This is the more ambitious and complicated of the two shows. Back in America, Harrington splits his attention between the psycho- drama and fairly accurate recreations of 1930s Hollywood kitch. This closest of all the imitators to the Robert Aldrich source movie, What's the Matter with Helen? isn't about movie stars, but it's soaked in stage mothers, bratty child actors, and fan adulation.

As in Baby Jane?, we have a diabolical pairing of 'aging' female stars. Neither are particularly old, but Shelley is sufficiently heavy to make us forget she was ever a starlet. Reynolds is just on the far side of a well-maintained 40, and seems to have decided to look the same as she did when she was 30 ... in the scenes when she's supposed to show some wear, it looks like they had to put old-age makeup on her. Adelle's new career teaching tots to tap dance (affording several showoff moments for Debbie - one can't help of thinking of Postcards from the Edge here) would be untroubled if not for Helen's meltdown - Winters has Hitchcockian visions of knives, imagines that strange avengers are tracking her down, and obsesses over her rabbits while attaching her emotions to Adelle. When things get violent, Adelle becomes an accomplice in crime, but otherwise stays out of the central mystery. The result is that Helen's problem becomes kind of an inconvenience that keeps a plot going, but doesn't lead to any great character developments between the women.

The look of the film is a slightly subdued Singin' in the Rain artificiality, and is interesting in itself, as are the constant insider references, such as the 'Joan Crawford gardenia' gag. A constant flow of '30s hit songs help make the story seem more like a fantasy, than a period picture. Some mayhem and suspense work in a melodramatic sense, but the picture never delivers the shocks or the delirious extremes of acting that might make it stand out. The plot twist at the end has some slight irony but is rather inconsequential.

All the acting elements are fine, but again, the story doesn't organize them to play upon the central premise. Dennis Weaver is interestingly cast against type as a sophisticated dream date for Debbie, but the picture cuts off just as he finally gets involved in the mystery. Likewise, the colorful Micheál MacLiammóir character functions as a red herring and not much else. Timothy Carey does a down-and-out bit that we also know won't develop into anything. Agnes Moorehead's short scene is nice, but again very minimal... and its effect is to make us wonder how both films would play, with Moorehead in the Winters roles. Like Auntie Roo?, Helen seems to have been a pre-sold 'crazy old actresses' project with a predictable script that the stylish Harrington did his best to enliven and embellish.

MGM's DVD of What's the Matter with Helen? has a bright and colorful transfer that gives it more punch than Roo?. The show-bizzy moppet dance revue, with its weird Mae West imitation, is a standout. The trailer makes the show look much gorier than it is.

The original Baby Jane? had a definite sordid aspect. Curtis Harrington brings an overall artistic seriousness to both of these derivative shows, which make them much more interesting than their borderline trashy scripts. He downplays the violence, which makes no attempt to be convincing, at a time when mainstream horror was just beginning to run wild with gore. The films are more like shallow character studies than they are Horror pictures, with a spoofy willingness to celebrate the fame of Winters and Reynolds. For a 'campy' director, Harrington doesn't play up the potential perversity in either film - Shelley Winters is weird in both stories, but her attraction to Debbie is desperate hysteria, and not sexual.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? rates:
Movie: Good -
Video: Fair
Sound: Good
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: September 5, 2002