Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?
Tags: insanity

Plot synopsis:
Mrs. Forrest, in the eyes of the staff and children at an orphanage, is a sweet, kind-mannered and children-loving widow, who throws a lavish annual Christmas party at her mansion, Forrest Grange (known to the orphans as the "Gingerbread House") for ten of the best-mannered children at the orphanage. But secretly, she is a demented, sad and miserable woman who keeps the mummified remains of her daughter Katharine in a nursery room in the attic, singing lullabies to her and trying to contact her spirit with the assistance of (phony) psychic Mr. Benton. He fools Forrest into believing that the voice of Clarine, one of the servants, during the fake séances is that of Katharine.
Christopher and Katy Coombs are orphaned brother and sister. Christopher has a wild imagination, telling stories about dragons and witches that frighten the other orphans. When he and his sister are not included in the list of ten orphans for the Christmas party at Auntie Roo's mansion, he and Katy sneak into the car of Inspector Willoughby, who transfers the orphans to Forrest Grange, and are warmly welcomed by Auntie Roo. Auntie Roo is surprised to see the resemblance of her daughter Katharine to Katy, and becomes more and more focused on her. Katy is missing as the party ends and the other orphans leave. Auntie Roo promises to find her and send her back. Christopher realizes that Katy is not just missing, but was kidnapped by Auntie Roo. Meanwhile, Albie, the young, sadistic butler, discovers that Auntie Roo has Katy locked in the nursery room. He blackmails her into giving him £2,000 by threatening to reveal her secret to the police unless she pays to keep him quiet. After this, he and Clarine depart from the mansion and leave her alone with Katy.
When no one believes Christopher about seeing Auntie Roo singing lullabies to mummified Katharine, or that Katy has really been abducted, he runs away to the mansion but ends up trapped inside too. Auntie Roo wants to replace Katy for Katharine, but in Christopher's mind, he thinks Auntie Roo is really a witch wanting to devour him and his sister. Auntie Roo prepares a dinner for the New Year's coming, while Christopher assists her. He steals the key to the nursery room.
After Christopher frees Katy, Auntie Roo chases them to the kitchen where Christopher tries to protect them with a knife. Knocking it from his hand with a piece of wood, Auntie Roo corners them in the pantry and locks the door. Auntie Roo hears in her mind her daughter shouting for her and runs to her coffin in the attic. When she tries to touch the corpse's face, it disintegrates to dust. Auntie Roo returns to the kitchen in a highly agitated state yelling "I have nothing, I have nothing." She turns the hour glass over to time her cooking and starts chopping potatoes with a large cleaver. She then hears the children from the pantry calling to her to let them out, but she resists listening to them. Katy then says "Please, mommy", touching the heart of Auntie Roo. Completely lost in her delusions she opens the door to embrace Katy ("Katharine"). Christopher knocks things from the high shelf causing Auntie Roo to fall. The children lock the door but Auntie Roo begins hacking at it with a cleaver.
Christopher and Katy place the fire-wood he had been fetching at the door and set it on fire with paraffin (kerosene). Smashing through parts of the door with the cleaver Auntie Roo sees the fire and it comes into the pantry surrounding her. Auntie Roo, deep in her psychosis, falls in a corner. The children emerge from the smoked-filled building, carrying the almost forgotten teddy bear that belonged to Katharine (in which Katy and Christopher have placed all of Auntie Roo's jewelry), while Mrs. Forrest, surrounded by fire, shouts at Katy to come back to her.
Outside, the orphans meet Auntie Roo's butcher, Mr. Harrison, who is delivering a whole piglet by horse-cart. He sees the smoke inside and drives off to call the fire brigade. Katy realizes she was to cook the pig, but Christopher says they were to be eaten after it. When he leaves, Christopher quips, "Bloody good fire", while inside, the whole cellar goes up in flames. The fire brigade arrives and puts out the fire but are unable to rescue Mrs. Forrest. Inspector Willoughby will take the children back to the orphanage. Still outside, the orphanage doctor, Dr. Mason, comments "Poor little devils. They'll probably have nightmares till the day they die". Christopher and Katy smile at each other, departing from the burned mansion, with Christopher ending the tale by saying "Hansel and Gretel knew that the wicked witch could not harm anyone else and they were happy. They also knew that with the wicked witch's treasure they would not be hungry again. So they lived happily ever after."

