Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

Mark Lester fights back in Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

Curtis Harrington's Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, from 1972, was released at the end of the hagsploitation cycle of the 60s. An AIP production filmed in England, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? displays Harrington's talent for bricolage, but also the lack of narrative drive that hampers most of his features. The film varies in tone, unsure whether it wants to be a fable for children or something macabre for adults. Mark Lester, playing another orphan after the commercial success of Oliver!, and Chloe Franks are stand-ins for Hansel and Gretel, both appropriately pale and thin. Their fleshy counterpoint is Shelley Winters, more deluded than evil as the witch figure. Ms. Winters' performance can hardly be called good, but it is effective in a bull in a china shop way. There is a peculiar combination of masochism and narcissism in Ms. Winters' persona that cause her to be sacrificed like a fatted calf to the audience: in A Place in the Sun, The Night of the Hunter, The Diary of Anne Frank, Lolita, The Poseidon Adventure and the fiery finale of this film. Various distinguished British thesps are on hand to do bits of business and pick up a paycheck: Hugh Griffith, Lionel Jeffries and Judy Cornwell contribute. Ralph Richardson wins the acting derby as a seedy medium. Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is campy entertainment, but only fitfully gripping as a film.