Another scorcher this week. Good thing you can watch movies in the air conditioning…. And that Jet’s Pizza delivers….
Movie #1: What’s the Matter with Helen (1971, with Shelley Winters, Debbie Reynolds)
“A musical-horror-melodrama-satire-love story”….as described on the DVD box. It was certainly all of those things. Boy, this movie was chock full of just weirdness…murder, fake identities, co-dependency, religious fanaticism, and…. What we believe may have been (& we’re not sure whether intentionally done or not)… some underlying homoeroticism… The basic plot is that these seemingly normal Midwestern mothers decide to move to California after their sons are imprisoned for murder. They assume fake names to avoid discovery. Helen (Winters) and Adelle (Reynolds… and for the record, Kathy always pronounces this “A”-delle, which is really rather Southern for an upstate New York born and bred Yankee transplant….) open a dance studio which Adelle, the more stable of the 2 women, runs. The movie progresses through Adelle finding love again and Helen spiraling further and further down the religious fanatic rabbit-hole. It ends with a large-scale back yard bunny massacre, a dead Adelle, and Helen feverishly playing a recital as her mind completely vanishes into the ether of madness.
Things we loved: Debbie Reynolds’ costumes (particularly her shorts, they were cute!); Agnes Moorehead’s cameo as the fervent evangelist Sister Alma… give her a donation and “Youth shall be yours forever”.
Favorite Quotes: “She’s a small but horrendous creature!” spoken by the elocution tutor about one of the studio’s child pupils. “There it was…my one big moment…all bitched up!” spoken by Debbie Reynolds after Helen ruined the recital with her hysterical screaming “I’m going to make love to this pizza!” spoken by Jason about the delivery of our cheesy, deep dish Jet’s Pizza order
Ratings: Jason 4; Kathy 3; Me…3
Movie #2: Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” (1972, with Shelley Winters, Ralph Richardson, Lionel Jeffries)
Otherwise known as… “The 1.5 hours of my life I will never get back…”
Okay… it’s been solidified amongst our group that in later years, Shelley Winters was type-cast as the maniacal crack-pot. This is no exception. In a very loosely adapted Hansel & Gretel-esque story, Auntie Roo is a definitive nut-job who hides her mummified daughter’s corpse in a secret room behind a paneled mirror (Phantom of the Opera, anyone????), has a barn full of odd magician’s contraptions, including a working guillotine, which belonged to her husband whom no one has seen in ages—just vanished (perhaps that was his way of “going out for cigarettes and never coming back”), and hosts a creepy overnight Christmas party for a select number of the neighboring orphans. You guessed it—2 of the orphans are Hansel & Gretel and Auntie Roo is the witch.
Of the 2 movies, at least the first one had some musical numbers to keep it lively, and we could get our fill of eye candy with a very attractive Dennis Weaver (for those of you young folks… he played this loveable deputy with a limp in an old black & white Western show called Gunsmoke). This movie, on the other hand…. Has no redeeming qualities. The Hansel & Gretel adaptation is a stringy one that doesn’t seem to fit the period or the setting… it just doesn’t mesh well. Also… we really weren’t interested by anything in it. The children were annoying. The séances were laughable because you guessed right off the bat that it was all fake. We all figured this movie out within 10 minutes and then had to spend the other hour and 20 minutes going “Why are we watching this again….?????”
Things we loved: NOTHING
Most Disturbing Moment (at least for me): Towards the end...Auntie Roo goes to cup her dead daughter's cheek and the face just collapses inward into a pile of dust... no more face. That skeeved (Is "skeeved" a word? If not, it is now...) That skeeved me out. EW.
Favorite Quotes: “I wish she had at least eaten the kids… “ spoken by Kathy at the end
Ratings: Jason 1.5; Kathy ½; Me 1 (Jason only gave 1.5 because Shelley Winters plays crack-pot REALLY well….. which leaves me wondering about her actual mental wellness…. Just saying…)
Final thoughts: I wish whoever slew Auntie Roo had done it before they filmed this movie…
***NOTES:
1. As What's the Matter with Helen? was filmed in 1971, I’m not sure about the “no animals were harmed during the filming of this motion picture” status… we are just hopefully assuming that the backyard bunny massacre was done with stuffed bunnies and the torrents of bunny blood were actually glossy red nail polish…. Or something.
2. We were about to declare Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? the worst movie ever. However, to be fair, I asked that we vote by comparison. Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? or The Swarm. We unanimously still feel that The Swarm is the suckiest movie to date. (Sorry, Michael Caine…but we still love you!)
3. When you buy a DVD combo pack that declares “Midnight Movies” as the selling point of the combo pack…that just means that these movies are so bad the tv stations would rather air infomercials for overly emotional, ever perky, uber annoying Richard Simmons, some Japanese knife set you know the Japanese did not actually make, and skincare regimens made of some miraculous melon extract that will make your face look like a baby’s butt (yet all the melons in the grocery store look like shriveled up old prunes after about 3 days off the shipping truck from Peru). Yes… that DVD combo pack is that bad…back away….back away slowly….
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