Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? Reviews
		Apollo Movie Guide
	Ye gods, were movies ever really this campy? Worthwhile only as a testament to the over-baked and hysterical talents of Shelly Winters, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is just about the weirdest (and dumbest) variation on Hansel & Gretel ever conceived – and that includes cartoons. Winters plays a manic mama who’s trying to find replacements for her own dead kid… resulting in more dead kids. Fun stuff eh? This garish and mouldering old chestnut rambles on between high camp hysterics and loooong stretches of over-baked dramatics, and the result is a movie that’s 90 per cent boring and 65 per cent stupid. (If you think those percentages don’t add up, go rent the flick.) Two captive kids (one of whom is played by Mark Lester of Oliver! fame – not the movie director Mark Lester) spend much of their time running from their porcine persecutor, convinced that she wants to eat one or both of them. And since their attacker is the hefty Shelley Winters, one would assume that the kids might just be right. Fans of exaggerated and silly old camp-fests may hold a special place in their hearts for the British wackiness of movies like this one. And many of the older Hammer flicks have indeed aged quite well. Not so in this case. On the other hand, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is funnier by accident than many films are on purpose, so clearly there’s some potential entertainment hidden within.