Alice, Sweet Alice

source: Alice, Sweet Alice

I just viewed the DVD of this film and have state that as many times as I've seen it in the past, this vicious little thriller just keeps getting better. I first saw this at an early morning pre-release screening for the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror films. I remember thinking, at that time, that this was just an "OK" little low budget flick. Several years later I caught the film on the bottom half of a double bill and have remained impressed ever since. Incredibly stylish direction, an early 60s time period, natural wining performances, great kill scenes and a logical twist I never saw coming. Highly Recommended!

This movie really disturbed me...i'm not sure what it was about this movie but I just did not like it. It was a little bit boring at times but it did keep me scared so I have to give credit for that. But some of the stuff in this movie just about made me sick to watch. (SPOILERS) I really hated the scene where the lady smashed the guys face with the rock and then pushed him off the building ughh that gave me a weird feeling when i was watching it. Most of the times when I watch something scary I have fun watching it considering I like being scared and all, but this one was just way too disturbing in my opinion. 4/10 (4 because it kept me scared)

"Communion"-the second film by Alfred Sole(after * "Deep Sleep"-1973)is one of the most underrated horror movies ever made.Not many horror fans heard about this gem,so if you find it you'll not be disappointed.Young Brooke Shields is killed in church,and the prime suspect is her creepy sister Alice(brilliant Paula Sheppard of "Liquid Sky").With its oppressive religious atmosphere,gory as hell murders and nerve-wracking tension,this is surely one of the best horror movies of the 70's.Alphonso DeNoble("Bloodsucking Freaks")is particularly memorable as a fat pervert landlord,and there is really gruesome staircase slashing which shocked me beyond belief!10 out of 10-find this low-budget chiller and prepare to be scared!

It's a murder mystery * slasher movie built around the goings-on at a Catholic church. The little girls are lined up backstage for their appearance at their first holy communion. Brooke Shields, the last in line, is strangled and her body stuffed into a window seat and set afire. That's the good part. The audience gets to see the killer too, but he or she is all dressed up in an oil slicker like the Gloucester Fisherman and wears a halloween mask of a smiling young girl. Suspicion is immediately cast on another young girl, Alice, and for good reason. She showed up late for the service, is seen coveting and hiding a veil that may have belonged to Shields, and owns an oil slicker, a mask, and a butcher knife. Also, boy, is she a waspy thing, insulting, shrieking angrily at everyone, especially her critical aunt, ridiculing a tenant in her apartment house who is morbidly obese. This obese guy is great. He can't act but he looks perfect, with his shaved head and goatee. He listens to scratchy opera records and mopey old torch songs, keeps a room full of kittens, and doesn't clean up his apartment. I suppose the opera and his effeminate tone are designed to suggest his sexual orientation, but then he puts moves on the eleven-year-old Alice, which simply confuses things. I guess he's polymorphously perverse. But, if the truth be told, you hardly notice the confusion because in fact the marginal utility of his sexual orientation is so low. The confusion is already so bountiful that, following Weber's law of just-noticeable-differences, the guy's homosexuality makes hardly a dent. During some of the killings, the violins shriek exactly like those in Hitchcock's superb "Psycho." I won't go on too much longer. The murders multiply. Father Tom, at the church, is the only guy we can possibly identify with. He looks the part and sounds reasonable. There's blood all over the place after the initial strangling. Alice's aunt goes, Alice's estranged father goes (I think), the fat guy goes, Father Tom goes -- all bathed in blood. I was sorry to see Brooke Shields get it so early, and in her first movie too. But I didn't believe she was eleven years old. I believe she's never been eleven years old, but that she's always been a middle-aged midget, parading her cuteness around like Shirley Temple did before her. Wild horses couldn't drag the identity of the murderer from me, but I will say that the reveal comes as a shock. It's rather like Thelma Ritter turning out to be the murderer in "Rear Window." And there's just as much motivation, which is to say none at all. To cap it off, after the murderer is apprehended during mass, Sweet Alice leaves the church, stunned, and on the way she opens a bag she's been carrying and therein lies -- a butcher knife, which she partly withdraws in the most sinister fashion. What this is supposed to signify is, well, there are some things man was never meant to know, and this is one of them. As a minor carp, I didn't particularly like the way that Catholic liturgy is put on display as if this were all a freak show. The mass is in Latin (gosh!), the communicants are seen from Father Tom's point of view with their tongues hanging out, and there are other grotesqueries, such as religious icons made to look like the garish and spooky figures in Madame Tussaud's. What a meretricious kettle of fish.

