Chi giace nella culla della zia Ruth?

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

From the opening scene, it is obvious that Rosie Forrest (aka Auntie Roo) is completely insane. She lives alone in a magnificent mansion in 1920s England and will never get over the death of her young daughter. In an attempt to fill this void, Auntie Roo has an annual Christmas party for a few of the best behaved children from the local orphanage. This year, a misbehaving brother and sister stowaway in the trunk of the car and join the party. Auntie Roo starts to believe the girl is her daughter, while the boy is convinced Auntie Roo is a witch. Mayhem ensues.

This is a clever, creepy, and amusing subversion of the "Hansel and Gretel" fairytale that puts forth the notion that the wicked witch might not be inherently evil or even malintentioned--just severely insane! 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. But overall, this is an underrated sick little fairytale. My Rating: 7/10

I had the fortunate circumstance to see this double-billed as a very young child with Bava'a Baron Blood. Some of the scenes remained in my mind - particularly the creepy figure of Shelley Winters. I recently set out to see the film again some 30 years later. I remembered more than I thought I had, and the film came back to me in large part. This is not a bad film nor a good film. As another reviewer noted, it is a pleasant, harmless time-waster - for those of us who enjoy "wasting" time on such things. Mark Lester and Chloe Franks play two orphans at an orphanage. Franks has an uncanny resemblance to the dead daughter of the orphanage's greatest patroness and benefactress, Shelley Winters. Winters is so good to the kiddies that every year she invites them to her sumptuous home at Christmas for yuletide fun. She has virtually no interest in Lester but soon has the keenest of hearts for the young Franks as her dead daughter's look-a-like. 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. Well, the movie has a poor story overall - but Winter's fine performance albeit over-the-top to be sure does add emotional depth to it. Director Curtis Harrington is very able behind the camera if not dazzling.

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. However, as is usually the case with Harrington, he milks the threadbare material for all it's worth and manages to create a rich, striking, really quite memorable picture that almost ranks as his best ever. Desmond Dickinson's beautiful cinematography is also a nice touch. The film is intended to be a travesty of sorts of the gruesome HANSEL AND GRETEL tale. 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.

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.

Mrs. Forrest (Shelley Winters) is a rich widow who had been married to a successful British Magician. 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. Auntie Roo quietly steals out after we think the child is asleep. The camera slowly pans to the cradle only to reveal a rotted corpse of a child in a nightgown. This sets the scenario for the film.

Auntie Roo is obviously an eccentric. She has constant seances in an attempt to communicate with her dead daughter. 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. Christopher and Katy Coombs, a brother and sister are not selected, but stow away in the back of the car. 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. The art and set direction are marvelous along with excellent camera work and lighting.

This film makes for a different and offbeat Christmas movie or just a plain "fun" movie to watch anytime!