Communion

Plot synopsis:
New Jersey, 1963. Alice Spages (Paula E. Sheppard) is a 12-year old girl who lives with her mother, Catherine (Linda Miller), and her younger 10-year-old sister, Karen (Brooke Shields). Their father, Dominic (Niles McMaster), is divorced from Catherine, and has recently re-married. Catherine and the girls live in a humble apartment, and their lives are very much centered on their Catholic parish. Both Alice and Karen go to the small Catholic school associated with their church, and all of the students wear church-issued yellow rain slickers as part of their uniforms. Karen is just about to make her first holy communion, but Alice seems to be jealous of the attention that Karen is getting because of it. Alice appears to have some major emotional problems.In the opening scene, Alice, Catherine and Karen are visiting the young priest Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich) at the rectory, discussing Karen's upcoming first Holy Communion. Alice startles the rectory's housekeeper, Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton), by wearing a bizarre transluscent mask, and she terrorizes Karen by stealing her doll and luring her to an abandoned building. While inside the building, Alice frightens Karen with the mask and briefly locks her in a room alone, threatening to never return her doll if she tells their mother about the incident. In the family's apartment, Alice takes Karen's communion veil and models it herself in a mirror; Karen causes a commotion over it and Catherine has to intervene.Things go from bad to worse on the day of Karen's communion. As the parishioners sit in the pews waiting for the children to enter the sanctuary, Catherine and her younger sister Annie (Jane Lowry) notice that Alice is not with them. Annie sends her daughter Angela (Kathy Rich) to look for Alice. Before Karen can join the rest of the girls who are dressed in their white communion dresses and veils, she is attacked by a figure in one of the school's yellow rain slickers, wearing the same translucent mask that Alice wears. The figure strangles Karen and then stows her body in a hollow bench, setting it on fire. Just before burning the body, the killer snatches the small cross that Karen wears around her neck, ripping the pendant from her body. Alice then appears among the younger girls, in Karen's place and wearing her veil, awaiting holy communion. Annie is outraged and urges Catherine to put a stop to it immediately. Shortly after, a nun notices the smoke and discovers Karen's body, her screams summoning the rest of the congregation. Annie sees Karen's body and melodramatically tells Catherine that her daughter is dead. Catherine breaks down crying. Alice slips Karen's veil into her pocket.Dominic returns for Karen's funeral and Catherine weeps when she sees him. The domineering Annie imposes herself on Catherine and Alice, insisting that she will stay with them to help Catherine with anything she needs. Alice is resentful of Annie's presence, and wants to stay home with her mother instead of going back to school. Annie's obvious dislike for the girl gives way to accusations about Karen's murder; Annie points out the fact that Alice's whereabouts during the murder are unaccounted for. Catherine seems to be unwilling to admit that Alice acts strangely, insisting that nobody understands Alice like she does. She has to smooth over a confrontation between Annie and Alice, sending Alice on an errand to defuse the argument.Catherine has Alice take the rent check to the family's landlord, Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), who lives in one of the lower apartments of the building. Alphonso is a grotesque man, extremely obese and living in an apartment full of kittens; we see him feeding the kittens, referring to himself as "mommy", and then eating some of the moist cat food himself. Alphonso has repeatedly made jabs at Alice regarding Karen's death; he aligns himself with Alice's Aunt Annie, saying that Alice must have had something to do with Karen's murder. He also tells Alice that he knows about the odd shrine she has in the basement of the building, where she keeps various objects that she has either found or stolen, including the mask and Karen's missing doll. He tells Alice that Karen will return from the dead to collect her doll. When he makes inappropriate advances toward Alice and begins to touch her in a lewd manner, Alice throttles one of the kittens and strangles it to death and yelling "you never do that again!", upsetting Alphonso and allowing her to escape.Meanwhile, the detectives investigating Karen's murder summon Alice's school records from the parish. When Dominic visits the police station to discuss Karen's case, he becomes hostile when Detective Brennan (Tom Signorelli) suggests that he would like to question Alice about the murder. He phones the rectory to talk to Father Tom, with whom he is apparently familiar; at first his phone call is intercepted by Mrs. Tredoni, who is fiercely protective of the priests and the elderly monsignor who reside