Tag: Donald Sutherland

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

ALICE, SWEET ALICE (1976) ***

They really tried hard with ALICE, SWEET ALICE, the horror film that’s best known for being Brooke Shields’ film debut.

It appeared in November 1976 at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it competed against such films as ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, GREY GARDENS, SMALL CHANGE, THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, and Best Feature winner KINGS OF THE ROAD.

It received theatrical release (and mostly negative reviews) in 1977, 1978, and 1981. Viewers might have seen it as either ALICE, SWEET ALICE or COMMUNION (the original title) or HOLY TERROR depending on when they watched it.

The promotional forces especially played on the Brooke Shields angle in ‘78 and ‘81.

One of the ‘78 ALICE, SWEET ALICE ads proclaimed at its top, “PRETTY BABY Brooke Shields, America’s New Star,” a reference to Shields being in Louis Malle’s contemporaneous PRETTY BABY.

Three years later, the film returned as HOLY TERROR with a hard sell promotional campaign again built around exploiting Shields’ notoriety from her Calvin Klein advertisements and her film projects like THE BLUE LAGOON. Shields put up a fight, though, because she had more clout and ENDLESS SUMMER coming down the pike; “Brooke was concerned that film goers could only be disappointed if led into the theater with the promise that the film was of recent vintage or that she had a central part in it,” said her attorney. See, the original HOLY TERROR ads used a photo of Shields circa ‘81 rather than one of her from the film that was made during a different administration. Those naughty ad men, they did a bad, bad thing.

Roger Ebert made the advertising campaign for HOLY TERROR his “Dog of the Week.” “The ads promise that it stars Brooke Shields,” Ebert said. “That’s where the trouble begins, because HOLY TERROR was first released five years ago under the title of COMMUNION and then it was released three years ago as ALICE, SWEET ALICE. Now, when this movie was originally shot, Brooke Shields was a little girl, only 10 years old, and as Calvin Klein can tell you, she’s not 10 years old anymore. Shields has a supporting role in the movie as an apparently demented little girl and it’s an effective thriller alright, but how many title changes is it going to go through in an attempt to cash in on Brooke Shields’ recent popularity?” Gene Siskel replied, “Maybe they ought to try GONE WITH THE WIND.”

Truth in advertising: Shields, listed 10th in the cast in the end credits, appears in the picture for about the first 10 minutes. For those of us who think she’s one of the worst mainstream actresses ever committed to celluloid, that’s a major blessing in disguise. She’s not a demented little girl, though, but the first murder victim. Attending her first communion, her character Karen gets killed real good before she can receive it, strangled to death and then incinerated by a masked figure in a costume that should make one think back to the superior thriller DON’T LOOK NOW. Only this raincoat is yellow rather than red like DON’T LOOK NOW.

Deceptive promotional campaigns are not anything new. They’ve happened before and they will happen again. It happens all the time, and not only (but especially) during election years.

For example, John Travolta made his debut (briefly) in the ridiculous 1975 thriller THE DEVIL’S RAIN, which features Ernest Borghine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerritt, William Shatner, and Keenan Wynn in the cast, as well as the special participation of Anton LaVey, high priest of the Church of Satan. Anyway, in the original 1975 ads, not a mention of Travolta. Instead, we have mug shots of “Satan on Earth” (Borghine), “Devil Destroyer” (Albert), “Demon Sacrifice” (Lupino), “Tortured Soul” (Shatner), and “Faceless Follower” (Wynn) right above the claim “Absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever!”

Preying on Travolta’s success in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE, THE DEVIL’S RAIN made a comeback. Siskel named it a “Dog of the Week” the same week in 1978 his colleague Ebert picked that awful monster movie SLITHIS. “My dog this week is a four-year old film named THE DEVIL’S RAIN that’s suddenly come back to a lot of theaters advertised as starring John Travolta,” Siskel said. “Well, that’s a complete lie. THE DEVIL’S RAIN stars Ernest Borghine as a Devil’s helper trying to hang on to some lost souls. Travolta is on screen for less than a minute, this was his first film. He had only one line of dialogue in it. Most of the time, he has red and green wax melting all over his face. Looks like he fell asleep on a pizza. … Beware of films you’ve never heard of promising big stars. One reason you’ve never heard of them, they’re lousy.”

