How sad is this?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The first must-see film of the year.

Blistering performances.

Shelley Winters stars as widower Mrs. Forrest, who, having lost her daughter Katherine in an accident, now enjoys the company of children from the local orphanage, throwing a party for the best behaved kids at her house each Christmas. When Christopher Coombs (Mark Lester) and his younger sister Katy (Chloe Franks) crash the party, Mrs. Forrest takes a particular liking to the little girl, who reminds her of her own dear departed daughter. Her feelings towards Katy quickly become an obsession and she schemes to keep the girl as her own, although Christopher, convinced that the woman is a witch, is determined to rescue his sibling no matter what.Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is quite the oddity, drawing inspiration from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, with Mrs. Forrest tempting the kids with sugary treats to fatten them up, and preparing a roaring oven in the kitchen, which Christopher believes is intended for both he and his sister. Adding to the twisted atmosphere is the dessicated corpse of little Katherine that her progressively loopy mother keeps hidden in a secret room. All of this had bags of potential to be a thoroughly demented classic of macabre cinema, but the rather restrained execution prevents it from being so. Winters tries her best, hamming it up as much as possible in every scene, but even her best efforts fail to make this the ghoulish treat it could so easily have been.For a far more effective off-beat approach to the Hansel and Gretel story, watch Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby. Now that is seriously messed up!

"Auntie Roo" is marketed a a "crazy old dame" movie, but it's very confusing in it's intentions. Here we have Shelley Winters playing a batty old lady with a large mansion, who likes to invite children across for parties to ease her loneliness. Unfortunately two of the children get a bit nosey and Auntie Roo's dark secrets come tumbling out. What's wrong here is that the plot doesn't really give the viewer any clearly defined direction. The film uses the Hansel and Gretel fable as a parallel, and the constant reference to this subject matter does get a bit silly. Auntie Roo is not the witch that the children think she is, in fact the children terrorise her more than she does them. Maybe that was the twist that they were going for but I don't know if the story is supposed to paint the poor, misguided Roo as the villain, or the annoying children. It's all over the place. Who are you supposed to like? Nobody? Shelley Winters does a good job of acting here, but sadly the two children (Mark Lester and Chloe Franks) do not. I can't imagine anyone coming away at the end of this film feeling satisfied.

This is the opposite of Psycho. What I mean by that, is that the mom of a child keeps 'said' daughter in secret room, all deceased and no place to go. Auntie Roo is a creepy woman. Mrs. Claus with a dark side. The eccentric 50ish woman , obviously of money, that does neighborhood deeds. One of the traditions is staging a Xmas for local orphans. The parallel story to Hansel and Gretel was unnecessary for my taste. No explanation of what became of 'magician' husband. No explanation of how Katy died. Too many loose ends. What we are left with is 2 kidnapped orphans from the gathering. A suspicious, Danny Radcliffe lookalike aka Harry Potter , without the glasses and an innocent , naive young girl that resembles Roos deceased daughter.Two siblings ultimately fighting off , warped Roos kidnapping . In a nutshell, This movie has many holes in it. Fine acting all around. Just a so so flick to fill the time . Watch it as a CULTISH movie and you wont go wrong.

Mischievous Christopher (the terrific Mark Lester of "Oliver!" and "Eyewitness" fame) and his sweet little sister Katy (adorable blonde sprite Chloe Franks, who played the daughters of Christopher Lee in "The House That Dripped Blood" and Joan Collins in "Tales from the Crypt") are a couple of orphans living in Great Britian in the 1920's. Christopher convinces Katy that loopy recluse Rosie "Auntie Roo" Forrest (Shelley Winters chewing the scenery with her trademark four-sheets-to-the-wind hambone panache), a former music hall singer who once a year invites a bunch of kids to her huge, crumbling mansion for Christmas diner, is really a witch who plans to fatten Katy up and eat her. Director Curtis Harrington, adapting a fiendishly clever script co-written by veteran Hammer horror film scribe Jimmy ("The Curse of Frankenstein," "The Horror of Dracula") Sangster, whips up a delightfully twisted and darkly amusing Gothic black comedy version of "Hansel and Gretel." The first-rate cast have a ball with their juicy parts: Ralph Richardson as an eccentric charlatan medium, Michael Gothard (the crazed killer in "Scream and Scream Again") as a mean butler, Lionel Jeffries as a friendly, hearty police inspector, Hugh Griffiths as a jolly butcher, and Marianne Stone as a strict orphanage supervisor. Desmond Dickinson's polished cinematography, Kenneth J. Jones' spooky orchestral score, and the marvelously macabre conclusion are all solid and satisfying as well. Good, ghoulish fun.