WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? (1969)
Director: Lee H. Katzin
Anchor Bay Entertainment

The acclaimed, Oscar winning success of 1964's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE spawned a succession of imitations during the remainder of the decade. Employing middle-aged, notable, Hollywood stage & screen actresses, the public was served an array of "Who," "What" and "Why" type melodramas all hoping to have the same impact as their prototype. Although most of them met with some critical favoritism, the bulk of them sank into a pool of obscurity.

This 1969 offering was produced by BABY JANE's director Robert Aldrich. In it, Geraldine Page plays a wicked, alcoholic widow, Claire Marrable, whose husband left her with nothing. She hires housekeepers but quickly knocks them off--after arranging to acquire their savings--and buries the bodies in the garden of her Arizona desert home.

Mrs. Dimmock (Ruth Gordon) is next up for the position, but her real purpose for taking the job is to find out what happened to her friend, Miss Tinsley, the last housekeeper that disappeared. Soon Page becomes suspicious of Gordon, and their relationship culminates in a deadly conflict.

Page does a disturbingly animated turn as the bitchy lead, and Gordon (fresh from her Oscar success in ROSEMARY'S BABY) gives a surprisingly sympathetic performance. Although the film is talky and stretched out, and its supporting characters (Robert Fuller, Rosemary Forsyth, etc.), appear only to slightly augment the narrative, there are a handful of genuinely profound scenes, namely an attempt at beating a dog to death, and Gordon's delayed suffering.

Anchor Bay's transfer of this 30-year-old movie looks very smooth, with nice colors, and it's letterboxed at 1.85:1 and 16x9 enhanced. The sound is very crisp and audible. There are slight blemishes in the form of cue marks and a few scratches that appear to be embedded in the film's negative. The original Cinerama trailer is included, complete with offscreen voices chanting, "Aunt Alice?, Aunt Alice?, Aunt Alice?..." (George R. Reis)

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