Review: Who Slew Auntie Roo is still one of the most cleverly constructed films of the 70s.An interesting and fascinating take on the Hansel and Gretel story.
He died leaving her his fortune and creepy mansion called "Forrest Grange" Their little 7 year old daughter Katherine died after falling off a banister that she was sliding down.The film opens with Auntie Roo as she is called by the orphans singing a lullabye to what appears to be a child in a cradle.
Of course her psychic is in cahoots with the servants who stage the seances.It is now time for Aunt Roo's annual Christmas Party where 10 lucky children from the local orphanage are selected to attend an overnight holiday party at Forrest Grange.
Auntie Roo sees a resemblance in Katy to her dead daughter Katherine...and of course the movie takes off from here.
The children see Auntie Roo as the witch in Hansel and Gretel...and Forrest Grange is the Gingerbread House.
I won't give away any more of the plot, but the psychological games between the children and Auntie Roo as their terror mounts makes for an extremely entertaining film.Aside from Shelley Winter's bravura performance, there are also strong contributions from Sir Ralph Richardson as her psychic; Rosemary Crutchley as the director of the orphanage, Mark Lester (of Oliver fame) as Christopher.
Probably Shelley Winters' greatest Movie - though I suspect many would disagree.Many viewers delight in name-calling 'Aunt Roo' as 'nuts' 'crazy' 'evil' etc., but many fail to see the sad and pathetic side to this unfortunate character.Aunt Roo (played marvellously by the wonderful Shelley Winters) is clearly traumatised by the tragic death of her only child.
If the roles of this film were reversed, everyone's sympathy would still lie with the children...Shelley Winters' performance still brings tears to my eyes when she cries and yearns for her dead child, only to find out she's been made a fool of - enough to drive anyone insane!A fabulous Movie, and a fabulous story.
A broad take-off on the old "Hansel and Gretel" fairytale, this movie is pure 70's.If you like your horror films without a lot of gore and with a lot of suspense, see "Who Slew Auntie Roo?"  It's worth your time..
This is a well-acted, but thinly plotted addition to the BABY JANE/CHARLOTTE cycle, with Shelley Winters giving an appropriately over-the-top performance as the lonely, crazed woman who lures unsuspecting young children into her creepy old house.
Made by horror practitioner Curtis Harrington in England after directing Winters earlier that year in the superb Gothic thriller WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?, this film is a bit of a letdown in comparison.
Though Shelley's campy performance in the title role is the film's main attraction, the movie boasts an equally impressive supporting cast that includes Ralph Richardson as a phony psychic, Hugh Griffith as an eccentric butcher, and Mark Lester and Chloe Franks as the terrorized young children..
Some of the scares are cheesy, a few of the child actors are awful (the lead girl looks and acts like she was sniffing glue during the entire production!), and it is a bit disconcerting to sit through yet another movie where Shelley Winters sings and dances like a freak.
I love Shelley Winters in this film as the demented Auntie Roo, the widow of a British magician.
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.
Well, Lester is a growing teen rebelling, Winters decays into some form of madness, a cast of stalwart British character actors such as Sir Ralph Richardson, Hugh Griffith, and Lionel Jeffries ably aid the story, and that story degenerates/diffuses into some sinister tale not unlike Hansel and Gretel.
Former stage star Auntie Roo (Shelley Winters) is the love of orphans in town come Christmas time as she invites ten lucky kids to come spend the night at her countryside estate on Christmas Eve. Two kids, Chris (Mark Lester) and Katy (Chloe Franks) Combs, who didn't make the cut sneak along to the mansion and soon their host is infatuated with Katy because she reminds her of her own missing daughter, who she has been trying to contact through séances.
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.
Well, the title sounds intriguing, and "Hansel and Gretel" has always been one of my very favorite fairy tales, but this is a slow-moving, lackluster thriller, with only a few suspenseful scenes (one of those, however, with a kid trying to reach a key before Shelley Winters returns to the room, is perfectly executed).
