 1996"The night of the hunter" Charles Laughton 1955"The nanny" Holt 1965"Bunny Lake is missing" Otto Preminger 1965

Scarecrow-88 Rosie Forrest(Shelley Winters), as the film presents in the opening singing to her daughter who is a rotted corpse, is pretty mad you could say. The mansion she lives in was obviously constructed at her late magician husband's command since the daughter's room is so well hidden within secret passageways, if(..and when)the police were to search for someone(or two, to be precise)it's nearly impossible unless you know the right button to push and the specific door to enter. We are presented with two orphans, Christopher and Katy(Mark Lester and Chloe Franks)notorious for their constant attempts at running away and misbehaving(they give their "den-mother" the silent treatment out of protest for having to return to the orphanage). 10 children, the kindest of the orphanage, are selected to spend Christmas with Rosie, and Christopher & Katy are NOT on that list. Yet, they take it upon themselves to hide in the luggage cart of the carriage anyway and are invited into the bosom of Rosie. Rosie often sees a corrupt con-artist, Mr. Benton(Ralph Richardson)who pretends to be a medium who can contact her late daughter Katherine. A child's voice claiming to be Katherine is actually the maid conspiring with the butler scamming cash from Rosie when Benton separates their cut. Albie(Michael Gothard)presents himself quite the loyal butler attending to Rosie's every need until that right moment when he can get a big payday through some sort of blackmail. Albie knows Rosie is bonkers and buys his time. That time may've arrived in the luggage cart for Christopher believes Rosie is a witch and that he and Katy are to be stuffed in an oven and eaten when she's gets a chance(Christopher compares their situation to the dark fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel..an aspect the film tries in every way to exploit throughout even using Christopher's narration parlaying excerpts from the story). What does happen is that Rosie sees Katherine in Katy and really wishes for her to stay..without Christopher who becomes Rosie's arch nemesis. Both scheme against one another as Christopher finds the room where the dead daughter is locked away and sees Rosie singing to her. The final thirty or so minutes is Christopher trying to rescue Katy(..and himself)from the clutches of Rosie who keeps the entire house locked away. Katy is kept locked away in Katherine's old room while Rosie forces Christopher to assist her in everyday chores once Albie and the maid exit the premises with a nice fat check through blackmail(Albie threatens to expose Katy's whereabouts when Rosie informs the orphanage that she must've disappeared). The ending is quite twisted..if you have an understanding of the dark fairy tale mentioned throughout, then you might have an inkling what I'm talking about.I'll be honest, this is really a sick little number. It exploits a mentally woman for comedy using the death of a daughter as the catalyst. It also is quite disturbing as a misunderstanding through the paranoid mind of a boy leads to a horrible tragedy. Even more so twisted is that Christopher understands where Rosie keeps her expensive jewelry and steals it, burying them in a hole within this teddy bear Katy insists on getting(it was Katherine's). If you want me to tell the truth the boy protagonist isn't the kindest, most pleasant kid in the world..anything but. He's just a smaller version of Albie. But, poor Rosie is used by everyone in the film. Everyone preys on her mental weaknesses. The really crazy part is this film plays Rosie's madness for snickers. I think this film works best for those with a macabre sense of humor. Not for all tastes, that's for sure.

Coventry I honestly wonder why the entire production crew of "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" opted to use such an unusual and revealing narrative structure? Before the opening credits even, it's made distinctively clear that Rosie Forrest (a.k.a Auntie Roo") is mentally disturbed and dangerous, as she sings lullabies to a cradle that holds the mummified leftovers of a young girl's body. Yet, after this bizarre introduction, the film nevertheless attempts to convince us that she's an endearing old lady who throws Christmas parties for poor orphans and even tries to get into contact with the spirit of her deceased daughter through séances. I'm no horror script-writer, unfortunately, but wouldn't it have been much more effective if the macabre secret in Rosie's attic only got mentioned near the end of the movie? Anyway, despite some severely incomprehensible continuity-errors and other flaws, "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo" is an entertaining piece of American 70's horror that features surprisingly great acting performances and some memorable moments of ingeniousness. The story is presented as an adult variation to "Hansel & Gretel", which is definitely one of the eeriest and most gruesome fairy-tales ever told. When a dozen of orphans arrive at Auntie Roo's mansion to celebrate Christmas, she sees in beautiful Katy the reincarnation of her own deceased daughter. She seduces the young girl with toys and privileges, and when the rest of the children returns to the orphanage, Katy stays in the mansion, locked up in a room. Her courageous older brother escapes from the orphanage to search for Katy and discovers Auntie Roo's demented secrets. All the supposedly horrific plot-twists entirely miss their effect, for obvious reasons, and the playful character (as implied already by the silly title) prevents the film from ever getting disturbing. Director Curtis Harrington occasionally succeeds in capturing a tense moment, most notably when Christopher tricks the loony old lady and seizes her keys, and he also sustains a competent pacing. The film definitely also features a lot of atmospheric scenery, such as uncanny rooms full of old dolls and a garden shed filled with a magician's attributes. Shelley Winters is sublime as the crazy old woman and especially the talented child actors are a delight, for a change. The script also should have given some more attention to the interesting supportive characters, like the odd butler Albie and the joyful meat-deliverer Mr. Harrison. "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" is by no means a great horror film, but it's fun enough to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon or during a theme-night with friends.