Alice, Sweet Alice

Welcome back to Horror By Harrison! This week I’m covering Alice, Sweet Alice (originally titled Communion and sometimes known as Holy Terror). Luckily for you, faithful reader, this won’t include my entire horror origin story so this will be a little shorter than last week. 

Alice, Sweet Alice was directed by Alfred Sole, written by Rosemary Ritvo and Alfred Sole and was widely released on November 18th, 1977. Alice, Sweet Alice was made for a budget of $350,000 however Box Office Mojo doesn’t have any information about what it made at the Box Office. The film received mixed reviews upon release, with some critics praising the direction and screenplay and others condemning the violence and perceived anti-Catholic bias.

Alice, Sweet Alice follows a troubled young woman named Alice (Paula Sheppard) who is suspected of killing her younger sister Karen (Brooke Shields). After a series of other murders the true killer is revealed to be Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton), the housekeeper of the local priest. In the end Mrs. Tredoni is arrested and, unbeknownst to anyone, Alice takes her knife from the scene of the final murder and keeps it.

This was my first time watching this film and I had no prior knowledge or expectations going in. Ultimately, I came away from the film slightly underwhelmed. While there was certainly quite a bit about it that I admired and I think it starts off very strongly, the story feels unfocused and it all begins to fall apart in the second half.

Let’s start with the good, shall we? Sole’s direction is impressive and his use of Catholic imagery striking. Sole makes excellent use of his sets, particularly the warehouse set during the murder of Karen and Alice’s father Dom (Niles McMaster). The killer design is also fantastic, a simple yellow slicker and a translucent plastic mask. It’s suitably unnerving and does an excellent job of hiding the killer’s true identity as well as casting suspicion on Alice, who wears a similar costume early in the film to scare her sister).

What brings the film down is the screenplay itself. The story is very choppy and can’t seem to focus on a particular plot or character. Alice is ostensibly the main character, but she’s largely absent in the second act after she’s been institutionalized. She returns for the third act but doesn’t contribute anything important to the plot. The second act instead focuses on Dom’s attempt to clear his daughter’s name, but he’s quickly dispatched of and the only purpose of that sequence seems to be to reveal Mrs. Tredoni as the killer to the audience.

The reveal of Mrs. Tredoni as the killer is underwhelming. She establishes late in the film that her motivation is to punish Catherine and Dom for the sin of their divorce by killing their daughter, but at this point we’re heading into the finale of the film so it feels like too little, too late. The film would have been stronger if it had either had Alice herself as the killer, or had established Mrs. Tredoni’s motivation and identity as the killer much earlier. The movie tries to play it both ways and it doesn’t work.

Overall, I was let down by the film. It’s well-made and well-acted, but the story meanders through different plot points that only kind of come together at the end. I’d recommend it for a little piece of horror history, but not much else. 

Rating: 2.5 yellow rain slickers out of 5

Other Observations

• Does the Dog Die? Alice threatens to kill a cat, but seems to let it live. 

• Harrison’s Favorite Scare: Early in the movie, Karen pulls off Alice’s translucent mask and she has an old woman mask underneath that gave me a start. Also served as some foreshadowing for the killer reveal.

• I didn’t comment in the review about some of the supporting characters because they pretty much existed to up the body count, but here’s some quick thoughts. Annie (Jane Lowry), Catherine’s sister, is the worst. I wish she had died. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), the landlord, is disgusting and his attempted sexual assault of Alice was gratuitous. I’m glad he died. Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich) was boring as hell and super creepy. I’m also glad he died.

• Earlier this week I watched Don’t Look Now, another movie about the aftermath of the death of a child featuring lots of Catholic imagery and a very strange late killer reveal. I liked it more.

• Next Week: Next week is my birthday week (July 17th is my actual birthday) so I will be covering one of my all-time favorites, Jurassic Park.