These promotional campaigns definitely backfired in the case of ALICE, SWEET ALICE, because it’s a good little thriller often compared with the works of Alfred Hitchcock and called a prototype of the slasher film. That should have been more than enough to sell the film.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE involves a series of murders in 1961 in Paterson, New Jersey, around a church and an apartment building. Our title character, a 12-year-old girl played by a 18- or 19-year-old Paula Sheppard, becomes the first suspect and she’s sent to a psychiatric institution for evaluation. She was always mean to her little sister and besides, she’s just plain “weird.” Their parents are divorced and they live with their mother Catherine (Linda Miller) and attend St. Michael’s Parish Girls’ School. We also have the girls’ father Dom (Niles McMaster) and their aunt (Jane Lowry), Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich), his housekeeper Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton), the creepy obese landlord (Alphonso DeNoble), and assorted policemen and minor characters. Dom leaves behind his new wife to more or less become a detective on behalf of his oldest daughter, and that leads to his demise in a scene that echoes Donald Sutherland’s death at the end of DON’T LOOK NOW.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE reminds one of not only DON’T LOOK NOW, but also any number of giallos or Italian thrillers because of the anti-Catholic themes, dark humor, and familial dysfunction. Lucio Fulci’s DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING and Dario Argento’s PROFONDO ROSSO quickly come to mind. Of course, all these films have their roots in Hitchcock.

Director, producer, and co-writer Alfred Sole, who shared the screenplay with Rosemary Ritvo, reveals the real killer around the two-thirds mark and that’s a departure from the modus operandi of the thriller.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE stands up long after the promotional campaign has become a faded memory. Anyway, I’ll still call it Brooke Shields’ best movie.

National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) Four stars

There are few comedies I have enjoyed as much as NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE.

I have watched it many times over the years and that’s not even counting all those times on TBS, because, let’s face it, one misses so many “good parts” of a movie like ANIMAL HOUSE when it’s been edited for TV. It warped my fragile little mind seeing it on video the first time and I lost count of how many times I watched that VHS tape I bought circa 1997.

I loaned it to Brad Rich so he could watch Bluto’s infamous “Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” speech and remember it verbatim for his high school speech class. Mr. Rich earned an ‘A’ for his performance. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to watch him act it out, though, fortunately, Mr. Rich returned the VHS tape. Bonus points for him.

College friend Don Stephens came over to my house about once a week to watch ANIMAL HOUSE it seemed like after Mr. Stephens joined a fraternity at Pittsburg State. Mr. Stephens and I started living ANIMAL HOUSE just a little bit so the viewings of the movie decreased significantly, especially after I continued my educational career in 2000 at Pitt State. Mr. Stephens eventually returned to the ranks of the independents and I remained one throughout both tours of college.

There was that one night when Mr. Stephens played Otter and I was Boon: “Hi, Don Stephens, damn glad to meet you,” then I hit ‘em with “Hi, that was Don Stephens, he was damn glad to meet you.” We only used it that one night, especially since it seemed like nobody got the reference. That’s when I started losing faith in the youth of America and have ever since.

Another time, Mr. Stephens and I went on a Thanksgiving break pilgrimage to Wichita to meet two young women (sisters) and, ahem, spend the night at their house. At some point, I believe it was early on at the bar, my date said that I was just like that Bluto guy from ANIMAL HOUSE, since I told her I’d been in college seven years. You win some, you lose some, and another time I’ll tell you about the six years off-and-on I knew my date from Wichita, although, to be honest, I really don’t want to do that.

Enough about that: ANIMAL HOUSE made a tremendous impact on the movie industry.

Every year, we get at least one raunchy, R-rated, gross out comedy.

