Alice, Sweet Alice 4K UHD

Arrow Video

Blu-ray Release: February 11, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/2160p (HDR10/Dolby Vision)/Color

Audio: English LPCM 1.0 Mono (all cuts)

Subtitles: English SDH (all cuts)

Run Time: 107:05 (original Communion cut), 107:17 (Alice, Sweet Alice cut), 107:13 (Holy Terror cut)

Director: Alfred Sole

On the day of her first communion, young Karen (Brooke Shields) is savagely murdered by an unknown assailant in a yellow rain mac and creepy translucent mask. But the nightmare is far from over – as the knife-wielding maniac strikes again and again, Karen’s bereaved parents are forced to confront the possibility that Karen’s wayward sister Alice (Paula E. Sheppard) might be the one behind the mask. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)

Note: I'm recycling parts of my older Blu-ray review. If you're only reading this to get my opinion on the new 4K UHD transfer, kindly skip to the Video and Audio sections.

Alfred Sole’s Alice, Sweet Alice is a quintessential late stage proto-slasher (one Patrick and I briefly covered during the prototype episode of Genre Grinder) and it draws upon the same influences as Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972), Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), and the first proper slasher, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1977), which it predated by less than a year. Sole has claimed that he was inspired by multiple Hitchcock movies and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973 – the most obvious nod is the fact that his movie’s killer and red herring both wear a yellow rain slicker, similar to the red rain slicker worn by the dead child and crazed killer in Roeg’s film), but he also drew upon Italy’s colorful giallo thrillers, which were developing alongside the proto-slashers and sometimes overlapping.

Approached simply as a murder mystery thriller, it is one of the greatest of its decade, brimming with dynamic set pieces, frightening suspense, and clever story twists. It’s also interesting when viewed through the lens of a nearly camp-level family melodrama, punctuated by bloody mayhem. But, for this review, I wanted to discuss Alice, Sweet Alice’s place in the small canon of Catholic guilt horror, as well as the ways that it inverts the cinematic trope of the evil child.

Despite being a non-religious person raised in a largely agnostic environment, I am nonetheless interested in the horror that coincides with deeply held religious beliefs. Not the horror that is tied to religious mythology, as seen in exorcism movies, vampire movies, and Taoist or Buddhist wuxia fantasy (though they’re also neat), but the horror tied to the belief itself. From the outside looking in, Catholicism appears to be particularly intense in this regard and there is a collection of films based around the horrors of being Catholic, including (but not limited to) Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling (Italian: Non Si Sevizia un Paperino, 1972), Anthony Page’s Absolution (1978), and, of course, Alice, Sweet Alice. Rather than threatening non-believers with fire and brimstone, these films expose the reality of excruciating guilt, as well as the existential and emotional damage that fervent dogma can instill. 

Spoiler warning from here until the Video section.

During various interviews (including those on this disc and one with Bill Ackerman, linked below), Sole refers to himself as an ex-Catholic who remained obsessed with the ritual of the religion. Co-writer Rosemary Ritvo’s was also, apparently, a lapsed Catholic. For much of the film, Catholicism appears to be only a backdrop for the story. Eventually, it’s clear that the church backdrop isn’t simply used for flavor, but to highlight the film’s anti-religious – or at least anti-zealot – theme. This theme is subtly represented in the comparisons between the church ritual and Alice’s playtime activities (it is implied that she wants communion and that it is being withheld from her for misbehaving), as well as religious iconography and cluttered consumer decorations.

But the key statement on religion is tied to killer Mrs. Tredoni’s (Mildred Clinton) motivations, which aren’t unlike those of Seven’s (David Fincher, 1995) unnamed Deadly Sin Killer. She’s driven to murder as a way to punish the people she thinks are sinners, though, unlike ‘Jon Doe,’ her first victim is a surrogate offender – the child of a sinner, rather than the sinner herself. The popular slasher movies that followed Alice, Sweet Alice really clung to this idea of victims perpetuating ‘moral impurity,’ eventually leading to parody, like Wes Craven’s Scream (1996). We mostly credit Halloween as the ground zero for this concept, but Sole was already playing with the trope almost a year before Carpenter’s film was released. 