"Auntie Roo", she provides a nice place for orphaned children to spend their Christmas holidays.
But incorrigible child Christopher Coombs (Mark Lester) is convinced that she's like the witch in the "Hansel and Gretel" story, and kidnaps kids in order to fatten them up and eat them.While clearly Mrs. Forrest has gone off the deep end, you do feel sympathy for her.
Some viewers are sure to be suspicious of the bratty Christopher, and doubt the possibility of Mrs. Forrest being an actual "witch".Overall, the movie is a fun, if not exemplary, effort for Curtis Harrington, who'd also collaborated with Winters on "What's the Matter with Helen?".
It establishes a tone right away with its pre-credits sequence, where Mrs. Forrest sings a lullaby to a corpse.Lester and adorable Chloe Franks are good as the brother and sister targeted by our unbalanced protagonist, with Gothard, Richardson, lovely Judy Cornwell, Lionel Jeffries, Hugh Griffith, and Rosalie Crutchley providing excellent support.The opening credits sequence comes complete with over the top music by Kenneth V.
(1971) *** (out of 4)Every year at Christmas time, rich widow Mrs. Forrest (Shelley Winters) invites ten kids from the local orphanage up for a good time.
Christopher (Mark Lester) and his sister Katy (Chloe Franks) eventually catch the key of Mrs. Forrest and especially the sister since she reminds the woman of her dead daughter.
Before you know it the kids are staying with Mrs. Forrest but before long Christopher begins to think that she's a witch with plans to eat them.Curtis Harrington's WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO?
The film isn't the greatest movie ever made but it's certainly an effective one and one that is very much worth watching.There are a lot of things to like about the picture including the atmosphere that director Harrington builds.
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.
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.
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?".
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).
One Resourceful Kid. No doubt that Shelley Winters assumed the title role in Whoever Slew Auntie Roo for a chance to really chew the scenery.
That's what's great about films like Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, you can overact to the max and no one will criticize you.By all appearances Shelley is a kindly old widow, an American transplanted to the United Kingdom of the Roaring Twenties and she opens her house once a year to a select group of children from a nearby school.
She lost her own daughter in a tragic accident and tries to communicate with her through a medium played deliciously by Ralph Richardson.Mark Lester and Chloe Franks are a pair of misbehaving kids from the school who are brother and sister.
She kidnaps Chloe and Lester takes it upon himself to rescue her.The story is a loosely told tongue and cheek version of the Grimm brothers Hansel And Gretel so if you remember the tale from your childhood, you've got some approximate idea of what happens to Winters.
Shelley Winters stars in this combination of modern, macabre film making, along with fairytale interpretation, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?
focuses on the seemingly giving widow, Mrs Forrest (Winters), who offers food, shelter and presents to local orphans at Christmas time.
(1969) musical - and Chloe Franks), secretly enter the mansion, and a relationship between the girl and Mrs Forrest ensues that develops into a strange obsession, that leads to Winters connecting Katy with her dead daughter.
The film does also boast some good, but small performances from the great Ralph Richardson and Lionel Jeffries, but as with Oliver!, I still have great inability to believe that Mark Lester would ever have been orphaned or poor - he is just too well-spoken.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com.
Extremely mild British thriller from AIP has 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.
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo is a seventies horror take on the classic Hansel and Gretel story.
She was surrounded by accomplished cast members (Ralph Richardson, Lionel Jeffries, Hugh Griffith, Rosalie Crutchley, Michael Gothard and child actors Mark Lester and Chloe Franks) and the behind-the-camera crew was equally imposing (Jimmy Sangster and Gavin Lambert among the screenwriters and cinematographer Desmond Dickinson).Incidentally, just as Hammer's STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (1972) took its inspiration from "Peter Pan", this was based on the popular fairy-tale by the Brothers Grimm "Hansel & Gretel" - with Lester and Franks as the siblings at the mercy of 'witch' Winters!
Ironically, however, the first half of the film works rather better than the heavy-handed fairy-tale scenario: the story has been updated and reset to pre-WWI England (where it was also shot) and necessitates quite a bit of exposition (including a subplot involving Richardson and Gothard fleecing the rich widow by holding fake séances, in which she tries to contact her own daughter about whose death she is guilt-ridden and whose decaying corpse she still conserves!).
