Diagonaldi Very well executed

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

andrew taylor I can remember first seeing the image of a girl in a yellow raincoat wearing a translucent mask and thinking it was one of the creepiest things I had ever seen. I was very curious to finally watch the film that contained this frightening image. Alice, Sweet Alice starts off very shocking and very dramatic in the first half. The story of a young girl suspected of having murdered her younger sister during first communion was horrifying and at times difficult to watch. Unfortunately the plot deviates from that storyline and the movie loses most of it's emotional resonance and becomes yet another silly slasher film. The first half of the film works well but is unfortunately undone by the uninteresting plot twists.

Bill Hollister The 70s, more than any other decade produced many what I would call "socially conscious horror movies" or message films. Alice Sweet Alice is no exception.Karen (Brooke Shields in an early role) plays Karen, a young girl who is about to receive her first communion.She is the darling, apple of her mother's eye and can do no wrong. Karen has an older sister, Alice (Paula Sheppard), who likes to go around in her yellow rain slicker scaring people,cursing, and giving them the evil eye. During Karen's communion, someone kills her and all suspicion falls on the outcast, Alice. Someone wearing a yellow rain slicker and plastic doll mask begins killing people in the town. Some suspect Alice, but is it really her?The remainder of the film focuses on Alice. Many people may have very mixed emotions about her. Are we supposed to like and care about her? She does come across as a bit bratty, foul mouthed and "off" but we can cut her some slack because she also has to deal with her emotionally detached mother (Linda Miller)not to mention the obese landlord, Mr. Alphonso. I,personally really like the Alice character.Paula Sheppard, who plays the role, does an excellent job. She looks like a normal 12 year old girl one moment, and a deranged psychopath the next. Her eyes and facial expressions speak volumes about what she is thinking. Sheppard was actually 19 at the time of filming and sadly would only appear in one other movie, the ultra weird Liquid Sky. A word or two must be said about Mr. Alphonso. He is quite unlike any other character you will see in a movie,horror or otherwise. He is bald,always wears a stained white tank top, weighs close to 400 pounds and eats cat food. There are also a few not so subtle hints that he dabbles in pedophilia. Alice has a few run ins with Mr. Alphonse.He is, in my opinion,one of the most disturbing characters ever in a movie.Alice Sweet Alice was directed by Alfred Sole who would later direct one of my favorite horror spoofs, Pandemonium. I do not know much about Sole or his upbringing but one senses that there is a bit of self referencing in this movie.It seems to be a very personal film for Sole and the fact that he grew up in the same state (New Jersey)where the film is set adds to this feeling.Catholicism plays an important role in movie. Many of the characters attend the same church that Karen was killed in. Every character in Alice Sweet Alice has emotional baggage and are often unhappy with their lives. Guilt combined with a dreary late season setting make the movie very pessimistic in its atmosphere. If you're looking for a fun, lighthearted horror movie, this is not the one to watch.The killer's identity and motive may become obvious to some as the movie progresses but it takes nothing away from the overall effectiveness of the film. Although filmed and set in the United States, it looks and feels more like a giallo, which at the time was more prevalent than the slasher movie.Overall I would give Alice Sweet Alice 8/10 plastic doll masks. It is available on DVD and comes well recommended from this reviewer. Just don't let Mr. Alphonso catch you sneaking around his apartment door.

