Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)

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

Fmovies: Despite the hair-raising ads ("It's DEAD time!"), a mild British thriller from American-International Pictures with Shelley Winters camping it up as loony woman mourning her dead daughter, convinced a little orphan girl is her deceased child come back to life. Allegedly conceived as a "Hansel and Gretel" revision, the film has some suspense and sharp editing, also a satisfying wrap-up. Say what you will about Shelley's style of acting, she makes a dandy villainess; going from sugary sweetness to angry paranoia in record time, one begins to fear these kids don't stand a chance. Following on the tail-end of the "Baby Jane" cycle, "Auntie Roo" isn't "respectable" work... however, on the bottom-half of a drive-in double feature, it's enjoyable enough. Curtis Harrington directs in workman-like fashion, and probably deserved a medal after having helmed "What's the Matter With Helen?" with Winters the previous year. ** from ****

Shelley Winters stars as widower Mrs. Forrest, who, having lost her daughter Katherine in an accident, now enjoys the company of children from the local orphanage, throwing a party for the best behaved kids at her house each Christmas. When Christopher Coombs (Mark Lester) and his younger sister Katy (Chloe Franks) crash the party, Mrs. Forrest takes a particular liking to the little girl, who reminds her of her own dear departed daughter. Her feelings towards Katy quickly become an obsession and she schemes to keep the girl as her own, although Christopher, convinced that the woman is a witch, is determined to rescue his sibling no matter what.

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is quite the oddity, drawing inspiration from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, with Mrs. Forrest tempting the kids with sugary treats to fatten them up, and preparing a roaring oven in the kitchen, which Christopher believes is intended for both he and his sister. Adding to the twisted atmosphere is the dessicated corpse of little Katherine that her progressively loopy mother keeps hidden in a secret room. All of this had bags of potential to be a thoroughly demented classic of macabre cinema, but the rather restrained execution prevents it from being so. Winters tries her best, hamming it up as much as possible in every scene, but even her best efforts fail to make this the ghoulish treat it could so easily have been.

For a far more effective off-beat approach to the Hansel and Gretel story, watch Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby. Now that is seriously messed up!

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? fmovies. Curtis Harrington had just directed Shelley Winters in the sinister "What's the Matter with Helen?", and so he brought her back for the equally sinister "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?". Unlike the first movie, this one doesn't look at moral gray areas. Instead it goes straight for the jugular, riffing on Hansel and Gretel with Winters in the role of the witch (who in this case is simply a disturbed woman keeping her late daughter's skeleton preserved). It's a pretty fun movie, corny though it is. Easily better than the other movie in which Winters starred that year (the obnoxious "Poseidon Adventure").

So yes, can you hear your daughter's voice?

A demented widow (Shelley Winters) lures unsuspecting children into her mansion in a bizarre "Hansel and Gretel" twist.

I am not a big fan of Shelley Winters. Frankly, I don't really understand how she became anybody. But I do love AIP, and I absolutely adore both Jimmy Sangster and Curtis Harrington (whose "Night Tide" is a true horror gem). These gentlemen have brought the Hammer touch to AIP, making this film both British (in a good way), but still that same cult AIP style we love.

And even better is the "Hansel and Gretel" idea. Some legends and fairy tales have been done to death, but this one has not. And furthermore, it puts children in the danger zone -- the scene of this film with the guillotine had me on the edge of my seat wondering if they had the guts to go all the way.

In England, in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the American millionaire Mrs. Forrest (Shelley Winters) welcomes ten orphans from the local orphanage to spend the Christmas night with her. Mrs. Forrest misses her daughter Katherine, who died in a silly accident, and is exploited by the charlatan Mr. Benton (Ralph Richardson), her butler and her housekeeper in fake séances. When the sibling orphans Christopher Coombs (Mark Lester) and Katy Coombs (Chloe Franks) are not selected to go to the party, they sneak out to Mrs. Forrest's home and she welcomes them. She feels a great attraction for Katy, who resembles Katherine, but Christopher suspects that the widow is a witch.

"Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" is a great horror movie, with the fable of "Hansel and Gretel" in the mind of an innocent orphan. The plot and characters are well-developed and with excellent cast. The dark conclusion is excellent. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Fábula Macabra" ("Macabre Fable")