COMMUNION
US, 1976, 108 minutes, Colour.
Linda Miller, Mildred Clinton, Paula Sheppard, Jane Lowry, Brooke Shields, Lillian Roth.
Directed by Alfred Sole.
Communion - Alice Sweet Alice: A low-budget horror thriller, critically acclaimed as Communion (after its Psycho-like gory finale at mass) but commercially acclaimed after a title change to Alice Sweet Alice. Set around 1960 in a U.S. Catholic atmosphere of saints, superstition and repressed resentments, an unhealthy Catholicism, as Hitchcock-like madness and mistaken guilt-responsibility, the film has echoes of Hitchcock (I Confess, for instance) and other religious association thrillers like Don't Look Now. There are good performances and an interesting atmosphere (especially for the Catholic horror movie fan) that raises all kinds of religious psychological questions that are lurking beneath the surface of a sometimes sensationalist and gory murder thriller.
1. Focus, tone and themes of the title? The alternate commercial title, Alice Sweet Alice and the change of tone?
2. How could the film be best described - genre, conventions? The quality of the small-budget film. actors? The visuals? The homage to the cinema thriller tradition? The musical score and atmosphere? A successful horror thriller?
3. The appeal of crime thrillers, murder mysteries? Violence, brutality, death? The background of religion and repression? Intimations of the occult? How much did the film have to say beneath the thriller surface?
4. The atmosphere of 1960 and the transition from the '50s to the '60s? The United States and its moral traditions religious traditions? The Catholic Church at the verge of change in the '60s? The atmosphere of New York, the Italian ghetto, its way of life? Religion, repression, sexuality, violence? Religion and ritual, sacraments? The period of Psycho - and the advertisement seen in the background?
5. The film's reliance on devices for its effects and shocks - camera work, subjective shots, hiding identities, deceiving and misleading the audience? The role of masks? Shocks and scares? Knives and brutality? Blood? The atmosphere of the bizarre?
6. The importance of the Catholic setting - religion, Mass,, Communion, the ritual of First Communions? The focus on the church itself, statues and the angle at which they were filmed? Suggestions of holiness, other-worldliness? Repression? The Church's moral teaching, standards, the breaking of these? Sin and guilt? The clues to the mystery and the possible solutions?
7. The focus on the two sisters, Alice and Karen? Karen and her sweetness, age, the gift of the cross, her veil? A target for jealousy? Alice as the problem child, the comparisons, the age difference, difference in love from her mother? Her being isolated, eccentric behaviour? The masks, giving people a fright? Stealing? Her potential madness? The link by masks with Mrs. Tredoni? The background of her illegitimacy?
8. Katherine as the average American woman, trying to cope with her daughters and the household, her differing attitudes towards her daughters, the anger at Alice? Her attitudes towards Alice because of her birth? Her relationship with her sister, with her niece? Her ex-husband and involving him after Karen's murder? Her fear, fright, the attacks, blame? How responsible was she for her daughter's behaviour? Dom and his visit, his attitudes towards Katherine, towards Anne and Angela? His responsibility for the break-up of the marriage, the repercussions for his daughters?
9. Father Tom and his place in the parish, friendship with Katherine, with Dom? His gift for Karen? Close friendship? Seeing him in the presbytery? Mrs. Tredoni and her fondness for him? His decisions about the bizarre behaviour? The build-up to the final Mass, the ugliness of his murder? Why was he Mrs. Tredoni's victim? A wish fulfilment for a son? The symbolic mother-son relationship?
10. Alice and her malevolent attitudes, the tests, the interviews with the psychiatrist, her presence at the shelter? Her mother's obtaining her release? The audience thinking she was a killer?
11. The sketching of Mrs Tredoni in the background, her Italian Catholic attitudes, strictness? The emergence of her madness? Her attacks on Annie, on Dom and luring him to his death? The fight with him? The final murder? why the killing of Father Tom? Her motivation for killing? The link-up via the masks with Alice? The reasons given for the death of her child on the First Communion day, children paying for the sins of their parents, Alice conceived out of wedlock? An avenging angel? The bizarre aspects of Catholicism?
12. The presentation of the church itself, the celebration of Mass, Communion, Confession, Tensions at Mass?
13. The patterning of family relationships and their images? Katherine and her daughters, Dom and his daughters, the role of Annie and Angela and suspicions? Mrs Tredoni and her family relationships?
14. The effectiveness of the horror style, its surface impact and the use of B-film conventions? The deeper implications? Involving the audience in the deeper levels by the horror techniques?
