Alice Sweet Alice AKA Communion
(1976) 98 min.
Rated: R (slight gore)
Country: USA
Director: Alfred Sole
Starring: Linda Miller, Brooke Shields, Patrick Gorman, Lillian Roth
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
A series of brutal murders surround an adolescent girl named Alice.
Synopsis:
It’s Karen Spages (shields) First Communion and Father Tom presents her with a lovely crucifix. Her older sister Alice is slightly jealous of all the attention that Karen is getting. Karen has even gotten a new doll which Alice steals and hides in her box in the basement.
After school Alice runs into an abandoned warehouse while her sister tries to catch up to her. She hides and scares her in her mask and locks Karen in a room momentarily.
The scene changes to the landlord, Mr. Alfonso. He is an obese man who lives in squalor and has several cats around the house. He’s creepy and seems to detest Alice.
At home Alice and Karen fight over Karen’s communion veil. Catherine, their mother, seems to pay more attention to Karen and yells at Alice for taking the veil. Alice storms out feeling very much unloved.
Finally, it is the day of first communion and all the young girls line up in their white dresses. Karen is at the end of the line and as she waits someone in a yellow rain jacket and mask suddenly chokes her. Communion carries on as normal. Angela, Karen’s cousin, is sent to look for her. At this time Alice is also mysteriously missing. The person in the yellow raincoat drags the dead body of Karen and puts her inside a wooden box, they pull off the cross around her neck and then set her on fire.
Alice walks up to the front of the church and opens her mouth to take communion, surprising a few people.
The blaze in the box starts up quickly and soon one of the nuns sees the smoke and opens the box. Chaos ensues at the discovery of the body. During this time Alice hides her sister’s veil in the pocket of her yellow raincoat.
At Karen’s funeral a few detectives discuss their suspicions about Karen’s murder. They wonder where Alice and Angela were during the time of the murder.
Back at home Aunt Annie decides to help her sister out around the house. She has suspicions that Alice hurt her sister since she saw the veil. Catherine tells Alice to give a cake to Mr. Alphonso.
The kids go off to give him cake.
As the days go on Annie and Alice do not get along as Annie suspects something is wrong with Alice. Alice is told to give a rent check to Mr. Alphoso. She crumbles the check before handing it to him. They banter and he threatens to tell the police about what she has in the basement. Alice grabs one of his kittens and throws it on the floor. She then runs out and presumably to the basement.
Downstairs someone in a mask is waiting. Annie walks down the stairs and is stabbed repeatedly in the foot and leg by the masked person. Mr. Alphoso and Catherine appear and scare off the suspect. Catherine then goes to help her sister who has crawled out in the street crying and bloody in the rain.
In the hospital, Annie says that Alice stabbed her. Catherine starts to scream and get upset feeling that everyone is pointing their fingers at her daughter Alice. The police decide to question Alice.
Alice is brought in for a polygraph test and the results are mixed. She believes she knows who the killer is and she thinks it’s Karen, though Karen is dead.
The police give her over to a psychiatrist for further study. When Alice’s parents see the psychiatrist, Dr.Whitman, she advises them that Alice needs to remain there for the time being to get more help. Catherine and her ex-husband Dom (Alice and Karen’s father) go to see Alice. She is hostile towards her mother and feels rejected.
Dom gets a phone call that Alice has run away to the abandoned building so he decides to go there. He sees a masked person wearing a yellow raincoat and assumes that it is Angela. He had suspected that Angela was the killer all along and follows the person to the abandoned building. As he climbs up the stairs he is stabbed in the shoulder by the masked person.
He gets up and goes to the person hiding behind a pillar. She hits him in the face with a brick. As he falls to the ground she repeatedly hits him and then ties him up while he is out cold. She begins to push him toward open doors that lead to a drop-off on the side of the building. As she pushes him she pushes off her mask.
Dom awakes to see Mrs.Tredoni pushing him closer to the edge of the building. He tries to struggle and bites the crucifix off of her neck. She takes off a shoe and starts to hit him in the face, causing the cross to bend in his mouth. She finally is able to push him over and he dies.
