What's the Matter with Helen?

- After their sons are sentenced to life in prison, Adelle (Debbie Reynolds) and Helen (Shirley Winters) begin receiving threatening phone calls because someone fells their sons got off easy. The pair decides to move to California to escape the... Full review

For fans of weird movies and these kinds of Grand Guignol horrors, "What's the Matter With Helen" is very nearly electrifying for about 3/4 of it's running time. Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters are both excellent as a pair of... Full review

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... Full review

It has taken me 24 years to find the courage to see this film again. Like another reviewer here, I was too young when I first saw this movie back in 1971 at the tender age of 7 (what were... Full review

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... Full review

The most bizarre of the cinematic sub-genres is the so called "The Great Ladies of the Grand Guignol": camp horror films which combined over-the-top melodrama with gothic thrills and always starred by seasoned and almost forgotten actress from hollywood golden... Full review

It was interesting to see the comments preceding my entry. I saw this movie when it first came out when I was 11 years old and it was really frightening at the time. The gruesome murders that the sons committed... Full review

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... Full review

My God was this movie funny! It is supposed to be a horror flick, but the out-dated nature of this really gives it a b-movie feel to it. Shelly Winters is absoulutely hilarious as Helen, the unstable, "all-knowing" woman on... Full review

From the writer of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "Hush .. Hush, Sweet Charlotte," this tail-end of the sixties horror cycle has some eerie and campy fun. Micheál Macliammóir does a Victor Buono-type bit, but too often the... Full review

The whole movie is very 1930s, right down to the phony studio streets and the 20-foot shadow that comes around the corner five seconds before the actor does. Debbie sets up a dance studio, and Shelley pounds out "Goody Goody" on the piano for lots of horrible little would-be Shirley Temples. ... Full Review

he layers of pastiche that fuel What's the Matter with Helen?multiply like Shelly Winters's titular character's fat white rabbits. In fashioning a flapper-era psycho-shocker with muted sepia tones and two histrionic performances from slumming movie starlets, director Curtis Harrington... ... Full Article

Henry Farrell, the man who brought us What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.Like that movie this movie is basically a character study of the relationship between two down on their luck women. ... Full Article

What's the matter with Helen?She's a raving lunatic, and given that she's played by Shelley Winters in 1971, she's obese, to boot. It doesn't help that Helen and her pal Adelle (Debbie Reynolds) are both mothers of sons who... ... Full Article