Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 26, 2019

Note: This is a thriller where even a discussion of some relatively early plot points (which are not kept hidden, it should be added, even in the film’s key art) might be considered spoilers by some. Those wanting to avoid such revelations are encouraged to skip down to the technical portions of the review, below (not to mention also encouraged to not pay too much attention to the cover of this release).

Robert Aldrich hit considerable pay dirt in 1962 with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and again in 1964 with Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, paving the way for a veritable subgenre of films featuring aging female stars in desperate straits, straits that often featured elements of psychological unraveling. What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, a film Aldrich produced but did not direct (as Richard Harland Smith gets into in his appealing commentary included on this Blu-ray as a supplement) is certainly firmly within those parameters, but in a way, a more suitable analog might be tangentially linked to another Kino Lorber title being released in tandem with this film, the 1970 Movie of the Week entry The House That Would Not Die, albeit only insofar as it was part of the now iconic ABC series of “world premiere” films. Just a couple of months after ABC broadcast that Barbara Stanwyck horror outing, The Movie of the Week featured a really interesting adaptation of a little known Broadway flop written by the venerable Ira Levin of Rosemary's Baby fame, Dr. Cook’s Garden, starring Bing Crosby in the only “straight” dramatic performance he gave other than his Oscar nominated turn in The Country Girl. In a role that had been played during the work’s very brief Broadway run by Burl Ives, who some might argue had a more palpable sense of menace at his command than did Crosby, Crosby essayed the part of a seemingly avuncular country doctor (think a rural Marcus Welby, M.D.) who had been “culling the herd” (so to speak) of what the good (?) doctor considered “undesirables”, with his garden providing a clue to his nefarious activities. While not exactly the same, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? also features a bit of "culling", with a garden in this case being the actual burial grounds for the victims.

Claire Marrable (Geraldine Page) finds herself not just widowed, but improverished, as What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? opens. A toady (played by the great Peter Bonerz) detailing her late husband’s will informs here there are no assets other than a few items left in a briefcase (one such item will instantly prick up the hairs on the back of the necks of fans of Charade, and indeed it ends up playing out pretty much the same way as in that Stanley Donen film). The story then segues forward to find Mrs. Marrable evidently already in the throes of a murderous rampage, after a brief vignette showing her taking out her housekeeper Edna Tinsley (Mildred Dunnock) and “planting” her in the garden surrounding Mrs. Marrable’s home. Mrs. Marrable has evidently hit upon a foolproof scheme of inviting elderly women into her home under the guise of being her companion and more or less maid, and then killing them, taking whatever riches they had as her own.

Alice Dimmock (Ruth Gordon) is Mrs. Marrable’s new hire, and obviously is slated to become her next victim, though the cat and mouse game has at least a couple of surprises as things unfold. A new neighbor called Harriet Vaughn (Rosemary Harris) also complicates matters, as does a guy named Mike Darrah (Robert Fuller), who seems to be making eyes at Harriet but who turns out to have another connection to the story.

What Ever Happend to Aunt Alice? doesn’t mine the same Southern (and/or Hollywood) Gothic ambience that informed Aldrich’s two best known “aging female star” entries from earlier in the sixties, and in fact its sunny Southwestern locale may undercut some of the spookiness. Page and Gordon are a lot of fun as the unavoidable nemeses, but the film never really attains much suspense, some of which may be due to production problems which Smith gets into in his commentary.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber's Studio Classics imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The back cover of this release touts that this is a "brand new HD master from a 4K scan of the original camera negative". The results here are largely very commendable, reproducing the rather gaudy palette fairly accurately, though flesh tones can skew slightly pink at times, and there are still some variations in both overall color temperatures and densities. There are a number of optical dissolves in the film, where the grain field can understandably assume a slightly chunky, yellowish quality, but that same look can also crop up, albeit briefly and intermittently, in scenes that are not opticals (mostly outdoor material, for some reason). There are also still signs of age related wear and tear, including minor speckling and dirt, as well as some fairly noticeable, kind of purplish, vertical scratches that can be spotted in scenes like the big kitchen showdown between Page and Gordon late in the film.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? features a lively if at times kind of shallow sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly, though Gerald Fried's hyperbolic score (which Richard Harland Smith takes to task) has a bit of clipping. There's no major damage to report in the form of pops, crackling or dropouts.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Richard Harland Smith


• What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:01)

Additionally, trailers for other Kino Lorber releases are included.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is probably not in the same league as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hush. . .Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but it's kind of goofily (and campily) enjoyable on its own terms. Fans of Page and/or Gordon are probably most apt to enjoy this, and for them or for others considering a purchase, Kino Lorber has provided a release with generally solid technical merits and an enjoyable supplemental commentary.