Review: Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

Director: Alfred Sole

If you survive this night…Nothing will scare you again.

Set in the 1960s (which, due to lack of budget, was lost among more contemporary details) and heavy on anti-Catholic rhetoric, Alice Sweet Alice is definitely the odd one out of its time. It stars a young Brooke Shields as Karen, the first victim and younger sister of our deeply unnerving yet oddly likable antagonist, Alice. Between the constant whining and carrying on of Karen and the overt favoritism of children by the mother, it’s easy to sympathize with poor Alice.  Although the film starts right off with all kinds of emotional tension, the first death definitely sets the mood for the rest of the film.

Alice becomes main suspect in murder of sister. I mean, she did just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have the same creepy smiling mask and yellow raincoat as the murderer, and have more than enough motive. Throughout the film, it becomes more and more apparent that Alice is less than innocent, but her involvement in the terrors to unfold would remain to be seen. However, there was much hinting at the idea that the ghost of Karen, back for revenge may be to blame.

One character, which we are introduced to briefly after the death of Karen, was the creepy apartment manager with all of the kittens. I feel he could have been explained or integrated into the plot a little more. He seemed to both hate and take a “liking” to Alice and reminded me a bit of a John Waters character. Alice seemed to return the favor, somehow possibly liking his creepy, pedophilic attention, adding to the Alice character as deeply troubled and demented. Indeed, a disturbing but weirdly compelling relationship.

Throughout the film, Mom refused to listen to anything and anyone, ready to fight everyone about her children, and was always hysterical and uncooperative. She was also kind of an enabling pushover. There was also the aunt. She seemed to always know what was up, but no one listened and came off as overzealous at times. Between the two of them, there was quite a lot of tension and screaming, especially in regard to the guilt of Alice, who later may or may not have stabbed her aunt several times. As you can imagine, the following scenes would be littered with yelling, denial, and hysteria. The estranged father played the role as the voice of reason, although he started off by being uncooperative and silly about everything. However, he begins to pull himself together and actively aid in solving the mystery of who attacked the aunt in the stairwell.

I do believe that had the film followed along the “disturbed little girl dodging everyone’s radar on a killing spree” path that it would have been more compelling. The final murder and the reveal of the real killer at the end were a bit of a letdown (although it didn’t not make sense). However, the notion of the idea that Alice could very well be capable of murder and was not completely innocent was compelling and would have made for a fine storyline in of itself. The fact that the ending seemed kind of thrown into place, for the sake of the element of surprise, was more frustrating than anything. Despite the fact that the plot was a little bit all over the place, I would say that this film is deserving of a gander for any horror buff.

- Jasmine Casimir

Review: Monkey Shines (1988)

Monkey Shines (1988)

Director: George A. Romero

Writers: Michael Stewart (novel), George A. Romero (screenplay)

Stars: Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil

George A. Romero will always and forever be, to many, the master and originator of zombie horror. Monkey Shines, however, does not fall under this category. The “odd guy out," if you will.  I had not seen it until last Monday and it was not at all what I was expecting, out of Romero or in general. This was not necessarily a bad thing. I will keep this review short and sweet this time around.

Monkey Shines is about a quadriplegic man named Allan, who becomes paired up with a trained monkey named Ella. What he does not know, is that Ella was also part of an experiment which allowed her to tap into his deepest feelings of rage, which she carried out for him.

This film was an interesting one because it reminded me a bit of Re-Animator and how the bulk of the movie was slow paced and then just wallops your sensory organs with the last half hour or so. For the most part, it seemed to me to be a basically-sci-fi, not-really-horror movie. It was mainly about this cute little monkey who progressed in intelligence through an experiment. She then started to become slightly naughtier with the storyline, which all in all was pretty tame. There was not a whole lot of gore or horror really, which was actually a nice break, although unexpected and in this case, a little disappointing. My mind wasn’t totally blown by this film, and it didn’t exactly feel like a Romero film ought to. Yes, it was not meant to be just like one of his zombie flicks, but it felt a little too disconnected from his directing style. It is possible though that I’m a bit tainted after familiarizing myself with a gorier video library. If you are looking for and expecting something more in the vein of a psychological, science fiction flick, I would say give it a shot. It’s definitely nothing I will back-shelve, and it was worth taking a look at what else a familiar film director could do.

- Jasmine Casimir

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Original Vs. Remake: Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Vs. 

Night of the living dead (1990)

By Jasmine Casimir

“They’re coming for you Barbara.”

George A Romero dazzled audience and future filmmakers with his classic Night of the Living Dead in 1968, birthing a new genre of horror, soon to create and maintain a solid cult following. As you all may know, it was then remade in 1990, directed by Tom Savini. The following is a comparative look at both films.

We begin with the classic and familiar storyline of siblings visiting a graveyard. Soon after the quick introduction to our first characters, seemingly queued onto screen by Johnny with the infamous tagline, the two are greeted by a man who appears to have just risen from the grave. Johnny is killed instantly, and Barbara flees to a nearby house where she meets Ben, and eventually two couples: one with a “sickly” little girl.

Taking a break however from my synopsis, which I am sure you can make up from there without continuation, I do want to point out the main merit of the original. Although pretty much only a technicality by way of “they didn’t have the technology yet” was, for starters, the black and white film and the lack of noise-assault. This did two things: it choked down much of the aural and visual horror in a way that made these aspects less cheap and obvious, and it did not force one to be on edge, by way of scary sounds the whole time. The horror was in the actors and situations as is arguably the way it ought to be. It was genuine, organic, and in that sense, much more “spooky” than overtly visually terrifying.

Back to the plot and characters.  It’s possible that this is all due to my post-second-wave feminist upbringing, but the fact that the entirety of Barbara’s personality was boiled down to constant, irrational, screaming, whimpering, sad-sack in the corner was so irritating that I spent equal amounts of brain power trying to ignore her as I did watch the rest of the film. Granted, this was just a reflection of the times, it was a distraction, as that character archetype always is. 

I do also want to point out that the little girl character, once transformed into the living dead, was much more jarring and creepier due to lack of over-done gore, the film quality, and the lack of brain-punching sounds. I don’t think many film “monsters” have left as big of an impression on me as that little girl, with the subtle, dark, sunken-in eyes, appearing from dead silence with that iconic facial expression as she ceases munching on her father’s dead corpse to kill her mother with a trowel.

Taking a gander at the 1990 remake now, we are greeted with the familiar scene of siblings, brother killed instantly, pretty much follows the original plot pretty damn well, including the line, “They’re coming for you Barbara,” in the same oh-so-spooky, foreshadowing manner. Barbara wasn’t so much of a waste of sobbing, hysterical oxygen, taking on an equal lead to Ben. Which, although a fundamental device to the original, it was not uncomfortably irritating for me to watch. This film, apart from a few other very minor adjustments, such as divulgence of clarification, was pretty much the same. Per usual, I will not give away any endings. I did have moral obligation to stand and applaud to the switching up of the ending, which gave one hell of a nod to the original but also to the character-facelift of our leading lady.

All in all, despite the fact that the Night of the Living Dead remake was basically just the original with minor alterations, it was not, in my opinion, the abomination that some people feel that it was. I will admit, I am a bit of a purist and generally lean much more heavily to the original. That being said, the remake did not reek of over-cautiousness (despite the strong similarity to its predecessor) or do that hideous, terrible, hateful thing where they leave out really important stuff and invent new scenarios that just screw the original story line. Both films are worth merit in my book and take up equal playing time in my VCR, and maybe you’ll think so too.

- Jasmine Casimir