This, then, would seem to suggest that the supporting cast is wasted; with respect to Jeffries and Griffith, that may perhaps be true, but Richardsoin does get to demonstrate his incomparable thespian skills in a couple of extended scenes (still, his role isn't quite as large or central to the plot as one would expect from his above-the-title billing!).Harrington's wonderful period atmosphere is admirably sustained, however, and the scenes in which Winters lullabies her long-dead daughter have a definite creepiness to them (ditto the sequence in which the children insinuate themselves into the room belonging to Winters' late conjurer husband, play around with a still-active guillotine and are scared by a costumed Gothard)..
It seemed like an extremely slow moving film but I liked a few of the performances (Winters and Richards), great set pieces and it's something that has stayed with me for a long time even though haven't seen this movie since the early80s.
Mischievous Christopher (the terrific Mark Lester of "Oliver!" and "Eyewitness" fame) and his sweet little sister Katy (adorable blonde sprite Chloe Franks, who played the daughters of Christopher Lee in "The House That Dripped Blood" and Joan Collins in "Tales from the Crypt") are a couple of orphans living in Great Britian in the 1920's.
Christopher convinces Katy that loopy recluse Rosie "Auntie Roo" Forrest (Shelley Winters chewing the scenery with her trademark four-sheets-to-the-wind hambone panache), a former music hall singer who once a year invites a bunch of kids to her huge, crumbling mansion for Christmas diner, is really a witch who plans to fatten Katy up and eat her.
Director Curtis Harrington, adapting a fiendishly clever script co-written by veteran Hammer horror film scribe Jimmy ("The Curse of Frankenstein," "The Horror of Dracula") Sangster, whips up a delightfully twisted and darkly amusing Gothic black comedy version of "Hansel and Gretel." The first-rate cast have a ball with their juicy parts: Ralph Richardson as an eccentric charlatan medium, Michael Gothard (the crazed killer in "Scream and Scream Again") as a mean butler, Lionel Jeffries as a friendly, hearty police inspector, Hugh Griffiths as a jolly butcher, and Marianne Stone as a strict orphanage supervisor.
One of the children at the party, a little girl, reminds Rue of her daughter and the woman believes the child is the reincarnation of her.
Both are on a single DVD and are a lot of kitschy fun.The film starts with Winters telling her daughter a bedtime story and the scene is quite charming...until the camera pulls back and you see that the child is dead and has been there for a very, very long time!
You soon see that Winters is indeed daffy and a psychic (Ralph Richardson) comes to the house and they have a séance--Winters is desperately trying to dead daughter.A bit later, a group of orphans are invited to this weird lady's home.
The oldest (Mark Lester--who STILL looks like he needs a haircut following his role in "Oliver!") is quite inquisitive and searches throughout the house finding all kinds of creepy props from Winters' deceased husband (a magician) as well as a secret room--Winters' dead daughter's room (though fortunately the corpse is now hidden).
As for the little girl, she has the same name as the dead daughter and reminds Winters of her lost child.
So, in a move that Lester thinks is akin to the witch in "Hansel & Gretel", Winters steals the little girl and hides her in the hidden room.
Shelley Winters plays the heartbroken and distraught widow Mrs. Forrest (Auntie Roo to all the kiddies), who also lost her daughter in an unfortunate accident.
I haven't watched very many of her films, but so far this is my favorite and she plays the role of Auntie Roo very well.
And reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel, Auntie Roo seems to also have an appetite for children, which turns out to be very bad for an orphaned brother and sister.
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.
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).
Here we have Shelley Winters playing a batty old lady with a large mansion, who likes to invite children across for parties to ease her loneliness.
Shelley Winters does a good job of acting here, but sadly the two children (Mark Lester and Chloe Franks) do not.
"Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" is decent enough but still watchable in the right mind-set.**SPOILERS**Shortly after her daughter's death, Mrs. Forrest, (Shelly Winters) becomes insane and tries to reconnect with her anyway she can.
After hosting a Christmas party for the local orphans, Winters kidnaps little Chloe Franks as a replacement daughter.
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.
"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..