StrandedinLaLaLand I present "Alice, Sweet Alice", the underrated, American "in-spirit only" cousin of such Italian scream fests like Dario Argento's "Suspiria", released in 1976 and directed by Alfred Sole ("Pandemonium"). I'm not the first to call this film underrated either. Unlike films, like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both films created in the 1970s, that have been played to "death" (Don't excuse the pun!) on t.v. sets, either around Halloween or just because, "Alice, Sweet Alice" simply is not known as much to the general viewing public, unless the viewers are genuine horror fans. Like "Black Christmas" (which I will review later), it hasn't received it's due. Now mind you, I am a big horror fan, and even I overlooked this film for thirty years (Yes, I started watching horror sooner than most kids and, with care and caution, I've exposed my own children to the greatness of this genre.). I would see promos for televised late-night showings on my local t.v. stations as a kid, or I'd see critics put it on their "best of" lists. Yet, I still never showed interest in watching the actual film. It wasn't Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhies, or Michael Myers ("the Big Three" of "slasher" films).Ignoring this film for so long was a big mistake! Creepy! Creepy! Creepy! I'm being modest in this description. Where do I start? A troubled preteen becomes the prime suspect of her younger sister's murder during the latter's First Communion. We see a young, single mother, Catherine Spages (Linda Miller, daughter of Jackie Gleason, and wife of Jason Miller, Father Karras, of "The Exorcist"), along with her two daughters, 9 year-old Karen and 12 year-old Alice, played respectively by newly introduced Brooke Shields and Paula Sheppard. They are preparing for Karen's First Communion. Through early scenes of sibling rivalry and bullying on the part of Alice, we deduce that Karen is the clear favorite of the two. I wonder if the reasoning for Karen's favoritism is that she was born apparently in wedlock and Alice wasn't. Oh, those crazy Catholics! (Disclaimer: I'm a former member of the Church. No judgment! Just pure snark.) Without giving too much away (That's not my thing!), Karen ends up dead and Alice is suspected of the brutal murder. Through a series of "mishaps" and deaths involving people close to Alice and Catherine, the film gets crazier and creepier with each frame. Did Alice do this? How crazy is she? At what lengths will Catherine go to protect her surviving daughter? Some of the questions are answered and some are left ambiguous, like the ending, which adds to the creep factor.Generally, I love and recommend this film, based on my initial viewing. It's a nail biter, with many twists, turns, and red herrings, that trying to predict how the film would end was impossible as I was shocked gratefully by a big twist that came out of nowhere (unless, I wasn't observant truly). Normally, a major pet peeve of mine is the use of ambiguous endings. No, I don't want a spoon-feeding of an ending; but, sometimes, I need closure after much character and plot investment. Cut me some slack! I want to know how it ends. Maybe, this ending was a sequel hook. Whatever. I don't know. I was in diapers when this film premiered.However, the only thing that threw me off throughout the movie was that Paula Sheppard, Alice's actress, was nineteen and cast as a twelve year-old. Well, guess what? She sounds thirty. Either Alice smokes menthol cigarettes and enjoys three shots of Scotch each day after detention and we didn't know, or perhaps, a younger actress that sounds like a preteen, should've been cast. Nonetheless, voice maturity aside, she did a good job of portraying a rather sinister girl. While creepy boys get more play in horror films, it's good to see a malevolent girl. We can't all be sugar and spice, right? Thus, I highly recommend this film. It scared me and left an unsettling feeling. Of course, I'll watch it again. I will not ignore another late-night promo!

missmonochrome Poor little Alice(Paula E. Sheppard). Mercurial and withdrawn since her parents divorce, all of the attention is lavished on little sister Karen (a very young Brooke Shields) by their rather glacial, newly single mom,Katherine (Linda Miller).When Karen is found murdered in church on the day of her first Communion, all eyes on on Alice, who has Karen's veil in hand, and was ready to take her sister's place at the altar when the body was discovered. Soon bodies are piling up around the fractured family...but is Alice a sociopath or just a little girl fractured by both the slights of her upbringing (outright disdain from her aunt, a borderline pedophile landlord, an absent father) and the fact that she knows something regarding the crimes no one else has yet noticed? This film is a low budget classic of atmosphere. Gore is minimal, but tension is high, with a range of carefully selected music, a muted, faded color palette and a lot of giallo style POV close up reaction shots, and a claustrophobic series of sets, building a slow boil tension that even the sometimes clunky dialog and somewhat stiff acting can't break.It's an object lesson in how much can be done with quite little in the way of budget, and everything from the Catholic mass imagery to the rain destroying Katherine's careful coif after a brutal stabbing attack on her sister is placed with intent and care. Even when the killer is revealed just below the half way point, it just ups the ante for the remainder of the film My only real quibbles are that some of the character backstory and motivation is sketched quite thinly (particularly that of the killer, and the precise details of the divorce that fractured the family) and that those well crafted mood making moments were not let run just a tad longer, as the stills have a way of burrowing into your head and staying there.Given that a lot of the more straightforward expository scenes are written a touch awkward and thin, shaving a few seconds off them would have not done any harm, and made the transitions slightly less jarring.In any case, this film deserves to be remembered for far more than the first screen appearance of Ms. Shields, spent the $5 on Amazon and grab yourself a copy.For a nice little double feature, screen this with the equally atmosphere filled and under watched "Dead & Buried" (which I've also reviewed) and lament for a moment what thrillers used to be before the current vogue for sheer shock value.