It's a little eerie and in the beginning looks like there's some potential. A lot of reviewers said it stuck with them, the only thing that sticks with me is the overacting. The killer, which is easy to figure out from about ten minutes into the movie, makes no sense! The motives are ludicrous. There are so many better eerie horror movies to watch. Anything by Alfred Hitchkok for example, at least he put in some thought and it made bloody sense.

I can remember first seeing the image of a girl in a yellow raincoat wearing a translucent mask and thinking it was one of the creepiest things I had ever seen. I was very curious to finally watch the film that contained this frightening image. Alice, Sweet Alice starts off very shocking and very dramatic in the first half. The story of a young girl suspected of having murdered her younger sister during first communion was horrifying and at times difficult to watch. Unfortunately the plot deviates from that storyline and the movie loses most of it's emotional resonance and becomes yet another silly slasher film. The first half of the film works well but is unfortunately undone by the uninteresting plot twists.

Alice Spages (Paula Sheppard) is a rebel and problematic twelve year-old girl that lives with her divorced mother Catherine (Linda Miller) and her younger sister Karen (Brooke Shields). Catherine gives more attention to Karen, neglecting her older daughter. During the first communion of Karen, the girl is strangled by a woman dressed with a St. Michael's yellow coat and a mask. Alice takes her place in the line wearing her veil that she claims she had found on the floor and becomes the prime suspect of the police. When Catherine's sister Annie (Jane Lowry) is stabbed on the leg several times, she accuses Alice and the girl is sent to psychological evaluation under the protest of her parents and their friend Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich). Alice's father Dominick Spages (Nies McMaster) seeks evidences to prove the innocence of Alice. "Communion" is a creepy and stylish horror movie of the 70's and practically the debut of Brooke Shields in the cinema with a minor but important participation. The dramatic story discloses insanity through weird characters in a period of heavy rain and using the Catholic principles of communion, sin and guilty, giving an atmosphere that recalls Dario Argento's movies. The relationship among Catherine, Father Tom and Dominick is not clear, especially because the Catholic Church requires celibate from the priests. In one moment, Catherine is ready to leave town alone, and she says to Father Tom that Alice would be better with him, giving an indication that Alice might be Tom's daughter. If my guess is right, the behavior of fanatic Catholic Annie that apparently blames Catherine for getting married pregnant of Alice is explained, and the conclusion is perfect, with Mrs. Tredoni saying that "children should pay for the sins of their parents"; calling Catherine of *; and stabbing Father Tom. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Comunhão" ("Communion") Note: On 29 May 2012, I saw this film again on DVD. Note; On 06 Sep 2022, I saw this film again.

This exceedingly unpleasant slasher thriller has a memorable, unnerving atmosphere and does deliver some shocks, but it's so gory and nasty that it leaves you in a foul mood. You don't get any pleasure from this film; you get only suffering, blood and hysteria. The scene where the killer smashes a victim's teeth with a brick or the bloody climactic murder just went too far for my taste. The film also has a nice creepy score, which in some parts is all-too-reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's work for "Psycho", and director Sole also seems to have been influenced by that Hitchcock classic. (**)

I've heard a lot about this movie so I bought it on DVD. Fortunately I got it very cheap or I would be very sad right now. I've heard that this is a little horror gem, a good movie with suspense and many twists and that it has a great ending. This couldn't be further from the truth (at least in my opinion). THE GOOD: The story is interesting and has a lot of potential. This could have been a much better film. THE BAD: The direction and camerwork are nothing special. Not bad but not really good either. The acting is below average and sometimes comes close to awful. The dialog is stupid. The movie is unbalanced. It starts as a horror movie, it continues as a family drama, then goes back to horror. The characters are flat and undeveloped. The killings are very unoriginal and not at all scary. The effects suck. THE WORST: *****SPOILERS****** You can tell from the start that Alice didn't kill her sister since the killer is double her size. Duh! There goes the plot's main twist. And even if you overlook that, the killer's identity is revealed halfway through the film rendering Alice irrelevant for the rest of the story. The killer's motives are very thin and she is hardly believable. Some reviewers say that the end and the identity of the killer was unpredictable. Of course it was unpredictable. The bad guy was one of the extras. Who could predict that? Anyway, I'm tired of saying bad things about this movie so I'll just sum it up in one word: BORING. Skip this one unless you want to check for yourself what's this movie all about. I give it 4 out of 10.