What's the Matter with Helen?

The sons of two very different women are convicted of murder. Fearing for their safety in their small town in 1930s America, star-obsessed Adelle (Debbie Reynolds) decides to get a fresh new start in Hollywood, and convinces the quiet and religious Helen (Shelley Winters) to join her. They exploit the Shirley Temple craze by running a successful instructional school that teaches child actresses singing and dancing. Things seem to be going well for both until Helen starts to have crazed flashbacks about her "former life." But things have never looked better for Adelle, so What the hell is the matter with Helen?!

This movie is a hoot! Debbie Reynolds looks like a classic Hollywood starlet (fantastic costumes and makeup), and it is hilarious and sickening fun watching Shelley Winters in a downward spiral. Agnes Moorehead has an amusing cameo as a Radio evangelist with whom Helen becomes obsessed. The major drawback of the movie is the musical sequences. There are several, and while they do serve as a contrast to the more explicitly twisted elements in the film, showing entire song and dance routines is unnecessary (the scene where Reynolds tap-dances comes to mind here). It is also unfortunate that the film does not take advantage of the themes it presents. A deeper exploration of Helen's psychosis might have proved fascinating, scary, and even amusing.

Overall, What's the Matter with Helen? is an entertaining psychological horror/thriller that does its job but gets weighed down by filler drama and musical sequences. Recommended to fans of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and anyone who entertained by Shelley Winters going crazy. My Rating: 6/10.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS and SHELLEY WINTERS try to escape their sordid past (their sons were convicted of a brutal killing), so they flee to Hollywood in the 1930s and open a talent school for kiddies who want to become the next Shirley Temple.

It's a fun idea for a black comedy, and director Curtis Harrington makes the most of a story by Henry Farrell that pretty much adapts some of the same material he used in other thrillers written exclusively to give aging divas the chance to do some melodramatic emoting. While this doesn't reach the heights (or depths) of BABY JANE or CHARLOTTE, it does provide a lot of camp fun for film addicts familiar with the '30s scene.

DENNIS WEAVER has the only interesting male role, but the film belongs to Debbie (she sings and dances, too) and Shelley (who has a madcap time going insane) and there's even a shocking ending to keep the horror fans happy.

If you enjoy this sort of thing, done previously in similar films like WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?, this one is easy to take.

This is certainly NOT a movie to laugh at, rather than with, as one commentator indicates. This move has an understated black comic humor running through it that is simply delirious fun! And that "borders on a bad musical" that another commentator mentions? Well, I believe it's supposed to be bad. In fact, frightening so. One of the major points of the film is how we live our dreadful lives in sad imitation of equally dreadful Hollywood stars. And these kids are but the sad tools of monstrous parents, forcing them to play bad imitations of Shirley Temple, or worse, trashy child vamps! And the worst of them all is Debbie Reynolds, who - when given a bouquet of gardenias - can only remark, "Oh! Joan Crawford's favorite!

See this movie. Observations like the one quoted in the title to this post will surely make you wet your pants. And if that doesn't, then Agnes Morehead's milking her flock for donations in support of her CHURCH OF THE OPEN HAND should do it. Or how about the poem she recites that goes something like, "Give it up for to God. It's time you took action. You should make Jesus your main attraction!"

The audience at the screening I went to the other night was actually on their feet cheering after the film.

In New York, the sons of Adelle Bruckner (Debbie Reynolds) and Helen Hill (Shelley Winters) are convicted for a dreadful murder. Adelle decides to move to Hollywood to open a dance school and invites the religious Helen to go with her. They change their names to Adelle Stuart and Helen Martin and are successful in the school. When Adelle meets the millionaire Linc Palmer (Dennis Weaver), they fall in love with each other. But soon Helen is haunted by their ghosts from the past and affects her behavior and relationship with Adelle.

"What's the Matter with Helen?" is a great crime film with excellent performances. The plot is mysterious and Shelley Winters is fantastic in the role of a deranged woman. The dark conclusion is perfect for the story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Obsessão Sinistra" ("Sinister Obsession")

Slick, colorful Gothic horror tale features the veteran leading ladies in top form. Debbie Reynolds perfects that 1930's platinum blonde/Jean Harlow image, and Shelley Winters gives what is possibly her all-time best performance as the maniacal Helen. The film was directed by cult favorite Curtis Harrington, and was written by Henry Farrell author of the novel on which the classic film WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? was based. Farrell has concocted an equally effective mixture of horror and hollywood here. Harrington's next venture into the macabre was the similarly Gothic and atmospheric WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO?, also featuring the inimitable Shelley Winters in the titular role.