"And we're off..." -- ALICE. SWEET ALICE

Not only is Alice, Sweet Alice the film that kicked off my first SHOCKtober event in 2005, it also figured into SHOCKtober 2019 when I reassessed it. Now here we are, meeting again during this highest of holy seasons. I ain't complainin'!

As I've mentioned time and again, when this blog started in 2005 my focus was slasher films. Every horror blog, it seemed, had a niche regarding subgenres or gimmicks and slashers were a bit underserved. I pounced because hey, the "Final Girl" slasher trope made for a mighty name title for a blog! But mostly it was because it was the subgenre I felt I knew best. I grew up part of a horror-loving family and slashers were the stuff of my youth; But unlike Hammer films or haunted house movies or creature features or any of the other flicks I watched and loved, slashers felt like they were mine, perhaps owing to the fact that they were aimed at and featured characters who weren't adults yet. 

But as many as I'd seen, once I started Final Girl I realized how many more were waiting for me out there. Movies from before my time or more obscure titles that'd been unavailable to me or I'd missed on video store shelves. In those early days, when I wasn't writing posts or watching things I anticipated writing about, I spent most of my free time poring over reference books and a handful of dedicated websites in the hopes of finding some treasures...or, at least, films I'd never seen. Honestly, it was mostly books checked out from my local library, such as John Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1970s and Adam Rockoff's Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. It was a different internet then--a dial-up one, at that--and there certainly wasn't so much content on it. Slashers were an old world for me, but also, I discovered, an entirely new one. How exciting it was to have so many movies waiting for me to discover!

The point is that this was how Alice, Sweet Alice came into my life as something I simply had to see. What luck, then, to pick up a VHS tape for $1.50 and finally get my eyeballs on it. I gave it an 8/10--8 out of 10 catholic nutjobs, to be more precise--back in 2005 (I was rating things then, what folly), but regardless I think I found it a little disappointing because it wasn't solely the slasher film I was expecting. It's not fair to judge a film by one's expectations of it, of course, and I do think the killer's translucent mask/St Michael's Church-branded rain slicker creeped me out enough to make up for its other perceived "shortcomings."

In 2019, I'd upgraded from that $1.50 VHS tape to a caseless $0.50 DVD copy and, knowing what to expect (or not to expect) of Alice, Sweet Alice, I appreciated it much more than I did the first time, even if there was no number rating to prove my feelings. In that review, I wrote:

Alice, Sweet Alice is a deeply unpleasant film, and I'm not necessarily referring to the violence, which occurs fairly seldomly. Of course, when kill scenes do arrive, they are shocking and brutal for sure. It's more the atmosphere of the whole thing–it's all drenched in decrepitude and sleaze, and everyone is so damn loud all the time, yelling at one another and clomping up and down the stairs of the small apartment building where Alice lives with her mother (and sister, before her death).

It's a very crass and nasty kind of film in many ways--often, that's the point of it--and to be honest I think the 108 minute version on the DVD is perhaps a titch too long and the 98-minute VHS cut might be preferable. (No, I still haven't upgraded to the Blu-ray...given my history with this film, I suppose I'm waiting to find it for under $2.) Maybe I've just seen it too many times now?

Regardless, in the trashfire that is 2025 it feels more relevant than ever. The film points to the dissolution of American institutions we have always held up as aspirational, as protectors and safe havens...or more likely, it points to the fact that those institutions have always been rotten. "We're not even safe in the church!" a character laments after young Karen is brutally murdered during a Communion ceremony. Many have never been safe in the church, be they victims of abuse or sexual minorities or believers in another religion. The police in this movie are reprehensible, from the nudie pics plastered all over the walls of the detective bureau to lewdly commenting on 12-year-old Alice's body and suggesting she wants a cop to "feel her up." In the Kennedy era, when the film takes place, this rot was only known by a few--obviously, a gay man like Alice, Sweet Alice writer/director Alfred Sole was amongst those few. Now in 2025, the rot and hypocrisy are impossible to ignore.