What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969)

Lack of good storyline.

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I hadn't seen this at all, until very recently on YouTube, and boy was I hooked! I found it a delicious black comedy in every sense of the word. Geraldine Page (a fine actress) very clearly enjoying herself here camping it up as the snooty and obnoxious Mrs Marrible. Geraldine was in good company with Ruth Gordon playing Mrs Dimmock. A very entertaining film, despite its dubious production values. I'd even go as far as to say that I was surprised to find out that this little gem was the supporting feature to the MAIN film, when theatrically released! See it, you will enjoy it!

I've begun to regret that "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" was ever made. Two over-the-hill stars and some cheap sets and a lot of psychological horror must have made a fortune otherwise there wouldn't be so many rip offs.I missed the first 15 minutes or so but don't think it matters much. This is pretty sick. It's my own opinion, and I'm pretty perverted myself -- debauched even -- if you ask my so-called friends and my shrink, Dr. Wilbur C. Veruckt. I promise you, Bill, you've seen the last of my checks. And don't think I don't know what's hanging in your closet.Is there anything more depressing than seeing two ladies who might, most generously, be defined as middle aged trying to kill each other by bopping each other over the head with pocketbooks and telephones? No. There is nothing more depressing.Geraldine Page, stage star, I gather has buried the body of her housemaid in the garden to provide fertilizer. An old friend of the housemaid, Ruth Gordon, applies for the position without revealing her identity. This is a big mistake on Gordon's part, a fatal one as it turns out.The next door neighbor is Rosemary Forsythe, pretty but too tall for me. We're talking women's basketball here. She and her son get somehow involved in the fertilizer business because they've adopted a dog who is attracted to Page's garden, drawn presumably by the scent of cadaverine and the prospect of bones. A loose blond roams the periphery of the story and has nothing to do with it. A deep-voiced young man is around too, exhibiting a talent that belongs on the small screen.The musical score is made up of electronically enhanced orchestral sounds that are dissonant, scratchy, distracting, and frankly irritating. The setting is a rather nice Spanish-style house in the Sonoran desert on the outskirts of Tucson, now probably swallowed up in urban sprawl, but no use is made of the location.If you enjoy seeing some snotty ill-groomed chatelaine sitting in a wheelchair flinging insults at her humble housemaid and nurse in what she, the mistress, seems to regard as high-falutin' speech, then this is your movie. Women are much better than men at humiliating and degrading others. Men have a tendency to simply backhand those they dislike. I kept waiting for Page to come up with some really lethal insult -- "Hence, horrible villain, or I'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head, Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd'in brine, smarting in lingering pickle." It might have fit the character but the lines never appeared. The writer must have been a dull and muddy-mettled rascal.

Few weeks ago I got hold to a copy of Ursula Curtiss' novel "The forbidden garden". Although not without its' flaws, it was a very enjoyable read - the plot premise was interesting, and how Curtiss plays with different narrative points of view was fascinating: Part of the novel is told through the eyes of a ruthless murderer, part is told through the eyes of a more or less uninvolved observer. The role of a third protagonist is unclear to both of them, and both draw very different conclusions. While reading, I thought that the book would make an interesting movie, though hard to make. Then I found out that they did make a movie out of it - WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?, from Robert Aldrich's studio. Apart from the campy title, which is a not-very-subtle reference to Aldrich's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, I thought the movie must be great with all the acting talent involved (Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, a young Rosemary Forsyth). But boy, was I wrong! Boy, did they butcher the book! And what a waste of talent it was... but let's start at the beginning. As I told before, the main protagonist of the book is a ruthless murderer - I'm not spoiling anything here, because it's told on the very first page of the book and during the first 5 minutes of the film: The serial killer actually is a seemingly frail, elderly lady of about 70 who nobody would ever suspect of such things. That's actually one of the main points that make the plot interesting. She hires a housekeeper-companion, a 50something, practical woman who is not what she seems to be. Let's switch to the movie: Geraldine Page, 45 when the movie was made and made to look only very slightly older, plays the murderer - she's very healthy-looking throughout the movie and not at all frail. The housekeeper, on the other hand, is played by petite, frail 70ish Ruth Gordon. Damn, what were they thinking???? Does that make any sense at all? It turns the interesting plot line upside down and makes it uninspired instead of fascinating. Both actresses give tour de force performances, but they are so blatantly miscast that they can't save the film. If they simply had switched roles, maybe the whole thing would look different. But no, it's just very bad, trashy "old lady's horror", a cheap copy of BABY JANE. Rosemary Forsyth has a very thankless role as the girl next door, the observer in the book, who is for no obvious reason given a tragic past (her husband died recently) and who gets a very dull romantic subplot of her own (which was there in the book, but covered no more than 3 pages) with wooden Robert Fuller, whose minor role in the book is in turn expanded. What was interesting in the book (the different perspective of the girl next door) was left out completely in the film. Then there's her nephew, who is portrayed as a difficult child and plays a key role in the novel - here, he is given minimized screen time and the usual "annoying brat" treatment. The only characters that seem to come right from the book are the old lady's nephew and his wife, especially Joan Huntington is genius as a bitchy socialite. But that's cold comfort. The film manages to make a decent showdown, but the ending is less than satisfactory - again, for no logical reason changed, since in the book the punchline was the appearance of a most unusual angel of vengeance, while the film gives us a very conventional solution with an uninspired, run-of-the-mill ironical turn. Adding to the underwhelming experience are the overall cheap look and a grating, fingernails-on-the-blackboard musical score. And what's that with all the senseless name changing? (Not very comprehensible is, for example, why young Harriet Crewe gets to keep her rather old-fashioned first name, but her last name is changed to Vaughn???)

A definite film of the macabre again proving that there was no one like Geraldine Page for these neurotic, vicious parts.In this one, Ruth Gordon takes a job as a maid in Page's home under false pretenses. It seems that Gordon had a disagreement with her long time domestic, played by Mildred Dunnock. In a huff, Dunnock walked out and went to work for Page.Seems that Page has quite a history. Once she finds out that her maids have no family, she does them in quite neatly.Throughout the film you constantly are hearing Page yelling Mrs. Dimmock to maid Gordon, as she begins to suspect that Gordon is no usual maid.The film takes place in the desert of Arizona which seems to place a peculiar and effective aura to the film.The ending is an absolute knockout.