ANIMAL HOUSE paved the parade route for PORKY’S, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, DAZED AND CONFUSED, AMERICAN PIE, OLD SCHOOL, WEDDING CRASHERS, and HANGOVER.

Every time I watch ANIMAL HOUSE, it holds up and it remains better than its followers.

First and foremost, it is superbly acted up and down the cast.

Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst (1954-2017) make a successful entry point into this world, as one snooty sorority sister calls them “the wimp and the blimp.” Tim Matheson and Peter Riegert play off each other so well as ladies man Otter and wing man Boon that we believe their characters have been friends for several years. James Daughton and Mark Metcalf, especially Metcalf as Niedermeyer, create thoroughly detestable characters that we love to hate.

Speaking of characters that we love to hate, Canadian actor John Vernon (1932-2005) had a knack for playing them better than just about anybody else. We enjoy every single appearance made by his Dean Wormer in ANIMAL HOUSE, every single time he gets his comeuppance, and especially every single time Vernon sinks his teeth into lines like “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son” and “Put a sock in it, boy, or else you’ll be outta here like shit through a goose.” Vernon later played a similar character in KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, retaining that bias against college kids.

John Belushi (1949-82) exploded into stardom with the success of ANIMAL HOUSE, one of the biggest hits of 1978. Outside action heroes Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Steve McQueen, we don’t find star-making performances built around fewer words. Belushi’s Bluto makes us laugh mostly through classic physical comedy and he irritates the comic villains every bit as effectively as the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges did in their heyday.

Bluto definitely puts the animal in ANIMAL HOUSE, smashing acoustic guitars, downing full whiskey bottles in one fell swig (actually iced tea), pouring mustard on himself, starting food fights (by popping “zits”) and nationwide dance crazes, and peeping at cute coeds. Bluto’s predominantly silent act pays off with his big speech late in the pic for the Delta troops. It’s not quite George C. Scott as George S. Patton at the start of PATTON, but it’s close, real close in memorability.

Bluto has been described as a cross between Harpo Marx and the Cookie Monster.

Just about everybody has a memorable character in ANIMAL HOUSE, from Kevin Bacon in his motion picture debut (“Thank you sir, may I have another?”; how dare I forget a softball practice where I made every teammate who wanted another grounder hit their way ask that very question) to the lovely Karen Allen also in her debut, as well as Verna Bloom (1938-2019) as the ready and willing dean’s wife, Donald Sutherland as a hip professor, and DeWayne Jessie lip syncing his way through Otis Day on “Shout” and “Shama Lama Ding Dong.”

John Landis began a string of winners here, followed by THE BLUES BROTHERS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and TRADING PLACES over a few years. Universal wanted Chevy Chase to play the Otter role that went to Matheson, but Landis felt Chase was not right for the part and the director played a little Jedi mind trick by telling Chase that ANIMAL HOUSE would be an ensemble pic. That disinterested Chase, who instead made FOUL PLAY. Landis contributed to the anarchic atmosphere of ANIMAL HOUSE by throwing things at the actors, like an early scene when Bluto leads Flounder and Pinto into the Delta house and they’re greeted by a couple flying bottles.

Harold Ramis (1944-2014), Chris Miller, and Douglas Kenney (1946-80) combined on the screenplay and contributed their own collegiate and fraternal experiences.

George Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFFITI famously asks “Where were you in ‘62?” ANIMAL HOUSE, released almost five years later to the day by the same studio, also takes place in ‘62 and Lucas, Ramis, Miller, and Kenney obviously had different answers to where they were in ‘62 and these different answers inform their respective movies and characters.

Both smash hit movies inform us what happened to their main characters. For example, in AMERICAN GRAFFITI, we’re told Terry the Toad is reported missing in action in Vietnam in December 1965. Meanwhile, in ANIMAL HOUSE, we read that Neidermeyer’s own troops kill him in Vietnam. Yes, indeed, they fragged Neidermeyer. Maybe even Terry the Toad took part in it.