The repressed sexuality that goes hand-in-hand with classic Catholic guilt is key to the killer’s motivation, but there’s another side to the anti-Catholic sentiment that seems ahead of its time. Today, the Church’s biggest controversies surround child molestation accusations, several of which date back to the early ‘70s. But the news of the day rarely openly spoke about child sex abuse, so it wasn’t yet a consistent piece of the cultural zeitgeist. The fact that Sole included an explicitly pedophilic character, Alice’s family landlord, Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), in his Catholic horror film – alongside other adult men who speak about  Alice in a sexual manner – might have been seen as another ingredient in a transgressive stew in 1977. Today, it carries prescience.

The threat of pedophilia and open discussion of Alice’s sexual maturity are also part of a larger theme and Sole cleverly exploits the audience’s ingrained gender prejudices, bolstering her status as a red herring. She does play at adulthood, especially when she fearlessly rebukes Mr. Alphonso’s threats (the larger implication being that she’s simply gotten used to it over time), but she’s still a child and her motivations are childish – she’s not a femme fatale with grand machinations*. Even her choice in mask – a translucent face with pronounced lipstick and eyeshadow – represents her make-believe version of adulthood.

Alice, Sweet Alice is often categorized alongside other killer kid movies, mostly because Sole allows the audience to assume the worst about Alice for so much of its runtime. There are plenty of clues as to the killer’s true identity, but the movie deftly maneuvers around the possibility by focusing on Alice’s volatile emotional state and supposed sexual maturity. This is essentially the opposite of what happens in most evil kid movies, like Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956) or Joseph Ruben’s The Good Son (1993), where murderous children get away with their crimes, because they can hide behind their perceived innocence.

In this regard, it’s comparable to Jennifer Kent’s Babadook (2014). Both feature children who appear to be irrational antagonists from the point of view of (some) protagonists. In each, the child leads (Alice and Babadook’s young boy Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman) are emotionally erratic, due to a mix of normal and abnormal developmental influences. Both feature children that may have undiagnosed mental health issues, but their behavior isn’t particularly abnormal, especially considering each is dealing with the death of a loved one and an absent parent. The difference is that Babadook doesn’t switch perspectives on the audience; rather, Kent leaves the lesson to the subtext and lets the audience figure it out.

It’s also worth noting that Alice and Mrs. Tredoni are doppelgängers in more aspects than their rain slickers and masks – they have similar motivations for their behavior. Alice is jealous of her sibling and craves her parents’ attention, while Mrs. Tredoni is jealous of Alice’s parents and craves the attention of Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich).

*  Paula E. Sheppard was actually 19 at the time of filming, ensuring that the movie didn’t overstep any actual ethical boundaries. Unlike, say, Randal Kleiser’s The Blue Lagoon (1980), which featured a 14-year-old Brooke Shields in implied nude scenes with the use of body doubles.

Bibliography:

• Twisted Visions: Interviews with Cult Filmmakers by Matthew Edwards (McFarland & Company, 2017)

• Tracks of the Damned podcast (S.2, E.7, 10/26/2017), Alfred Sole interviewed by Bill Ackerman (listen here)

Video

Alice, Sweet Alice was easy to find on video in the early days of VHS, having been released by UAV, Vintage Video, King of Video, and Neon Video in the United States alone. I believe (but do not know) that this was because the film was re-issued twice in North America under three titles: Communion (Sole’s preferred title), Alice, Sweet Alice (after Brooke Shields had her breakthrough in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby [1978]), and Holy Terror (after Shields had an even bigger breakthrough with The Blue Lagoon). My assumption is that the copyright on one of these wasn’t filed correctly, so grey market video companies jumped on the property. Either that or it was just a victim of uncommon bootlegging. The ROAN Group released a letterboxed Laserdisc in 1997, the same year that Anchor Bay released a widescreen, fully uncut VHS. Anchor Bay then put out a non-anamorphic DVD edition in 1999. When that edition went out-of-print, the movie fell off the radar until 88 Films released an anamorphic PAL DVD and all-region Blu-ray in the UK in July of 2018.

Shortly after every fan finished importing 88 Films’ disc, the film had its North American BD debut via Arrow and it was sporting a new 4K restoration of the original camera negative. They also included a reconstructed Holy Terror edit – which is a couple of seconds longer – albeit with a lossy soundtrack, alongside the original Communion cut. The 4K scan was a sizable upgrade over 88 Films’ 2K restoration on almost every level and I wrote up a comparison review, complete with image sliders, that you can read here. They also included the Communion, Holy Terror, and Alice, Sweet Alice cuts.

