Alice, Sweet Alice

After a young Catholic girl, Karen (Brooke Shields), is brutally murdered during communion, suspicion falls on her emotionally disturbed older sister Alice (Paula E. Sheppard).

Director Alfred Sole's Alice Sweet Alice is the closest thing you will find to an American giallo: the death scenes are sudden and brutal, the score is haunting, the killer is distinctive in creepy plastic mask and yellow raincoat, and the film's overall atmosphere and aesthetic is redolent of many a Euro thriller/horror.

Admittedly, the film falls short of the best work of maestros Argento and Bava, the motive for the killings a little weak, and the pacing a tad pedestrian, while the identity of the killer is revealed way too early for my liking (true giallos generally wait until the very end before letting the cat out of the bag), but Sole conducts matters with an assured hand, presenting some striking visuals, and his cast give solid performances (with the exception of Jane Lowry as Alice's Aunt Annie, whose histrionics are waaaayy OTT).

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for Alphonso DeNoble as morbidly obese, cat-loving pervert Mr. Alphonso, who is wonderfully grotesque.