Here we have a semi-early example of a slasher-esque horror film (or at least one that predates the 80s slasher trend). Its production quality is definitely closer to B-grade than A, as you’d probably expect, but for what it is, it’s not too bad. It deals with topics that were relevant at the time (and still somewhat so today), such as the breakdown of the traditional family, strained parent & child relations, and the dark side of religious beliefs, or at least the dark places one can take said beliefs. All of this is delivered with a rather melodramatic, but still rather unsettling presentation that will unnerve the audience, to a degree anyway. Plus, it features an early appearance from a young Brooke Shields, which is an interesting detail in and of itself (as some say, “everyone gets their start in horror”). Now for a brief overview of the story.
The film follows the Spages family, composed of mother Catherine, eldest daughter Alice, youngest daughter Karen, and divorced father Dominick who’s currently remarried. Karen is preparing for her first communion, which angers Alice, as it’s assumed that she never received one herself and is jealous of the attention and affection that Karen receives from the family. She starts acting out and messing with Karen, including locking her in a rundown building, much to the ire of her mother. On the day of Karen’s communion, Karen is killed by a person wearing a mask and raincoat (an outfit that Alice had been shown wearing earlier), stuffed into a chest, and set on fire. Before this event, Alice had left the church congregation for a while, and returned later wearing a veil and tries to take part in the communion. However, Karen’s body is discovered, sending the whole event into a panic. Alice is clearly painted as suspicious, as she was wearing what turned out to be Karen’s veil (which she claims she found on the ground), though nothing much comes of this at first. Catherine’s sister, Annie, comes over to live with them for a while and help Catherine through this, but she and Alice immediately start butting heads. Annie acts very firm-handed towards Alice, accusing her of manipulation and carelessness, while Alice just thinks Annie is cruel and hateful. This, along with putting up with the highly creepy landlord Mr. Alphonso, puts a lot of strain on Alice and pushes her away from connecting with those around her even more. Things only get worse when someone in a mask and raincoat stabs Annie in the leg, rendering her hospitalized. She claims that Alice was the one who did it, to which Catherine nearly threatens her against saying, but the police are informed, regardless. The revelation that Alice has had a history of aggression at school doesn’t help her defense and results in her being taken in for questioning and psyche evaluation. Dominick, who has also come over for support after these incidents, becomes determined to clear Alice’s name, in whatever way he can. Sad as I am to cut it off here, I don’t want to go any further, as it gets into spoiler territory from here on out. This might make it hard to discuss at least one of the film’s ideas, but I’ll do my best to be as vague yet thorough as I can.
The 1970’s did seem to be a time for questioning the state of our traditions or institutions (granted, I’m looking at this in hindsight, as I wasn’t alive back then, but that is the impression I often get from looking back at this time-frame). The old ideas of the husband and wife with 2.5 kids staying together until death do they part was falling out of favor, and more and more divorce situations were occurring now that the stigma against it was loosening. This most likely brought up concerns over how well child-rearing would go with one of the parental figures having less direct influence or not even part of the equation at all. Not only would there be a loss of the balance between the two parents’ influences, but also a lot more pressure being placed on one single parent, especially if there are two children to take care of. (Now I should note that non-traditional families are no less valid than traditional ones. In fact, many can be more loving and stable than the typical ones, but this was a concern that folks were having at the time coming off the days of the nuclear family, thus this is most likely where this film was coming from in terms of its themes). This is ultimately part of the issue that leads to the situation the Sages family faces. Dominick can’t be there for the kids all the time due to having a separate life away from them now, so Catherine is mostly left to her own devices when raising Karen and Alice, and there definitely ends up being a bit more favoritism to one more than the other. Karen seems to be a much more well-behaved girl compared to Alice, so it would be natural for a person to be more accepting of her over the rougher and more aggressive Alice, but that doesn’t make Alice any less valuable than Karen, and either way a parent is a parent and needs to show both children their love, though not without proper discipline, of course. You can tell that Catherine does love both her daughters, but Karen often receives more attention than Alice, which just causes Alice to act out and become more aggressive. Actually, on that note, the fact that Alice had had these aggression issues at school the whole time beforehand, and Catherine never knew about them is also a testament to the unintentional neglect that’s been going on. Now it can be argued that Alice was in the wrong as well for never confiding in her mother about these issues and that it’s partially stemming from a rebellious phase, but the fact that she didn’t also shows that she didn’t trust her mother enough or felt that she wouldn’t understand, which is a fault on Catherine’s end. In addition to the issues at school which her mom was never aware of, there’s also the fact that she often has to put up with the creepy advances of the landlord Mr. Alphonse. I want to make a side-note here and point out that they really pulled out all the stops to make this guy one of the creepiest people I’ve seen in a film: obese, bald with a scraggly beard, very pale skin, dark and sunken-in eyes, weirdly eloquent speech. An almost over-the-top depiction of a pedophile in a way, but sadly still not far off from reality. Alice recognizes his predilections towards her and even digs at him in such a way that suggests a want to have some kind of dominance or power in her life, in this case exposing his underlying darkness and threatening to tell people about it to get back at him for how he treats her. When he takes the bait and forcefully approaches her, completely confident that he’ll get away with it, she grabs one of his cats and threatens to kill it if he doesn’t back off, ultimately strangling it anyway, though seemingly by accident. These sorts of strains on her mentality, and the actions that she takes to deal with them, certainly suggest a potentially growing problem within her, one that reacts with violence and anger, and possibly even murder? But of course, I won’t spoil the story. (Before I move on, I also want to note the very disgusting moment when the two detectives on the case comment on Alice’s breasts. I stopped for a moment and asked, “is everyone in this film a pedophile?” Obviously, that’s not true, but that moment definitely took me aback for a second). The religious angle of the film is trickier to discuss, as it ties much more into the ultimate reveal, but I will say that there does seem to be a want to comment on how the intended good that Christianity (more specifically Catholicism, in this case) tries to push forth can become twisted into a dark force to meet the needs of one who is suffering from a darkness themselves. I’m sure there are others that could get more into the specific religious symbolism, but I’ll admit that I’m not a foremost authority on Christianity, nor does that sort of analysis fit in with the purposes of my non-spoiler review. Before I wrap up, I do want to note the production quality of this film. It is certainly more on the B-movie side than anything, what with the poorer audio and visual quality compared to most A-films, but these aspects are still better than other B-films at the time and there is a want to use interesting camera shots to portray the emotion of the moment. The various close-ups, odd angles, and quick cutting suggest something of a giallo influence (which was a trend of Italian horror/thriller films at that time, e.g., Deep Red, Suspiria, etc.), or at least a shared mindset. Granted, this film doesn’t quite reach the striking and dementedly camp levels of many of the giallo films, but it does handle its melodramatic slasher identity rather well for what it is. It is interesting, as well, to see a slasher film before the commodification of the style that came in with the 80s. This film seems to want to stick more with the Psycho-esque concept of the slashers at this time-frame (funnily, a Psycho poster appears in the film at one point) rather than the over-the-top killer mascot concept that Jason, Freddie, and sadly Michael Myers would eventually take on.
In the end, this isn’t a bad little film. I can’t say that it’s the greatest film that you will ever see, but it does at least have a little more going on beyond the slashings. Plus, it is always interesting to see an actress in an early role of her’s, even if it’s only for a fraction of the runtime. Alice Sweet Alice is a prime slice of 70s horror-drama that’s at least worth a rent sometime, just be mindful about showing it to your Catholic parents, kids (though who knows, they might be cool with it too).