Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things

Don't be deceived by the misleading title, because the truth is that Aunt Martha CONSTANTLY does dreadful things. In fact, "Aunt Martha" is one badass brick of a Bea Arthur lookin' transvestite who's on the lam after robbing a bank, and living incognito with Stanley, "her" virile, but dope-addled lover/accomplice. And while she may seem like a charm-schooled and self composed hostess, Aunt Martha's infernal hostilities are easily roused by the winsome young girls who follow Stanley home from time to time. Quick to exterminate these potential threats in a variety of gruesome ways, Aunt Martha proves herself a most formidable adversary when it comes to competing for Stanley's affections.

Delightfully off-hand weirdness, AUNT MARTHA is archetypal of the anything-goes craziness of low-budget 70s cinema...a film so abstractly imagined and impulsively realized, it alights with a desultory otherness so reverently sincere that it steals a place in your heart usually reserved for awkwardly cross-bred puppies. Forgivable of its general inelegance, this is a fine specimen of a most exiguous film species.

7/10.