ALICE SWEET ALICE

"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. It was made by Alfred Sole in 1976 and quickly built up a cult reputation. It's long been unavailable except in some pretty dreadful copies, (an earlier dvd release was virtually unwatchable). It's now been restored on bluray and it really shouldn't be missed.

It begins with the murder of a young girl in a church on the morning of her first communion. The prime suspect is her disturbed older sister Alice and before the film is over a number of other killings or attempted killings have taken place. It's not particularly well-acted but Sole's imaginative direction and his handling of the set-piece killings is sublime. It also mixes sex, religion and murder to superb effect and although she was nineteen at the time the film was made the casting of Paula E. Sheppard as the pre-pubescent Alice was a brilliant stroke, though she was to make only one other film, "Liquid Sky", making her perhaps the quintessential cult performer.

Sole, too, didn't have a career after this, (he only made two subsequent films), which I suppose makes him one of the ultimate cult directors. Of course, if the film owes a debt to anyone or anything it must be to Hitchcock and to "Psycho" though stylistically the films are very different. It's also vastly superior to any of the so-called slasher films that followed it while "Hereditary" doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.