6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Mrs. Marrable (Geraldine Page) is a society matron who's had some shocking news. Her late husband left her only a stamp collection! Determined to maintain her extravagant lifestyle, she takes advantage of an unlikely new source of income - her housekeepers - by robbing them not only of their life savings but also their lives! The turnover rate for help speeds faster than a revolving door...until Mrs. Marrable's latest hire (Ruth Gordon) develops a drive to unearth the terrible secret buried in the front yard!
Starring: Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon (I), Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Fuller, Mildred DunnockHorror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
BDInfo
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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.
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? 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.
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.
2014
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