What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

Lee H. Katzin's 1969 film is a thriller set on a widow's ranch. Claire has been left without money after her husband's death; she hires elderly women as housekeepers, takes their savings, then kills them and buries them in the garden. Alice, the latest to arrive, is following the trail of a missing friend and trying to work out her method. The film builds a silent contest between the two women, neither of whom knows what the other knows, so that ordinary conversation carries threat. It belongs to the strand of thrillers about older women that the producer Robert Aldrich began in the same period and is a late example of it. The scenes between Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon are its body. The desert landscape and the empty house carry the unease. Who it's for: viewers who like classic suspense and character-led crime. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a fast thriller; the film advances through conversation.