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Alice, Sweet Alice |
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Alice, Sweet Alice Hen's Tooth 1976 / Color / 1:85 flat letterbox / 107 min. / Communion / Street Date May 1, 2007 / 24.95 Starring Linda Miller, Paula Sheppard, Mildred Clinton, Tom Signorelli, Brooke Shields, Miss Lillian Roth Production Design John Lawless Film Editor Edward Salier Original Music Stephen Lawrence Written by Rosemary Ritvo, Alfred Sole Produced by Richard K. Rosenberg Directed by Alfred Sole |
Alice, Sweet Alice is an accomplished post- Exorcist horror film about mayhem in a dysfunctional Catholic family. Although the opening image shows a little girl in a First Communion dress holding a dagger, the film is reasonably tasteful. Film critics have found favor with its well-organized themes of sin and repression. Director Alfred Sole knows how to generate suspense while developing interesting, unusual characters.
Killer kid movies proliferated after The Exorcist, and not just foreign rip-offs of William Friedkin's sensational hit: The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, Audrey Rose and The Omen. Alice, Sweet Alice seemingly borrows its central image of a tiny knife-wielding attacker in a plastic raincoat from Don't Look Now but can pride itself on on not being just another exorcism clone. Rosemary Ritvo and Alfred Sole's script instead churns up a sordid tale that would appear to make the Catholic Church responsible for all human ills. The film seems to say that by repressing human sexuality the Church creates and encourages all kinds of fear & frustration-driven psychological problems. This grossly slanted attitude dominates all the characters, who suffer from guilty vices. The parents are divorced, yet still attracted to one another. The mother inadvertently favors one daughter over the other, setting into motion a dangerous female Cain & Abel situation. With the men either missing (father) or emasculated (Uncle Jim; Gary Allen), only the 'sexless' Father Tom remains, and he has become an emotional focus for all of the women. All trust and adore him: Catherine, young Karen (Brooke Shields) and his housekeeper Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton).
The story takes place in the early 1960 when the Jackie Kennedy look is in vogue. The choice of period can only be to emphasize that a Catholic is in the White House, which indicates that the writers of Alice, Sweet Alice are either sincerely bitter about the Church or are amusing themselves with a complex anti-Catholic theme. Director Sole keeps the drama on its feet with sharp characters and situations we care about. Willful rebel Alice keeps a secret hideout in the basement and likes to scare people with her mask. Mother (here comes the repression theme, again) assumes that Alice is still an innocent and later must be told by a psychologist that she's menstruating. Family communication breaks down whenever sex is involved. Catherine also doesn't know that Alice carries on a teasing, insulting discourse with the obese Mr. Alphonso, a potential child molester who lives in the apartment downstairs.
Parental guilt translates into children with deep problems. Catherine was unmarried when she became pregnant with Alice, which has somehow translated into the younger, more obedient Karen receiving the bulk of motherly love. The absent father, Dom, is also gulity, especially when a phone call from his wife catches him kissing Catherine. Alice both needs her parents and resents them. Adding fuel to the fire is the horrible Aunt Annie, an unpleasant harpy who orders everyone about and escalates every issue into a big problem.
(spoilers from here on in; there's no other way)As it turns out, a super-repressive maniac is responsible for everything. Father Tom's Italian immigrant housekeeper Mrs. Tredoni has gone nuts after losing her own child on the day of her First Communion. Worse, she sees Catherine Spages as an unclean whore who must be punished. Diabolical murders follow when the diminuitive Mrs.Tredoni is able to don raincoat and mask to pretend she's Alice. Even in this odd horror film the blame for the terror is assigned to women. When the police look no further for a culprit after seeing Alice's disturbing school records.The father and the cops watch helplessly from the sidelines.
Director Sole does wonders with his cast and script and his direction never shows haste or undue economizing. Angles are expressive and characters' emotions well-covered. The various murders are stylish but not fetishized; the scary mask and Alice's creepy two-faced doll are well-used. Some unobtrusive Alfred Hitchcock references are present, and Stephen Lawrence's good score approaches a Bernard Herrmann tone, without overdoing it.
