Alice, Sweet Alice

Looks lovely

I’ve always enjoyed this one. I had a cheap VHS copy back in the 80s. It was one of those public domain titles released by a number of different companies to sell at Kmart and Target. The actress who played Alice was in her 20s though the character was 12! The actor who played Mr. Alphonso committed suicide a couple years after the movie came out.

Its so lurid and dirty looking...

Makes life look like hell.

And I love it!

I'll repeat what I said in the last thread on this subject, from July 2022:

My best friend and I watched it about twelve years ago, and were tickled to death by Kay Kyser's 'Three Little Fishies,' which is played in the film. We'd never heard it before, and were amazed at the apparent bathroom humor of the refrain, which sounded like

'Poop-poop, did 'em, dat 'em - wet 'em, too

And he swam and he swam all over the dam.'

Overall, the most creepy thing to me was the all-pervasive Catholicism of the characters and community depicted in the film. I'm not from 'Catholic World,' so it was the most alien thing in the film to me.

There have been a few threads on this over the years. The acting from Linda Miller (daughter of Jackie Gleason) and Jane Lowry is especially shrill—very stagey and obnoxious, but it doesn't detract from it for me—if anything, it just adds another bizarre tone. I think this film is a masterpiece and one of the most underrated horror movies of the '70s. I rented it on VHS as a kid and never forgot it. I've been a fan ever since. I was ecstatic when they finally announced a Blu-ray release of it a few years back. RIP to Alfred Sole, the writer/director. He killed himself last year.

Brooke Shields is in it. Victor Buono!

It's an American giallo.

Paula Sheppard did this and Liquid Sky. She kind of fermented a legacy of sorts in a rarefied air that Julia Ormond only dreamed of.

It has a lot of stylistic flourishes to it that really make it stand out among its peers. Paula Sheppard was great in this. I love the scene where Alice drags the lie detector test off the table while the detective is talking about her tits (they omitted the dialogue in the clip below for the TV airing—he tells his colleague, "Did you notice her tits? She was looking at me like she wanted me to feel her up!"

I was surprised Brooke shields died so early.

Alice's aunt was such a hysterical, bloviating cunt in this. She deserved more than a knife to the leg.

I'm sad that the director killed himself last year. The movie's an underrated classic. The over-the-top acting is really not too far off the mark, when you factor in the amount of tragedy these already repressed and dysfunctional characters face throughout the movie.

Brooke did this before Pretty Baby. Was originally released as Communion and Holy Terror, was rereleased post-Pretty Baby in 1978 to capitalize on Brooke.

Prior to Wikipedia friends would call me and need answers to obscure minutiae details like this which would lead to lengthy conversations about all sorts of random shit like this and other topics opined about here on the Datalounge. So in a way nothing has really changed that much.....

The above is my audition tape for any 'Get me a gay Paul Harvey' gigs that might be coming up

The above is my audition tape for any 'Get me a gay Paul Harvey' gigs that might be coming up

OP, thanks for the thread! I have this movie on DVD--first saw it on HBO back in 1982 and was transfixed by the blue-collar 70s New Jersey locations. Atmospheric and off-the-wall. So much weirdness in every scene, some of it intentional, some not. Brooke was very sweet-looking, just right for the role of the murdered sis. There's a scene where the Paula Sheppard character steals Brooke's communion veil, and poor Brookie goes full-on hysterical. "She took my VEIL! She took my VEIL, Mommy!"

Great fun and well worth multiple viewings. I always watch it on Halloween, along with Freaks and Night of the Living Dead.

Very sorry to hear that Alfred Sole killed himself.

Alfred Sole had a pretty successful career as a TV production designer in his later life. He was the long-running production designer on "Veronica Mars" and "Castle", which I'm sure made him pretty good money. He retired to a farm in Utah before he died last year. I didn't realize he was family. Apparently he had a husband and a son. It's too bad he's gone.

For a little Catholic girl, Brooke Shields really did some wild shit in her nascent career. She went from getting murdered onscreen in her debut (during her first communion, no less), to getting prostituted, fully nude, and preyed upon by Keith Carradine. I'm not sure any child actor has had such a shocking foray into film.

Brooke was also in the movie Traffic. She plays Bob the creeps wife.

Wait maybe that isn’t the title - Freeway!

How I fear a reboot, inevitably helmed by someone like that freak who does Euphoria..

Euphoria was depressing

"BUT YOU GIVE IT TO THAT WHORE!"

"BUT YOU GIVE IT TO THAT WHORE!"

A severely underrated proto-slasher. I'd highly recommend getting the Arrow 4K disc (or the Blu-ray even). The 4K just came out this week.

This is a guilty pleasure of mine

A fetish thread

[quote]I'm surprised this movie isn't mentioned on here much. This is pure camp imo.

Aw, OP, you're so stupid you type "imo" here like a schoolgirl.

There. Now you have both shock AND aw with your little thread.

I lack the giallo gene myself but this is one rated highly by those who do enjoy the genre.

This is going to sound like a sales pitch to buy the 4K but whatever -- I'd seen it ages ago and liked it fine - then i saw the restoration that Arrow did and it was like seeing a totally different movie. It's actually really beautifully shot with lots of great camerawork and use of those spaces, something I never quite caught onto in its degraded state before (although the movie is so sleazy the sleazy feel of the old version worked for it in another way)

Agreed R30. What surprises me is it was only Soles' second film (he'd done a porno flick before it that got him excommunicated from his local Catholic parish), but you really can't tell. It is gorgeously photographed and artistically done all around. He really had a good eye for filmmaking and I wish he'd directed more. The gritty Paterson, NJ locations are stunning, plus that haunting score, and a pretty damn compelling screenplay with a lot of subtext. The acting is a bit over-the-top at times, but still very good stuff. The Arrow Blu-ray was a fantastic upgrade, but the 4K is even better and it really brings out all the fantastic colors in the film. It resembles a European horror film much more than it does an American one.

R18, she really did. I grew up in the 90s and had no idea that she was famous in her childhood, I only knew her from her marriage to Agassi and Suddenly Susan. I was shocked when I saw stills from Pretty Baby. Her mom must have been the utimate bitch.

Jane Lowry as Alice's cunty aunt Annie is a highlight of this movie for me. The film is extremely moody and macabre, but she brings a lot of campy humor to it. My favorite scene is where she's waiting in the hearse with Alice just before Karen's funeral. Catherine, standing outside the car, is reunited with Dom, her ex-husband and the father of their dead daughter. Catherine embraces Dom and begins violently sobbing. Annie, who expressly dislikes Dom, rolls down the window and says to them: "I don't want to rush you, but Mass begins at nine." Black humor at its finest.

Paula Sheppard turned 19 while making this movie, though she is mostly convincing here as an adolescent. There are a few closeups where you can see she was a teenage smoker though, as there are visible nicotine stains on her front teeth. I suppose given her character and the time period, though, it wouldn't have been out of the question for Alice to have been sneaking Marlboros in the apartment building's basement.