Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)
Trivia
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Spoilers (5)
Paula E. Sheppard, who played 12-year-old Alice, was 19 during the making of the film.
Alphonso DeNoble, who played the Spages' fat pervert landlord, wasn't a professional actor at the time. He was working as a bouncer at a gay bar and director Alfred Sole persuaded him to play the role. Before his death in 1978, he got acting jobs in two other low-budget horror films.
This film takes place in the early 1960s. In one scene a photo of President John F. Kennedy is shown hanging on a wall, and a 1961 calendar is shown in the detective squad-room.
Columbia Pictures was set to release the movie (as "Communion"), but pulled out for legal reasons. When Allied Artists picked it up, director Alfred Sole demanded a title change so that the audience wouldn't think it was seeing a religious film. The book adaptation retains the film's original title.
Was partially inspired by the film Don't Look Now (1973), especially the usage of the yellow raincoats.
The knife used in the film was created by Alfred Sole's neighbor, who was an engineer, and was designed with a retractable blade. It was the only knife used in the film, the filmmakers never made any duplicates.
When Father Tom stands in the rain, watching Mrs. Tredoni check the mail, a poster for the film Psycho (1960) can be seen in the background.
Original prints of this film had the title credits with the animated painting of Alice holding the knife that newer digital copies of the film have, but the original title letters still said "Communion" which was edited in 1998 to comply with the name under which it would be marketed.
The camera Aunt Annie uses to take Angela's photograph during the Communion is a 1950s Kodak Starmite, an amateur film camera popular in the 1950s for family snapshots.
Linda Miller was injured while filming the scene in the hospital, and production had to be halted for a month. Fortunately, she didn't have to go far for medical help--they were filming in a hospital.
Lillian Roth's first feature film since Take a Chance (1933).
In 2018, film distributor "88 Films" released this on DVD and Blu-Ray in the U.K. as part of its "Slasher Collection. It is spine number 35.
Composer Stephen Lawrence said his inspiration for the film's score, particularly the opening titles track, was his imagining a cloud of bad karma hovering over the setting of Paterson, New Jersey and raining down upon the city.
Spoilers
In the scene where Dom is attacked by the killer in the stairway at the abandoned building, it was required for the killer to drop the knife after stabbing Dom once and have it land directly on the handrail below, sticking straight up. Director Alfred Sole only had one knife and had to drop it repeatedly, and then have a crew member run back down the stairs to retrieve it and try it all over again. Finally, after over 20 tries, the knife landed directly on the handrail, giving the filmmakers the shot that was needed.
There is a scene halfway through the film were Alice grabs a kitten by the neck, twists it the air, then throws it toward the floor out of the camera shot. This was cut from the British release due to the strict animal abuse laws in the UK.
Alice's and Mrs. Tredoni's translucent face masks with the eye shadow and red lipstick were popular Halloween items for children during the 1950s, mostly mass-produced to be sold in dime stores.
In the DVD director's commentary [Alfred Sole ] claims he made sure he had the characters in the movie get hurt in ways the audience could relate or feel. Examples being hit on lips and teeth with a shoe and being stabbed in the foot. He felt an audience could relate better to the gruesome pain.
