Aunt Ruth Chandler

'"One sound down here and I promise I'll kill the both of you. Not just punish you, kill you. Dead."

- Ruth Chandler "You've probably got the clap now, but never mind. They've got cures these days."

- Ruth '''

Aunt Rutherine "Ruth" Chandler is the main antagonist of the novel and film adaptation of The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. It is based on the real-life murder case involving a sixteen-year-old Indiana girl and her caretaker, Gertrude Baniszewski. She was played by Blanche Baker.

The Girl Next Door
The film begins with David Moran reflecting on his past after he witnessed a hit and run in 2007. The film then goes back to the year 1958, and it is there that he met two young girls named Meg and Susan Loughlin. Their parents were killed in a car accident, and they were sent to live with their aunt as a result. Their aunt by marriage was named Ruth Chandler and she would routinely dish out punishments on the two defenseless women. Her favorite victim, however, was Meg. She would constantly accuse her of being a whore and she would purposefully starve her. When she tried to tell a police officer about everything that her aunt had done to her, Ruth punishes her by binding her to a cellar in the basement. She would also appoint her own children and even most of the neighborhood children into torturing her niece. She would even allow them to have their way with her, and it's also blatantly shown that she had molested her herself.

Susan herself didn't fare any better. Whenever Meg didn't comply to Ruth, she would punish her for her sister's perceived disobedience. The children of the neighborhood also consider her as nothing but a plaything. They would cut her, beat her, and burn her with the butts of their cigarettes. David then decides that enough was enough, and attempted to free the two sisters from their bondage.

David returns to the house later on, and he discovers, to his horror, that Meg was being raped by her cousin, Willie. Ruth then tries to convince David to take his turn with the helpless young woman, and when he refused, Ruth carved "I FUCK, FUCK ME" on Meg's stomach. Ruth's assistants later tied David up, and they proceeded to mutilate the young woman with a blowtorch.

David manages to untie himself the next day, and he soon finds Susan tending to her sister, who was unconscious at the time. She then stated that Meg had tried to take her with her in an effort to escape from the house, but Ruth caught them before they could make it out the door. She then says that Ruth had been touching her to the extent of making her bleed, and this caused Meg to not want to leave. David then tells her that everything would be alright.

Fearing that Meg might not last any longer, David set the cellar on fire. When Ruth arrived to the cellar, he proceeded to violently beat her to death with Susan's crutch while her sons were arrested. He then retrieved her (Meg's) Mother's ring, and took it to the dying Meg. Meg accepted the ring and finally succumbed to her wounds.

The film then ends by going back to the present, and David remembering Meg's words.

Differences Between the Book and the Film
As with most film adaptations of books, several scenes from the original book were changed due to its explicit scenes. The scene in which Meg's vagina was mutilated with the tire iron was only suggested in the film whereas in the novel, it was described in full detail. The way in which Ruth meets her end is also different in both versions. In the film adaptation, David kills Chandler by using a tire iron, while in the novel, she fell off the stairs and snapped her own neck when she was trying to hit David. The film is actually considered tame compared to the original book.

Personality
Aunt Ruth was, quite simply, a very disturbing individual. In the novel that the film was based on, Ruth appeared as being a single mother who was a severe alcoholic. She was also noted for being mentally unstable and only became an all-out sociopath once she took Susan and Meg under her care. Ruth was also extremely misogynistic and believed that all women were whores who deserved to be treated like animals [never minded the fact she herself was a women] and men where stupid who only knew how to work and then abandon women when their needed the most as when she explains her back story with her ex husband and how she insulted David's father.

She also didn't seem to care for her own children and unknown if she abused them as well. She was shown as being very negligent of them, however.