Now we have Arrow’s 4K restoration on a UHD disc in full 2160p with HDR10/Dolby Vision enhancements. Because I can’t get UHD screencaps and because the general look of the 4K transfer is the same as its Blu-ray counterpart, I’ve included caps from the older disc for illustrative purposes. It’s also worth noting that there is no credited cinematographer and that Sole himself claims at least six different camera operators worked on the film.

It’s important to note that, when looking at the transfer critically, the vast majority (Sole has claimed “about 90%”) of Alice, Sweet Alice was shot on 16mm . It doesn’t have the same level of detail that a 35mm scan might have, the color quality is different, and grain is generally chunkier – all things that can look fantastic in 4K when done well (for example, MPI’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre 4K). Colors remain raw and naturalistic with a hint of those specific chromatic effects that come with 16mm sources. All hues skew warmer than earlier home video releases, as they did with Arrow’s first Blu-ray. I believe this is Sole’s intended look.

Audio

The multiple versions of Alice, Sweet Alice have led to multiple versions of the film’s soundtrack, pertaining mostly to small changes in music and dialogue. I don’t actually know what soundtrack is closest to Sole’s original intent, but I think it’s safe enough to assume that the Communion cut is the closest to what he wanted. That version features a new, uncompressed, LPCM 1.0 mono soundtrack. The Holy Terror cut is, as mentioned, presented in lossy Dolby Digital 1.0. Despite the single channel treatment and austere sound design, all of the important elements are crisp and neatly separated.

Composer Stephen J. Lawrence’s melancholic, sometimes soap opera-esque score pays homage to Bernard Herrmann, mainly Psycho (1960), though the strongest of his themes have connections to the gialli. Specifically, he utilizes haunting choral and music box aesthetics similar to those heard in Ennio Morricone and Goblin’s earliest thriller scores. The score is fragile enough that it occasionally distorts at the highest volume levels, but the uncompressed nature of the track leaves plenty of room for aural layers.

Extras

• Commentary with director Alfred Sole and editor Edward Salier (Communion version) – Maniac (1980) director and Blue Underground honcho William Lustig (who worked on the film) moderates this director/editor commentary, which was recorded for release with the Anchor Bay DVD. It’s a fun track, full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and deeper discussion of the movie’s themes.

• Commentary with film historian Richard Harland Smith (Communion version) – The historian, author, critic, and liner note writer extraordinaire offers a very informative, occasionally flowery track that fills in many of the straight up factoids missing from the more personable director/editor track, while providing context and comparisons to other movies.

• First Communion (18:42, HD) – The first new interview is with Sole, who recalls getting in trouble shooting his first movie, an X-rated picture called Deep Sleep (1972), in hopes of funding Alice, Sweet Alice, developing the screenplay, casting, struggling with a cavalcade of disrespectful cameramen, various other hardships while filming, and release.

• Alice on My Mind (14:59, HD) – Composer Stephen Lawrence walks us through his career and the film’s major musical themes while sitting at a piano.

• In the Name of the Father (16:02, HD) – Actor Niles McMaster Skypes-in an interview about being cast and working on the film that launched his career.

• Lost Childhood: The Locations of Alice, Sweet Alice (16:02, HD) – A tour/comparison of the original shooting locations hosted by former Fangoria editor-in-chief, critic, and screenwriter of a plethora of B-horror movies, Michael Gingold.

• Sweet Memories (11:18, HD) – Sole’s cousin and writer/director of Satan's Playground (2006), Dante Tomaselli, shares memories of Sole as a family member, production designer, mentor, and Alice, Sweet Alice.

• Deleted sequences (2:45, HD) – Two short sequences discovered while scanning the original negative, presented without audio.

• Alternate Alice, Sweet Alice opening titles (1:13, HD) 

• Holy Terror re-release trailer 

• U.K. Communion TV spot

• Image gallery 

There’s a link in the bibliography, but I’d like to reiterate that friend and persistent Genre Grinder contributor Patrick Ripoll did an Alice, Sweet Alice commentary track podcast with another friend of the show, Bill Ackerman, himself a ‘70s horror expert who can also be heard on Arrow’s release of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, along with Amanda Reyes. It even includes an exclusive audio interview with Alfred Sole.

Please check it out right here!

The images on this page are taken from Arrow's Blu-ray – NOT the 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.