Alice, Sweet Alice  aka Communion

An interesting little thriller that plays like an Italian Giallo, but is set and made in America.  Got famous for the brief presence of Brooke Shields at a young age (and she never acted better than in this), but I find many of the actors interesting – particularly the girl under suspicion for murdering her sister and others – played by Paula Sheppard very effectively.

The movie borrows from a few sources among Giallo, and is also strongly reminiscent of Don’t Look Now, but it also seems to be an inspiration for later movies.  The music and the use of the music, for example, seems a direct precursor to the music and its usage in Halloween, coming 2 years after this.

The director shows flair, with a good build up of tension both in plotting and his use of shots and music, but also in the use of some very strange characters (like the grossly overweight, effeminate landlord who seems morbidly interested in the young girls who live in his apartments, and seems to eat the catfood he feeds to his kittens).  He also uses in-plot music to add to the weirdness (watch out for ‘three little fishies in an itty-bitty pool’).

Overall, recommended and worth seeing.