What Became of Jack and Jill? (1972)

hyped garbage

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I do not think that this film was released in the UK.It certainly has not made it out on DVD.It is a rather strange film.It takes an awful long time to get to its climax and when it does all you can think its"so what".In fact when the couple go into see the solicitor about the reading of the will you think ,rightly,from that moment on that everything is about to go downhill.It is difficult to know why the makers thought this film was worth making.It is not a horror film,it is not sexploitation it is not a mystery thriller,it is just a mess.One can only feel pity for dear old Mona Washbourne that she felt that she had to appear in this.Although only 69 when the film was made she looks absolutely dreadful.

What Became of Jack and Jill is an extremely rare British psycho chiller, and a rather good film to boot. The film takes on the idea of 'murder for profit' and mixes it with a family theme and the idea of lazy youngsters not wanting to get a job. I do have to admit that the copy I saw was sourced from a very old VHS and thus the quality was rather shabby; but in spite of that, it's still clear to see that Bill Bain's film is very well made and effective, despite not having the luxury of a big budget and star names on the cast list. The film actually has nothing to do with the classic nursery rhyme - and I'm not sure where the title comes from considering the male lead's name is 'Johnny'. Anyway, we focus on a young man living with his grandmother, who just happens to be sitting on a fortune. Naturally, the grandson wants to get his selfish mits on this fortune and so does his girlfriend; so the two hatch a plot to send the grandmother insane; leading to her death and leaving the pair free to spend all her money. However, things do not exactly go to plan.The film is actually quite slow and the plot very relaxed in terms of it's plotting; but while the film is not particularly exciting, the slow plot does benefit it in that we get time to know the characters and the situation to ensure that the film is always intriguing. The acting is fairly decent too with the three central performers doing well in their roles. Paul Nicholas ('Blind Terror') convinces in his role as the grandchild that wants his grandmother out of the way so he can enjoy life, while Vanessa Howard (the biggest standout in Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly) is ice cold as his scheming girlfriend. Mona Washbourne ('Fragment of Fear') rounds off the central cast and gives the only likable character of the whole piece. The film is much better while there are three leads in it; after the death of the grandmother, there's some amusement in the aftermath but the rest of the film doesn't live up to the promise of what went before it. Still, What Became of Jack and Jill, while not a classic, is certainly an interesting little film and it's worth a look if you can find a copy.

This is an obscure English thriller, whose interrogative, nursery rhymesque title suggests an attempt to connect it to the series of bigger-budgeted "crazy old lady" thrillers directed by Robert Aldrich and Curtis Harrington ("Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", "Who Slew Auntie Roo?", etc.). The old lady here though (played by Mona Washburn) is genuinely sweet, and the villains are her lazy, amoral grandson and his sexy Lady Macbeth-in-training girlfriend (Vanessa Howard). The two young people plot to get their hands on grannie's money, but rather than simply pushing her down the stairs they hatch an elaborate plot to convince her that radical youth have taken over England are planning to do away with "oldies" like her. This is thus kind of like a nasty horror version of the recent film "Goodbye, Lenin", but not played for (intentional) laughs.This is an entertaining movie while Washburn is in it, but the other two characters are so disagreeable that it's hard to care much about them after she exits, and the young couple are also too one-dimensional to really relish them getting their eventual just desserts either. This isn't really the fault of the actors though. Vanessa "Girly" Howard is especially good(even if her failure to take off her clothes is pretty regrettable).This movie was also probably a little too tame for 1972, even for the famously violence-adverse British, and this too might have led to it's failure and current obscurity. Still it isn't a bad movie, and deserves at least a minor footnote in the history of the British psycho thriller.

This is one of those films almost no one living seems to have seen, yet remember. I only caught it once in '72 or '73 but found it great fun. An opportunistic young couple are after an elderly lady's money ... their plot & how they set it up is absorbing. This is a half-remembered movie, probably in line with the youth-oriented '70's American flicks like Three in the Attic and Wild in the Streets, which I would welcome enjoying again. It's not great, but it's very enjoyable "black humour".