Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

MOVIE #1,293 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.25.23 Ah, the Xmas slasher! Strap in for my first annual holiday triple header descent into this very specific world of pain. I've mulled over doing a full month of holiday pictures (horror or otherwise) but that just seems like too much. It's one thing in Shocktober, because there are endless horror subgenres from throughout the history of the medium and all around the world to help mix things up. But I think I'd go insane if I had to watch 25 or more straight Christmas pictures. I had no idea that this one, with its very funny title, was directed by Curtis Harrington, whom I discovered earlier this year and declared my intentions to do a Director Focus on. Well, that will have to wait because Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? was simply calling my name after googling “first Christmas slasher movie.”

But I wouldn’t even call this a horror and, truth be told, it’s barely a thriller. It’s definitely very Christmas-y but it otherwise gives off demented after-school special vibes. The premise is quietly bonkers: the film focuses on a demented American widow living in her husband's English manor who throws a lavish overnight Christmas party for ten of the best-mannered children at the local orphanage and becomes obsessed with a young orphan girl who resembles her dead daughter. Shelley Winters plays the titular "Auntie Roo," host of this gala orphan event.

The story of "Hansel and Gretel" is mirrored in these contemporary times and a literal reading is present in voice-over provided by the brother of the orphan girl whom Auntie Roo is fixated upon. One really interesting aspect of this is that this boy is the only one interpolating the fairytale saga. There's no actual evidence that Auntie Roo plans to cook and eat them (she’s not some sadistic killer, just a troubled, grieving mother). He even gives a devilish grin while she burns to death, and both siblings give a smile when they make off with the jewels hidden in the teddy bear. It's an interesting wrinkle to what's already a really enjoyable movie.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,292 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,294 ⫸

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Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (U.S. title: Who Slew Auntie Roo?) is a 1972 horror-thriller film directed by Curtis Harrington and starring Shelley Winters, Mark Lester, and Sir Ralph Richardson. Based partly on the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel", the film focuses on a demented American widow living in her husband's English manor who becomes obsessed with a young orphan girl who resembles her dead daughter. It was released on February 11, 1972.