FOR DYING OUT LOUD 666

SUCH A PRETTY GIRL



ALICE, SWEET ALICE aka COMMUNION, and HOLY TERROR (1976)
Linda Miller, Paula Sheppard, Brooke Shields, Jane Lowry, Mildred Clinton, Niles McMaster, Rudolph Willrich
Directed by Alfred Sole
Before she became the wet dream of millions of boys after THE BLUE LAGOON. Before she did or didn't hit a pipe with Bad Brains frontman H.R. Before posing for pictures with Johnny Rotten and Michael Jackson. Before her supermodel superstardom beginning with Calvin Klein. And long before feuding with Tom Cruise (and taking potshots at his then child bride) about postpartum depression, an unknown prepubescent Brooke Shields took her first step to celebrity fame in this macabre and effective thriller. Set in 1961 Paterson, New Jersey, Shields (in her film debut for a whopping 5 minutes) plays spoiled 10yr old (or is she 9?) Karen Spage who while in a church sacristy preparing for her communion, is violently strangled to death by someone in a yellow raincoat and creepy Devo-ish mask. The rumor mill quickly skyrockets that troubled 12yr old sister Alice (Paula Sheppard in also her film debut, who was actually 19 at the time, and resembles a young Karen Allen) did it. Alice becomes the prime suspect, notably for being a sulking sibling who displayed jealousy, smouldering resentment, and emotional instability (this girl has serious control issues), no doubt twinned to some adolescent sexual awakening/confusion. It also doesn't help that as well as her bullying disdain for regarding Karen as a princess and Mommy's pet showered with too much attention, Alice has a disturbing penchant for wearing masks, burning incense in their rundown apartment building's basement, keeping cockroaches, and playing cruel pranks.

When other family members (particularly her hateful & hyper Aunt Annie who has moved in) as well as neighbors (Mr. Alphonso, the obese pedophiliac and downstairs landlord with too many cats, and spending his time fanning his grimy sweat with a Chinese fan while listening to old showtunes), are savagely attacked, we are left wondering if she truly is the 'bad seed' knife-wielding killer and capable of inflicting such abhorrent mayhem, or if someone else is actually the guilty party intent on taking down her family. Outwardly accused and adamantly proclaiming her innocence (and with condemnation from a bad track record at school), even as Alice is briefly sent away to a psychiatric institution and kept under surveillance by a caring doctor, with damning evidence still condemning her, the murders continue after she is released, and her relationship to Mom only gets colder. Her distraught & beleaguered mother, plagued by harassing phone calls, begins to believe all the non-stop rumors that her daughter is not innocent. Alice's estranged and desperate, philandering father who has returned for the funeral, along with a trusted Priest (Father Tom, his former brother-in-law, whose too-much-interest in Karen was icky), make it their mission to find the killer and clear the young girl's name from all the chaos and fingerpointing, but each man meets with terrible results. Annie's own problematic daughter comes under suspicion and Alice returns to old habits. Is there anyone that can stop the sadism? And is it ever ok to scare cranky immigrant housekeepers? The movie is a weird but intelligent entry that either predates slasher flicks (2yrs before 1978's HALLOWEEN) or is one of the early starters (2yrs after 1974's BLACK CHRISTMAS).

There are a few drawbacks: slow pacing, a shoddy police investigation and unmistakable, and inappropriate grossness from a couple of unpleasant detectives during a lie detector test (who wouldn't even be tolerated in Barney Miller's squad) come to mind, but ALICE SWEET ALICE with its largely Italian-American cast, objectionable dodgy grown-ups, and one mistreated kitten, is still one of the great unnerving yet stylish giallo-esque horror classics from the 70's (albeit more on the mystery side) featuring visceral, shocking brutality and an admittedly polarizing twist. Considered a post-EXORCIST clone bunched with other evil kid movies such as THE OMEN, AUDREY ROSE, and THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE, that presented appalling adolescence as opposed to just young rebellion, the movie has its detractors not only for the then-taboo combo of children linked to murder which for too many was crossing a line, but from an addition of an uneasy ambiguity: just when the end is upon us, we're never quite sure. Loaded with grief, tension, trauma, suffering & disintegration, running parallel is the flirtation between mild attempts at resilience and holy retribution due to the Catholicism running throughout the background -- and drenched in imagery heavily upfront with its lingering on crosses, the pain-filled face of Jesus, angelic Virgin Marys, and themes of sin, guilt and deterioration. Religion on display here is that of repression, helplessness, hopelessness, and the redemption of Christ nowhere in sight. At times it even feels like a bitter rejection (if not an outright denouncement) of the Church and God which further helps the film to be snuggled nicely beside 1973's DON'T LOOK NOW as it too (along with its Euro arthouse feel) psychologically deals with the devastating parental loss of a child, the adult breakdown that ensues from the terrible void that is left, and murkiness of things not always appearing as they seem.




LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)
Zohra Lampert, Mariclare Costello, Kevin O'Connor, Barton Heyman, Gretchen Corbett, Alan Manson
Directed by John Hancock
Beginning in a voiceover to a long flashback, Jessica has just been released from a 6-month stint in an asylum after a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Duncan (a Symphony cellist), along with family friend, Woody, bail on New York's crazy rat-race-pace to help in her post-recovery. Taking off in Woody's hearse, the trio take up residence in a stuffy, ramshackle, old Connecticut farmhouse where they plan on starting an apple-growing business. (Could it get any more bohemian?) They meet carefree hippie Emily (who at times looks like a cross between Holly Hunter and Reba McEntire), a Manson-Family-looking squatter who was staying there while it was unoccupied. Woody has an instant woody for her [and that riff on his name is indeed appropriate as his character is pretty wooden as well]. Emily quickly becomes their guest and from her extended stay, she just as quickly makes an impression on both men (as she has on all the elderly men in town, who have bandages covering scars) and manages to convince everyone to take part in a séance. Speaking of the town, the elderly locals are suspicious, unfriendly and downright rude as they don't take kindly to the newcomers. From the get-go they aren't right and their coldness could be taken as a small commentary on the close of the 1960's and 'post-free-love' society, but isn't delved into deeper. Seeing as Jessica is fascinated by death and has a penchant for tracing cemetery headstones, she spots a mysterious blonde girl staring at her from a distance. This unknown female (who may or may not be trying to reach out to her) will fuel her paranoia to come but in the meanwhile, she grows uneasy with Duncan's attractiveness to Emily. Needing money, the trio look for items around the house to sell and in the attic, Jessica tries on some Victorian clothing and finds an old picture frame of the family who used to live there, the Bishops.

An antique store owner named Sam (also a New York native escaping the urban sprawl/hustle n' bustle of the big city) tells her that the woman in the photo, Abigail Bishop, drowned in the lake in 1880 just before her marriage was to take place. Her body was never found and supposedly she continues to roam the nearby area. Jessica is mesmerized by the story and having swam in the lake, is convinced that something grabbed her leg in the water but both men dismiss her fears. Could the legend be true? While Emily (who always seems to be sporting a forced smile and incidentally looks exactly like Abigail) continues to entertain with her stories and guitar playing, Jessica follows the blonde girl to a cliff where Sam's bloody body is found below near a stream. When Jessica brings Duncan back to the site, the body is gone but hubby and wife see blondie atop the cliff. After a chase, they attempt to question her but blondie doesn't speak a word. Then Jessica's pet mole (actually played by a mouse) which she found in their apple orchard also turns up dead, all carved up in a glass jar. Duncan, worried about his wife's mental health, suggests returning to New York to continue her treatment but he is spurned. When the Bishop portrait is found back in the attic, Jessica feels the upending of tranquility and trust, and herself alienated from the household, now believes she's hearing Abigail's ghostly voice in her head and that nefarious figures are coming for her. With Emily having seduced Duncan and made sexual overtures towards her, Jessica's own unbalanced psychosexual state, and jealousy teeters over the edge. Is Jessica relapsing and sliding into insanity? After agreeing to go swimming with Emily, is she really seeing the returning dead, vampires, spirits, and other supernatural possessed beings?

Or are these haunted manifestations all a product of a still mad and fractured mind? Can she keep all the voices in her head at bay? As she frets internally about appearing crazy, she externally pretends to keep herself in check, but will the emotional see-saw from the difficulty of deciphering between the unreal prove too much? With a low-key and dream-ish slowburn start, many early reviews criticized the movie for a narrative that was heavy on misdirection, and for unsettling disorientation -- particularly the climax with Emily biting Woody, Duncan's absence, Sam's reappearance, hubby and wife back home in their bedroom, Duncan's cut neck, knife-carrying Emily with her male mob of geriatric groupies, the discovery of mute blondie (gotta love the diy casket), the discovery of Woody, trying to board a ferry, and the film's final act after paddling in a rowboat into the middle of the lake... This end sequence of doom was a whirlwind of events that ponders whether or not a conspiracy took place, but the shifting mood of the picture as a whole is on Jessica's struggling interplay between somber and sinister. What initially looks peaceful and appealing, switches into a foreboding atmosphere that builds its apprehension amidst the foggy/hazy New Englandy cinematography of calm, country landscape and rural subtle scenery. Overall, LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (try to a imagine a Woodstock generation gap in a CARNIVAL OF SOULS setting) is a subdued, eerie horror offering that plays far more on whispered warnings and slipping fragility than the heavy sensationalism of what would become gutteral fare in scary 70's films. Even with its conclusion and unanswered questions, through all the creep factor, we are never sure of what is real or unreliable.