there. Tom picks up an extension and talks to Dominic, asking if they can meet in person. Dominic seems unaware of Alice's emotional problems, which have resulted in a number of questionable incidents at school. Father Tom tells him that Alice has a knack for causing trouble and making it seem like an accident.Alice goes into the basement to her shrine, where she keeps her strange items, one of them being a jar full of large cockroaches, which she keeps alive by feeding them. She also still has Karen's doll. Alice puts on her mask.Upstairs, the mysterious figure wearing the yellow rain slicker and mask is creeping around the hallways. Annie goes to leave the apartment and she is attacked by the figure. The killer stands on the landing and slashes at Annie's legs and feet was she walks down the stairs, seriously wounding her with a kitchen knife. Before the killer can administer the death blow, Annie's screams summon Mr. Alphonso, who sees the killer's outfit and immediately identifies it as Alice. As the masked raincoat figure flees, Annie, who is hysterical and terrified, drags herself out into the street in the pouring rain, where Catherine finds her. Dominic and Father Tom happen to pull up at the same time, in Father Tom's car. Tom and Catherine rush Annie to the hospital, while Dominic goes into the building to look for the person who attacked Annie. In the basement, he finds Alice at her shrine, terrified; she claims she saw Karen, apparently believing what Alphonso told her about Karen returning to claim her doll. Dominic comforts her; like Catherine, Dominic doesn't believe that Alice could be a killer.At the hospital, Catherine tries to get Annie to recant her story about being attacked by "Alice", but Detective Cranston (Ted Tinling) shows up to question Annie and she becomes hysterical, screaming that Alice was the one who stabbed her. They bring Alice into the police station to question her, giving her a lie detector test. Although Alice does not implicate herself, she gives a number of strange responses; one of the things that the lie detector machine reveals is that Alice sincerely believes that Karen is the one who attacked Aunt Annie. Alice resents being questioned, even lashing out at the policemen's lie detector machine, deliberately throwing it on the floor when they leave her alone with it.Although the police cannot charge Alice with either Karen's murder or Annie's slashing, they still feel she may be responsible for one or both, and they order her to have a psychological evaluation at the Sara Reed Children's Hospital. Catherine and Dominic are furious, but try to make the best of it. They visit Alice at the hospital together, discussing the case with the doctor who examines her, Dr. Whitman (Louisa Horton). Dr. Whitman's evaluation seems especially damning, suggesting that Alice is schizophrenic and possibly dangerous. Whitman refuses to allow Alice to be released.Dominic and Catherine have a quiet moment back at Catherine's apartment, when Catherine gets a strange phone call consisting of nothing but breathing; we see the caller is wearing the translucent mask. When the caller hangs up, Catherine assumes it was Annie; since Annie identified Alice as her attacker, Catherine vowed to disown Annie forever. Discussing the recent tragic events of their lives, Dominic and Catherine both agree that Alice could not have been responsible for all that's happened. Dominic suggests that perhaps Angela was the one who attacked Annie, which could explain why Alice thought she saw Karen, since they all wear the same yellow raincoat. Catherine, however, points out that Angela is an overweight young girl, and Karen was very petite, so it would be unlikely for Alice to confuse them. They wind up holding each other and beginning to make love, but are interrupted by a phone call from Dominic's wife, which breaks the mood.Dominic returns to his hotel in time to receive a phone call from a sobbing voice; the caller identifies herself as Angela, saying that she ran away from home and needs Dominic to help her. She asks him to come to the abandoned building, the same one where Alice scared Karen at the beginning of the movie. When Dominic arrives, he sees the figure in the yellow raincoat and mask off in the distance. When he follows her into the building, she attacks him with the kitchen knife, stabbing him in the shoulder. Still unsure of who it is, Dominic follows her up a staircase, where the figure surprises him and bludgeons him repeatedly with a brick.With Dominic unconscious, the figure binds him with a cord and rolls him over to a loading door; the drop over the precipice is three or four stories to the ground. Dominic regains consciousness and realizes he is about to fall to his death. The killer removes the mask to reveal Mrs. Tredoni underneath. She rants about Dominic's relationship with Catherine, revealing that she knows that Alice was conceived before Dominic and Catherine were married. Dominic screams for help, but the area is too desolate for anybody to hear him. He uses his teeth to grab the