Some of the performers' abilities are limited but most of the New York-based cast comes off very well, especially young Paula Sheppard, who looks a bit like an underage Karen Allen. Her only other IMDB credit is 1982's Liquid Sky. The impressive Mildred Clinton played Al Pacino's mother in Serpico, and had a part in the pre- Sound of Music German movie about the Von Trapp Family. The famous Lillian Roth has a small bit as a morgue pathologist.
Hen's Tooth Video's DVD of Alice, Sweet Alice is a real disappointment, an unimpressive older transfer given an indifferent encoding. In the sad fate that befalls many independent films, it's likely that the title was offered for licensing as-is. The flat-letterboxed picture is scratched and colors are not attractive, especially in the many close-ups. Also, the audio needed some work, as a few lines are inaudible. An earlier Anchor Bay release was also flat-letterboxed, but included a number of interesting extras first seen on laserdisc. This title needs and deserves a re-master. 1
Director Alfred Sole eventually turned from directing and is still going strong as a production designer. He provides an audio commentary along with his editor Edward Salier and makes a very positive impression. If Sole cared to get directing again, he might be an excellent choice to helm a Masters of Horror episode. 2
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Alice, Sweet Alice (Communion) rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Fair +
Sound: Good --
Supplements: Commentary by director Alfred Sole and Editor Edward Salier
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: June 9, 2007
Footnotes:
1. Watching big studios fail to exploit their libraries is frustrating enough but the fate of oddball independent productions is subject to the luck of the draw. Interesting pictures are frequently beautifully re-mastered and given deluxe treatments by dedicated boutique companies, while other deserving titles are stuck with rights holders that refuse to invest in film preservation or even transfer them properly. Frustrating as it is, we somewhat understand when a couple of heirs get the idea that they should be paid millions for video rights for an obscure film made by a relative or defunct company. What's worse is when old business feuds result in the neglect of important bodies of work, such as big chunks of the old A.I.P. library. The Arkoff-Nicholson split has resulted in films simply disappearing from view, or seeing release in compromised twenty-year old transfers.
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2. A helpful note from Marc Edward Heuck, 6.20.07:
Some detail on Alice, Sweet Alice I thought might help clarify why the DVDs have all been so subpar.
The movie was independently made, and ultimately picked up for release by Allied Artists. However, on that initial release, nobody bothered to put a copyright line on the print. And after it was initially released on VHS by AA's short-lived home video label, it became widely pirated by PD outfits. A few years later, Max Rosenberg's Dynamite Entertainment (who previously picked up a few unwanted Hammer movies from WB) sublicensed it and reissued it as Holy Terror to cash in on Brooke Shields' small role. Technically, Warner Bros. holds the chain of title on the film through Lorimar and their acquisition of AA's assets. Similar problems have plagued Corman's Death Race 2000: he fully owns the film, but because the first prints had no copyright notice, they've been bootlegged for years on DVD. And many Allied Artists movies like Who, Gold, and The Next Man have been frequent PD releases despite being owned by WB.
What Alfred Sole did with the Roan Group for the laserdisc release was to make a small set of editorial changes, which allowed him to re-copyright that variant version and prevent it from being hijacked by PD companies. Some of these changes were changed back for the Anchor Bay DVD release, and the Hen's Tooth release uses the AB transfer. Warner Bros. owns the original theatrical version & has the negative, and if they wanted they could put out a very nice looking DVD of the movie. But they have likely determined that there is no market for it, and since Sole has already done a commentary for his alternate cut, who would they get to provide added value content? Well, an imaginative fellow like you or me could answer that, but you get the idea. --- Marc
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From Steven Newmark of Hen's Tooth Video, 7.02.07:
Glenn, Just for the record, we used exactly the same master materials that were used for the Anchor Bay release (as provided by Alfred Sole). Perhaps our encoding did not reach the same high standard as theirs but the scratches, color, sound etc. were all the same. The only other "extra" they used was the "alternate" title sequence (which was really just a changed out title card). I thought that was too lame to be of interest to anyone. Otherwise, thanks for the fine review of the picture. -- Best, Steven Newmark, President/Hen's Tooth Video
Reviews on the Savant main site have additional credits information and are more likely to be updated and annotated with reader input and graphics.
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