Communion (1976)
aka
Alice Sweet Alice
If You Survive This Night… Nothing Will Scare You Again

Director – Alfred Sole

Writers – Alfred Sole, Rosemary Ritvo

Starring – Linda Miller, Mildred Clinton, Paula E Shepherd, Niles McMaster, Jane Lowry, Rudolph Willrich, Michael Hardstark, Alphonso DeNobleGary Allen, Brooke Shields

Review by Noel Bailey

One of the best ever slash-fests
Any half serious student of horror film over the past forty years would agree that this particular title stands head and shoulders over the average entry under this genre.

It HAS horror – Young Brooke Shield’s demise, though unseen, is as horrific as anything screened. (You don’t need severed heads to be horrific) It has the most realistic brick-in-the-face scene I have ever been privy to watch. Death in fact comes in this film with detailed realism.
Reminiscent in part of DON’T LOOK NOW…COMMUNION hands us one seriously deranged killer.

Alfred Sole directed himself a winner with this one.

Communion (1976)
Review by Wayne Malin

Interesting horror film,
This movie takes place in 1961 in NJ. Karen (Brooke Shields in her first film) is about to receive her first communion. However she is brutally killed before that and the prime suspect is her 12 year old sister Alice (Paula Sheppard) who hated her. Then more murders start to happen and all of the clues point to Alice…

Hard to see and interesting cult movie. It was made on a very low budget and it shows. The sets are cheap and some of the actors aren’t that good–Jane Lowry as Aunt Annie was just one of the worst actresses I’ve ever seen. But there is some good acting (Linda Miller, Niles McMaster and Sheppard were all good), it has some very bizarre characters (Mr. Alphonse is hard to forget), creepy murders (the mask the killer wears scared me) and is VERY anti-Catholic. That may or may not be a selling point to you.

The script is good too and it all leads to a truly disturbing ending. And it was fun to see Lillian Roth as a pathologist! Beware some of the prints out there–some are cut. I saw the uncut one but it had seriously drained color and muffled sound. Still it’s worth seeking out if you’re a horror fan.