crucifix that Mrs. Tredoni wears, the same one that she pulled from Karen's body the day she killed her. Mrs. Tredoni notices it and uses the brick to try and smash in Dominic's teeth. He refuses to give up the cross, swallowing it instead. Mrs. Tredoni, now furious, pushes him over the ledge and he falls to his death.Mrs. Tredoni then goes to the church, where a group of children are being instructed on how to make their first confession. Father Tom is the one who is going to hear the children, but he goes into the confessional to find that Mrs. Tredoni is already in there, changing out of the costume she wears to impersonate Alice. She pretends she is seeking to make a confession, and claims she feels guilty about having thoughts regarding the Monsignor; she says that he is in such poor health that she sometimes wishes he would pass away. Father Tom tells her she is a good woman, and that she doesn't need to come to confession about this since her thoughts are not sinful. He praises her for the care she has given himself and the other priests, and she is ecstatic when he calls her a friend.The next day, Catherine becomes worried when she does not hear from Dominic, and she goes to the rectory to look for him; she reasons that since he has been borrowing Father Tom's car, he may be there. She is greeted by Mrs. Tredoni, who tries to get rid of her but finally allows her in to wait for Father Tom. Mrs. Tredoni is gutting fish for that evening's dinner, and she brings Catherine into the kitchen after preparing coffee for her. Catherine is uneasy, when Mrs. Tredoni reveals that she also had a daughter who died on the day of her first holy communion, Mrs. Tredoni seizes the kitchen knife and brandishes it toward Catherine while calling her a whore for having her own child out of wedlock. Father Tom returns and interrupts their conversation, telling Catherine that Dominic's body has been discovered. Catherine weeps in frustration and horror.Dominc's murder suggests that Alice is no longer a suspect, and Catherine is able to take her home. After they return, the figure in the yellow rain slicker and mask enters Alphonso's apartment while he is sleeping, and places the jar of roaches from Alice's secret shrine on his chest. Removing the mask, the figure reveals itself to be Alice herself. Catherine catches her leaving Alphonso's apartment, but Alice explains that she was only saying 'hello' to him after returning from the hospital. Catherine praises her for being kind to him, and they leave to go to mass.Outside, Detective Cranston is watching the building as protection for Alice and Catherine. When they leave the building, Mrs. Tredoni slips in the back through the basement, wearing the yellow rain slicker and mask. She goes up to Catherine's apartment, apparently planning on murdering the first person she sees, but she finds the door locked. As she knocks on Catherine's door, Alphonso awakens and reacts in horror when the roaches begin to crawl over him. He starts screaming and alerts Cranston that something is wrong. Mrs. Tredoni hears it too, and she panics that he is drawing attention to the scene too soon. She runs back down the stairs, but Alphonso emerges and sees her running past his apartment. Thinking her to be Alice, he grabs her and starts to manhandle her, so she pulls out the kitchen knife and stabs him in the chest several times. He stumbles back into his apartment and dies. When Mrs. Tredoni tries to escape through the basement, Cranston smashes down the front door and sees her. In her panic, she has forgotten to put the mask back on, and he easily identifies her.Still wearing the yellow slicker, Mrs. Tredoni returns to the church and enters the sanctuary during service, making her way to where Alice and Catherine are sitting. Outside, the police arrive and discuss the best way to apprehend Mrs. Tredoni. Father Tom warns them not to try and confront her, as she is too close to Alice and her mother. Tom believes he can convince Mrs. Tredoni to come peacefully, since she adores him.During communion, Alice, Catherine, and Mrs. Tredoni all come up to the front side by side. Father Tom gives Catherine the wafer, but skips Alice. He also skips Mrs. Tredoni, instead leaning toward her and quietly asking her to go with the police. Mrs. Tredoni becomes indignant and asks why he will not give her communion; becoming furious, she shouts "But you give it to the whore!", pointing at Catherine. In a rage, Mrs. Tredoni pulls out the knife and stabs Father Tom through the throat. The congregation reacts in horror. Mrs. Tredoni clutches Father Tom to her as he dies, his blood pouring over the yellow rain slicker. Alice remains curiously detached from what is happening. In the confusion, a few policemen run into the church and arrest Mrs. Tredoni, while Alice has claimed Mrs. Tredoni's bag. Alice, still having not received communion, walks out of the church and pulls out the knife briefly, fondling the handle and smiling to herself (insinuating that Alice might one day adopt Mrs. Tredoni's murderous killing spree herself).

