Directed by Alfred Sole
Starring Linda Miller, Paula Sheppard, Lillian Roth, Brooke Shields, Niles McMaster and Jane Lowry
Ahhhh...giallo thrillers. I've reviewed plenty of these pieces of Italian goodness on the blog, and they are truly a uique beast within the great, grand horror genre. Kind of a gory mix between murder mystery and straight-up slasher flicks, for the uninitiated. And when I say mystery, these films are genuinely a mindf**k. For proof, I think my record of predicting killers in giallo films sits comfortably in the 0-171 neighborhood. And that is some accomplishment, considering Roger Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters (read: take the character who has no other reason to be in the movie than to turn up at the end and be the villain) sits in my mind whenever I'm watching one.
Released in 1976 by director Alfred Sole, Alice, Sweet Alice was one of a wave of American giallo-styled films and it might actually be the first one that I saw. For the record, it was sometime around 2005-ish on some Saturday afternoon local channel when I was in college, and I'd never seen anything like it in my life before. At the time that it actually came out, the flick was all kinds of controversial for reasons that I won't bog anyone on here down with. Me? I just think that this movie, while it has its flaws, might have the honor of having the single CREEPIEST mask in the history of masked killers. Just google this movie title, blow some of those babies up and be prepared. Yeah. Just...be prepared.
Like a lot of giallo films, this one is a bit of a slow starter. It's something that I noticed when I first started to seriously get into the Dario Argento and Mario Bava films that launched this wave, and while I am all about the slow burn...some of these movies tread the line and are perhaps a little TOO slow of a burn. Fortunately, this flick has other things going for it.
For the most part, the film is all about a small nuclear family. There is a mother character, Catherine (Linda Miller), but for whatever reason I was never particularly into her. The film's REAL stars are Catherine's two daughters - 9-year-old Karen, played by Brooke Shields in her first film role, and 12-year-old Alice (Paula Sheppard). Karen is preparing for first Communion, and the elder Alice seems to resent the holy hell out of her younger sister. She abducts her doll, dons the ungodly translucent mask that will soon be creeping up on you when walking through your halls at night, and then locks her in an abandoned warehouse in what is considered a pretty epic scene within film circles. Slow build aside, what we've got here is some classic misdirection...and that's most certainly needed when Karen is brutally murdered by someone wearing the same kind of mask that Alice has.
I will admit that I found this movie a bit more emotional than I did upon that initial 2005 watch when I was half-asleep and waiting to go to work at my college town's mall. Stuff in films that actually deal with family deaths always affect me on some level, and this one is no different. Karen's murder scene also does a good job setting up various plot threads and multiple suspects. Is it Alice? Is it the nun who curiously found Karen at the right time? Was it Father Tom (Rudolph Wilrich), who definitely had opportunity? Or somebody else? Again, I'm sure that plenty of modern audiences will guess who the killer is, but I certainly didn't. Giallo films can fool me with a Roger Corman puff of smoke.
The movie's middle sections unfortunately meander quite a bit. The biggest flaw that this movie throws at us is introducing too many supporting adult characters; we meet pathologists, police officers, Catherine's former lover, etc., and none of them are particularly enthralling characters. Call it glandular, but Alice - and the awesome performance by Sheppard - are just way more interesting than any of these goons. For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's a side plot where Catherine's long lost sister moves back in with her to help out after the murder and we get all of this subtext about how much the siblings hate each other for...reasons. Every once in a while, however, Alfred Sole (who also wrote the screenplay) remembers that this is a horror film and delivers well-timed jump scares and close calls to keep us interested, including a couple more murder scenes that aren't quite as effective as Karen's death but nonetheless had to have been pretty jarring to the film audiences of 1976.
Speaking of Alfred Sole, the dude clearly know what he was doing when he was writing this movie. He started things off with the two fascinating child characters, gave us that Hitchcockian misdirection that I spoke of, shocked us with a murder, and then gives us the good twist two-thirds of the way through that gives us all the answers we need immediately after reaching the government-minimum body count. I'm not saying that he ripped Psycho off beat-for-beat, because this movie definitely ain't Psycho. But if you're looking for a template to cull from, you can't ask for a better one. And that is observation that you can't get from Wikipedia, kids.
I do have a BIT more criticism to level at this film: once the killer's identity becomes known, the suspense pretty much vanishes. There are some good SHOCKS to be had in the third act, but I don't think you'll be truly frightened like you might have been when, say, Alice was creeping around a warehouse wearing a freaky-looking doll mask. It's a problem that a lot of mysteries have, actually. The build-up is fantastic, but it's VERY difficult to craft a story where the solution feels like it lives up to the build.
I know that it might sound like I've complained a lot about this film, but I really did enjoy it. One thing that I've barely touched on is this film's atmosphere. Simply put, it's unreal. Since most of the film takes place in or around a church, we get lots of candles, dark settings, religious imagery, you name it. It all adds a kind of classy touch to everything that's happening. More than anything else, though, this really was Paula Sheppard's movie. Creepy kids in horror films are always a dicey prospect with me, but she was something else. It's just a shame that she runs circles around virtually every adult in the film in the acting department. Still, the execution that Sole put into his script has nothing if it doesn't have conviction. When this movie is on...it's on, and I guarantee that you'll be on the edge of your seat for at least two scenes.
With that, it's time for the Final Judgment (see what I did there?). *** out of ****. Great atmosphere, disturbing themes and the awesomeness of Paula Sheppard make up for a bunch of venial sins (man, I'm on a roll!). Definitely check this one out if you're into giallo thrillers and/or like some mystery with your kills.
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