After killing Dom Spages, Mrs. Tredoni goes to the church to change out of her clothing in the confessional box. Father Tom listens to her confessions about disliking taking care of the monsignor. Father Tom assures her that it’s okay. She enjoys this comfort and goes home.
Mrs.Tredoni is at home when Catherine comes in looking for Dom. She assumes that he would be with Father Tom. Mrs.Tredoni is annoyed at Catherine’s presence but offers her coffee. Once in the kitchen, Mrs.Tredoni waves a knife at Catherine, who is startled. Suddenly Father Tom appears.
Back in the morgue, the cross is found in Dom’s mouth and the detectives speculate on who the murderer was.
Catherine decides not to let Alice know about Dom’s death. Alice is released from the hospital for the time being and returns home with her mother. While at home she decides to pay Mr.Alphonso a visit and places an open jar of cockroaches on his belly as he sleeps. She leaves right after. The roaches slowly come out of the jar.
Alice and her mother go out for the moment, meanwhile Mrs.Tredoni in her killing mask enters the building from the rear. She goes up to their apartment and knocks on the door but there is no answer. Just then, the roaches crawl on Mr.Alonso and he cries out in horror. Mrs.Tredoni is scared and she goes down the stairs and runs into Mr.Alonso who, thinking that she is Alice, pulls off the mask and is shocked to see the older lady. Mrs.Tredoni then stabs him two times in the gut and runs out of the building.
The screaming and noise gets the attention of the detective staking out the building. He is there just in time to see Mrs.Tredoni try to leave without her mask on.
The police make their way to the church knowing full well that she will be there. They talk with Father Tom and he assures them that he can lure her out so that they can arrest her. He doesn’t want any potential bloodshed in the church.
As everyone lines up for the communion, Catherine, Alice and then Mrs.Tredoni kneel and wait for the host. Father Tom asks Mrs.Tredoni to come with him. She’s surprised and then upset that she isn’t allowed to take communion. Finally she screams that Catherine is a harlot who bewitches Father Tom and she stabs Father Tom in the neck. The entire congregation stares in horror as Father Tom bleeds out into Mrs.Tredoni’s arms.
Finally we see that Alice has the paper bag holding Mrs.Tredoni’s bloody knife. She slide the knife back into the bag and looks at the camera as if to hint that she has a dark side afterall. The movie ends.
Review:
This movie is another murder mystery. If you know anything about a murder-mystery… the murderer is never the most obvious suspect, no matter how hard the film tries to paint one person. So right off the bat I figured Alice was innocent, despite her cruelty and selfish behavior. She obviously was unstable but there was someone else who was murdering people.
I have to give credit to the film for creating an odd atmosphere. Although at times a few scenes feel over-acted, there are a lot of genuine parts of the film that were creepy. For a horror film it isn’t quite scary. The only truly gruesome scene would probably be when Dom gets hit in the face repeatedly with a blunt object, but even that is tame by today’s standards.
There is something interesting explored here with the misunderstood nature of pre-teens. Alice is at the point in her life where she is no longer a child. No longer fawned over as much as her younger sister. She is growing into an adult and is competing for attention. Mrs.Tredoni is also, in her own way, competing for attention, though she seeks it from Father Tom. She despises Catherine for getting familiar with him. She murders Karen for being given a gift by Father Tom. She might even be what Alice may become if she gets older and doesn’t seek psychiatric help.
The movie is an interesting one, to say the least. It is not especially frightening and there is some sexual language, such as references to pedophilia.
Negatively, I’d say that there is some laughable acting in some scenes. Everyone was a bit too shocked to help a dying man in the last scene. Even the police just decided to stare and let the murderer hug the dying man.
Notes: Alphonso DeNoble who plays Mr.Alphonso only played in three movies and died two years after this film was released. He was 31 years old.
This is Brooke Shield’s second film role in which she lives for less than quarter of the movie before being killed.