Tags: mystery, cult, horror, murder, atmospheric

Review:
Alice's sister, Karen, is played by a very young Brooke Shields, and this movie is probably most known for having her name branded on it, even though she dies very soon in the film.
Paula Sheppard (who was actually 19 years old at the time) plays Alice, Karen's violently jealous sister, and her performance is probably the best of the entire film.
It's in fact a thriller with just that tad bit extra Despite of the modest budget Alfred Sole had to work with, his film doesn't look dated like many others and the influence it had on the slasher sub-genre is amazing.
Plotting, characterization and suspense are so expertly mixed the film doesn't even feel like a genre piece at times ; instead, it feels like a European drama...but one circling a potent giallo.As noted, Sheppard is superb as Alice; Linda Miller is exemplary as Alice's tormented mother Catherine and Jane Lowry as the domineering Aunt Annie turns in a powerhouse performance.
When young Karen Spages is strangled and set on fire in a Catholic Church at her first communion, her disturbed older sister Alice is the central suspect, because of her jealously towards her.
This is one of my favourite 70's horror oddities, which breaths a fresh air in its premise's circuitously glum layout, an ominously nasty streak, purposely stinging jolts and being filmed on authentic locations in New Jersey.What makes the unusually cunning and certainly unpredictable plot compelling, is that so much can be read from it, like it's penetrating thoughts on Catholicism too the prolific character developments involving the hardships of family life, but there's no lying about its true intentions, which did kind of got mingled with the baffling conclusion.
Some might think the tension will evaporate, as just after halfway through the killer is unmasked, but the story's slow rising sinisterness early on eventually leads to a brooding intensity that actually seems to fester up, for the thrilling final third with one powerful conclusion to boot.Sole does a vividly lucid job in the director's chair with moody imagery, creative viewpoints and uneasy composition, backed up by disquietingly stylish jolts timed with utter perfection.
Terrifically good sleeper horror from director Alfred Sole rises to a level much higher than it's low-budget appearance.Is young Alice the masked murderer that's targeting her family?Communion, better known as Alice Sweet Alice, is an engulfing and sharply-made shocker that seems to have been lost over the years.
Rudolph Willrich is also memorable as father Tom. Look for young Brook Shields as Alice's little sister.Communion is a striking and haunting little thriller that deserves a wider audience.
This is one of those films that came out during the mid 1970s in which the stories were pretty plain at first sight and the ending could be somehow taken for granted.In "Alice Sweet Alice", the attention is mostly focused on the main character's psychology, which is Alice Spages (Paula Sheppard), an introverted 12 year old girl who lives with her mother (Linda Miller) and her spoiled little sister Karen (Brooke Shields).
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) for Alice, her sweet sister Karen is brutally murdered during the day of her first communion by the hand of a merciless killer wearing a mask and a yellow raincoat.
