This Catholic Horror Gem Is Now on Prime–And It’s More Disturbing Than You Think
When I was in elementary school, I became weirdly obsessed with the idea of having my First Communion. My parents were Catholic in the most abstract sense of the word—we didn’t even do the Christmas-and-Easter-mass-only thing like some other lapsed families. But I had my pastel Precious Moments Bible and a deep-seated fear that one wrong move would land me in Hell, and for a while, that was enough.
Until one spring, when it seemed like everyone in my class was preparing for their First Communion. As a little girl who felt mostly invisible, I became jealous of my classmates who spoke excitedly about choosing their cakes, their pretty white dresses, their delicate little gloves. And their veils! I knew it was wrong, “thou shalt not covet,” and all that, but I would’ve killed for one.
Few movies nail the guilt, shame, and despair that come with the Catholic experience better than Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), now streaming free on Amazon Prime. This gnarly 70s thriller doesn’t rely on the usual demons and evil nuns we’ve come to expect from Catholic horror. Instead, it digs into the very real terror lurking within the church, our communities, and even the nuclear family.
Directed by Alfred Sole, Alice, Sweet Alice is an American giallo set in working-class New Jersey. Released two years before Halloween, this proto-slasher opens with Karen (a very young Brooke Shields in her feature debut), a nine-year-old girl preparing for her First Communion, only to be strangled and set on fire inside the church before she can take the sacrament. Her older sister, Alice (played by then 19-year-old Paula Sheppard, eerily convincing as a jealous 12-year-old), becomes the prime suspect. After all, she stole her sister’s veil. She’s got a secret stash of trinkets and roaches in a hallway closet. And she’s been running around in a bright yellow raincoat and a creepy translucent mask, terrorizing anyone who crosses her.
From there, Alice, Sweet Alice becomes progressively more disturbing, but there aren’t any cheap jump scares (although there’s one scare that earned a spot in Bravo’s 101 Scariest Movie Moments). Instead, there’s the lecherous landlord who seems to be interested in little girls, Alice’s neglectful mother who keeps sending her downstairs to deliver the rent check without realizing the danger, her absent father who suddenly reappears after Karen’s murder, and the constant, unblinking gaze of saints that watch everyone and protect no one.
And as the body count grows, so does the suspicion that the killer in the mask and raincoat is Alice. But she wouldn’t actually hurt anyone…would she?
I can already hear some of you begging me not to spoil Alice, Sweet Alice, and I promise I won’t. Part of the fun is the whodunnit of it all. God knows that’s the truth.
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