If You Like the Psycho-Biddy Genre

Spoiler Alert! I’m going to give away practically everything for the following movie, because I want to comment on what happens.

I wasn’t going to write about this one at all, because I ended up disliking it so much. However, I mustn’t be selfish. Some of my readers like to read my movie write-ups. And I think many of them particularly like the psycho-biddy genre.

When I saw Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) on the schedule for TCM, I immediately set it to DVR. We subsequently discovered (but were not surprised, considering the title) that it was produced by Robert Aldrich, the man behind Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (original title Whatever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?).

Aunt Alice stars Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon. What a pedigree! How could we go wrong?

A better question is how could the script writers go so wrong? The movie opens promisingly enough with a funeral and Geraldine Page all set to be a merry widow. The next scene reveals to her and us that in fact she is left penniless. On to the murders!

The move wastes no time in getting to the murders. On must give them that. My problem is they don’t really explain what’s going on. I know from the description the lady kills her maids for their money and uses their bodies to fertilize her garden, but if that had not been the description, I think I would have gotten a little confused.

Another minor caveat, she’s not exactly fertilizing a garden. She gets her gardener to dig a big, deep hole, gets the maid into the hole and kills her, then plants a big old pine tree on top of the body. That old lady planting a big old pine tree (not a sapling, like a normal murderer would plant) is one of the most unbelievable parts in the picture.

Probably the most unbelievable part is how she gets the maids to work for her in the first place. According to this movie, there are plenty of lonely old ladies with large bank accounts willing to work for chicken scratch. Oh, and who are prepared to work for a raging virago. Seriously, Page is so mean I can’t believe she can get anybody to work for her.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Page was still killing the first maid. In general I have no problem with a thriller that gets right down to the killing. In this case, however, I could have used a scene where she gets the idea to kill the maid for the money. For one thing, they could have explained how the maid got so much money in the first place.

So there Page is, living in Arizona (also never explained) (at least I don’t think she started out in Arizona). At this point I usually make a little self-deprecating remark about how I ought to pay more attention to these things. I’m not sure it would have done any good.

Before Page offs the second maid (that we see; there were others in between), we see a little more of her method. Apparently she dangles her highly profitable stock market investments till the maid invests her own life savings. Without meeting the magic broker or signing any kind of contract. Well, I guess that’s not so far-fetched. People make a lot of stupid mistakes when they think they will get a large return.

Soon another tree is planted and Page is looking for another maid (we suspect now there have been other murders judging by the row of pine trees) (and can I just say, who plants pine trees in the desert, for heavens’ sake?). Enter Ruth Gordon, and we see some more of our killer’s evil method.

“I won’t pay you much,” she says smoothly, as if this were a minor glitch, like not having a vacuum cleaner. “So you won’t be able to save much.”

For God’s sake, who does that? Who makes it a job requirement that the employee have savings because the job pays crap? And who takes a job under those circumstances? Working, I remind you, for a mean, nasty old lady who treats you like dirt?

Then there’s this random beautiful chick who moves into the cabin next door with her nephew. This is a set-up right out of a romance novel: she’s a grieving widow and the nephew has really bad asthma, so the family sends them both to Arizona to heal their respective wounds. Only, of course, she’s not the main character and there’s no Mr. Rochester-type brooding mysterious guy for her to be suspicious of slash fall in love with (yes, you need to say “slash”). What a waste of a perfectly good set up!

She does get a love interest, by the way. It seems both our biddies have nephews. Page’s is married but I doubt that would stop him if Widow were having any of it. She’s not. She has some history with Gordon’s nephew, yet another thing not very well explained. It figures hugely into the plot, however, when they’re off canoodling while Gordon could REALLY use her nephew’s help.

I haven’t even gotten to the dog yet! Beautiful Widow and Asthmatic Boy (yes, it’s her nephew, but I think there are entirely too many nephews in this movie) adopt a stray dog. Of course anybody watching this sort of movie is immediately apprehensive on the dog’s behalf (unless you are an animal hater, in which case, stop reading now, we have nothing to say to each other).

Page is obviously (and not surprisingly) a dog hater. She is additionally concerned that the dog will dig up her handiwork, but come on! Each maid is six feet under with a pine tree planted on top. No mutt is going to dig that shit up without a backhoe.

I had a lot of other problems with this movie, but I think my post is running a bit long. Which, by the way, the movie did, too. I suppose it was entertaining, because I did watch it through to the end, but I didn’t like it. Still, if you like the psycho-biddy genre, it might be worth your time.