As it is expected, all the fingers start pointing directly to Alice, since her jealousy and strange withdrawn manners match with her sister's perplexing slaughter Regardless of the obvious feelings surrendering Alice, her mother refuses to believe that her only daughter left is a raging murderess and confronts everyone who stands in her way just to prove the world that her sweet little girl is incapable of killing a bug.
While Mrs. Spages and her former husband Dom desperately try to convince the others that their sweet Alice is not a premature murderess, the body count increases in the most dreadful ways and the victims are coincidentally Alice's declared rivals.Clearly, this film could be taken as some kind of overlooked slasher film, but I myself find it compelling enough to be compared to some of the most respected horror gems that people worship nowadays.
The scene at the beginning when Alice's sister is burnt alive inside the church is amazing, and as for the end scene where the priest is murdered in front of the church congregation....I'm surprised this film wasn't on the video nasties list considering the religious horror elements!
Alice Sweet Alice (1976) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Rather surreal horror film centers on 12-year-old Alice (Paula Sheppard) who is a strange girl who is suspected of murdering her younger and more popular sister Karen (Brooke Shields).
Following the murder of her sister (played by a young Brooke Shields) twelve-year-old Alice Spages becomes the suspect in the ensuing investigation.'Alice, Sweet Alice' is a heavily atmospheric part-slasher, part-psychological drama which successful maintains a disturbing undercurrent despite minor shortcomings in the technical department.
Unfortunately, the most glaring failing with the film is the mediocre-to-inept acting abilities of the majority of the cast with Jane Lowry giving a particularly obnoxious, hammed and hard to tolerate performance (incidentally, Ms. Lowry would only appear in one further movie) and central performers Linda Milla, Paula Sheppard and Niles McAster providing only a minor guise of acting competence.Perhaps the most accomplished aspect of this low-budget chiller can be found in Stephen Lawrence's masterfully ambivalent score which fuses the enchanting with the malevolent and the tepid with the zealous.
Drenched in Catholic angst, it's a Hitchcockian horror-thriller with a haunting score, and a remarkably eerie performance by Paula E Sheppard, who is here playing a 12 year old when I believe she was in fact 19 at the time - lending her performance a truly other-worldly tone.
After a young Catholic girl, Karen (Brooke Shields), is brutally murdered during communion, suspicion falls on her emotionally disturbed older sister Alice (Paula E.
Sheppard).Director Alfred Sole's Alice Sweet Alice is the closest thing you will find to an American giallo: the death scenes are sudden and brutal, the score is haunting, the killer is distinctive in creepy plastic mask and yellow raincoat, and the film's overall atmosphere and aesthetic is redolent of many a Euro thriller/horror.Admittedly, the film falls short of the best work of maestros Argento and Bava, the motive for the killings a little weak, and the pacing a tad pedestrian, while the identity of the killer is revealed way too early for my liking (true giallos generally wait until the very end before letting the cat out of the bag), but Sole conducts matters with an assured hand, presenting some striking visuals, and his cast give solid performances (with the exception of Jane Lowry as Alice's Aunt Annie, whose histrionics are waaaayy OTT).6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for Alphonso DeNoble as morbidly obese, cat-loving pervert Mr. Alphonso, who is wonderfully grotesque..
And "Alice Sweet Alice" clearly fits the descriptions of that the story is somewhat different with murder and religion and it involves a withdrawn little girl and an older woman with a secret that causes her to be for revenge.Set in 1950's Patterson, New Jersey ten year old Karen(in one of Brooke Shields's very early screen roles)is all of a sudden killed in a shocking and violent bloody manner in church on the day of her first communion, and her older sister Alice(Paula Sheppard)who's different and withdrawn appears for sure the prime suspect.
Yet the film becomes more deviant and filled with bloody drama as more of Alice's family members and people who live in her apartment complex are attacked.Just when you think you have it figured out this movie takes a shocking twist as the past full of secrets prove that another person is doing the killings.
Overall this film isn't mainstream, but for a 1970's horror film it's one of the better ones that entertains with suspense, gore, blood, and it twist with a shocking surprise reveal of the truth behind the killings at communions, "Alice Sweet Alice" is a cut above many classic horror films..
Alongside that, the film's few slasher scenes aren't all that bad either with the fact that there's the chilling taboo-breaking opening attack in the church confessional where the death of a child is the prime factor here in setting this forward, the great ambush at the warehouse where he follows the masked killer into the abandoned building and leads into a fine brawl into the big battle to the ending confrontation in the church.This also manages to touch upon normal giallo motifs where the gloved killer requires a single killing device, the middle segment of the film trying to play detective for an incredibly brutal crime that takes place at the beginning of the film and several other little touches from the genre.
By turns seductive, cruel, childish and mature, Sheppard's Alice is a superb character and the final shot is a hauntingly memorable one.While modern fans of the horror film may be put off by the slow pacing and the literate script, this is a brilliant film whichever way you look at it and easily stands against the best work of Italian maestro Dario Argento - indeed the influence of the Italian giallo is very strong in this film, which can be seen as an American giallo in itself.
In addition, the film has an eerie score which complements the movie well and good performances from the cast, especially from Linda Miller who plays Alice's mother Catherine, and Paula Sheppard, who plays Alice herself.However, the overriding characteristic of the movie is the claustrophobic air of morbidity that comes from the lashings of Catholic iconography employed throughout the film and in far from sympathetic tones.
Mercurial and withdrawn since her parents divorce, all of the attention is lavished on little sister Karen (a very young Brooke Shields) by their rather glacial, newly single mom,Katherine (Linda Miller).When Karen is found murdered in church on the day of her first Communion, all eyes on on Alice, who has Karen's veil in hand, and was ready to take her sister's place at the altar when the body was discovered.
Even when the killer is revealed just below the half way point, it just ups the ante for the remainder of the film My only real quibbles are that some of the character backstory and motivation is sketched quite thinly (particularly that of the killer, and the precise details of the divorce that fractured the family) and that those well crafted mood making moments were not let run just a tad longer, as the stills have a way of burrowing into your head and staying there.Given that a lot of the more straightforward expository scenes are written a touch awkward and thin, shaving a few seconds off them would have not done any harm, and made the transitions slightly less jarring.In any case, this film deserves to be remembered for far more than the first screen appearance of Ms. Shields, spent the $5 on Amazon and grab yourself a copy.For a nice little double feature, screen this with the equally atmosphere filled and under watched "Dead & Buried" (which I've also reviewed) and lament for a moment what thrillers used to be before the current vogue for sheer shock value..
It's these self-righteous fanatics who can committed the most gruesome and unholy of crimes, in the case here inside a Catholic Church,without even the slightest bit of remorse feeling, like Islamic suicide bombers, that their in fact doing God's work!The movie starts off with 11 year-old Karen Spages, Brooks Shield, being grabbed from behind and strangled at the St. Michael Church in Patterson New Jersey, on the very day she's to receive communion, by a masked and unknown assailant.
The test, which Alice passed, shows that if Alice did in fact commit these two crimes she by passing it has no recollection of them.The movie soon turns into a bloodbath of religious horror with the masked killer coming out into the open and first slashing and then throwing to his death, down a three story landing, Alice's father Dominick Spages and then later slicing up the fat guy who lives down the hall, the landlord, of Alice's apartment house Mr. Alphonso, Alphonso DeNoble.
We get to see well before the movie is over, with some half hour left to go, who the masked killer really is which makes the blood-splattering ending, during Communion at St. Michael's Church, a bit anti-climatic.A notch above the usual slasher movies that came out in the 1970's and 1980's "Alice Sweet Alice" or, as it was originally titled, "Communion" is a lot like the 1973 religiously-inspired blockbuster "The Exorcist" in it's treatment of personal guilt in traditional Catholic teachings.
But there is some good acting (Linda Miller, Niles McMaster and Sheppard were all good), it has some very bizarre characters (Mr. Alphonse is hard to forget), creepy murders (the mask the killer wears scared me) and is VERY anti-Catholic.
Alice sweet Alice is a creepy disturbing horror film that takes place in the 1960s in Paterson new jersey,where i grew up.i remember them filming it in my neighborhood.and this is Brooke shields acting debut.
Alice sweet Alice is a low budget film thats about a killer and the catholic church.its a mystery horror film directed by Alfred sole who also directed the horror spoof pandemonium with tommy smothers.i would call Alice sweet Alice an underrated horror,I'm not sure its out on DVD just yet but i know i still have the cheap good-times VHS video version.
The performances are all exceptional, the intricate plot is well-written and keeps you guessing, and there is some deep symbolism and themes of ritualistic Catholic guilt and obsession that you wouldn't find in, say, "Slumber Party Massacre 2."  Paula Sheppard stars as the title character, a hostile young girl who becomes the prime suspect when her little sister (12-year-old Brooke Shields, in her first role) is strangled to death and burned on the day of her first Communion.
Alice (Switchblade Sister Lace)is a twisted 12 year old violently jealous of her younger sister(Brooke Shields)in this absorbing, atmospheric slasher movie.
I liked the variation on the slasher films and enjoyed cute little Paula Sheppard's performance as Alice.
(I love those masks!) If you are a horror fan, GET THIS MOVIE!Paula Sheppard's performance as the formidable "Alice" is so awesome.
"Alice, Sweet Alice" (aka "Communion", aka "Holy Terror"), isn't just one of the great American horror films but one of the key American movies of the seventies.
Notable, too, is an effective score that's occasionally (and not inappropriately) reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's legendary music for PSYCHO (1960).The scariest bit comes early on when Alice terrorizes Brooke Shields (in her film debut) by donning an ugly mask under her usual get-up (the knife-wielding yellow-jacketed killer which itself harks back to Nicolas Roeg's classic DON'T LOOK NOW [1973]); interestingly, then, the result of Shields' fiery death early on is seen only via a photo among the police records.
At Karen's (Brooke Shields in her screen debut) First Communion, she is murdered and when her older sister Alice (Paula E.
The story involves a 12 year old girl named Alice who becomes the suspect of murdering her younger sister Karen (a young Brooke Shields in her feature film debut) on the day of her first communion.
Communion (Aka Alice, Sweet Alice) (1976)I want to say about this movie, is that it had a good story and a great ending, but all the way in-between it got confusing and somewhat boring.
Paula Sheppard is chillingly perfect as Alice, a mental little girl who torments her little sister (Brooke Shields in a bit part), wears a creepy mask and yellow raincoat, and spends her time collecting cockroaches and reading comic books in her secret basement dwelling.
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).
"Communion"-the second film by Alfred Sole(after porn "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!.
The tragic murder of a little girl, Karen(Brooke Shields, who was just an adorable child)before receiving her communion powerfully opens this horror film about a killer donning a yellow raincoat and children's mask.
The film immediately points towards Alice(Paula Sheppard, who is quite creepy..her image in the closing frame gave me goosebumps)who was quite jealousy of Karen's attention regarding her communion.
But really, exaggerated portrayals of Catholicism only make this movie more brilliant.Karen (Brooke Shields in her film debut) is doted on by her single mother, but when she is brutally murdered during her first communion, her older sister, the more withdrawn and rebellious Alice (played by an incredible Paula E.
When her sister Karen gets killed in church on her first communion with the killer wearing a mask just like Alice's favorite one, Alice becomes suspect number one.
Although filmed and set in the United States, it looks and feels more like a giallo, which at the time was more prevalent than the slasher movie.Overall I would give Alice Sweet Alice 8/10 plastic doll masks.
On the day of her first communion, 12 year old Karen, (Brooke Shields in her first role) is gruesomely murdered by a masked killer wearing a yellow rain coat.
In the beginning of the film, we see that Alice and her pretty little sister (a young Brooke Shields), live with their mother Katherine.
Paula Sheppard turns in a particularly good performance as the unbalanced Alice who is implicated in the brutal murder of her sister (played by a young Brooke Shields).