I WAS IN LOVE WITH AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD BURN VICTIM

In 1977,when I was ten years old, I had a mad crush on Brooke Shields.

I remember first seeing her in a magazine and falling completely into the ten year old boy version of love with this baby goddess.

In 1978 she would rise to supermodel and movie stardom and thus have her face everywhere thanks to her role in the controversial film Pretty Baby.

Like many other little boys in that time period, I got my first raging case of doggie lust from that Farrah Fawcett poster.

But, Brooke Shields was different. She was my age. Actually one year older than me. Yep, she was special and so, it was official. I was in love. I used to drool over every magazine I would see with a picture of her in it, and when I was eleven years old a horror movie would come to my local theater that loudly advertised that it was "starring Brooke Shields."

Being the spoiled little child that I was, I begged my dad to take me to see this movie so I could oogle at the love of my life, and you just believe that he took me and I did just that. Well, for a few minutes at least.

The movie was called Alice sweet Alice.

It was actually filmed and released under its original title, Communion, in 1976 when Shields was herself only eleven years old.

After Pretty Baby become a monster hit and her face was plastered all over every magazine in the world the studio dusted the film off and re-released it as Alice sweet Alice and made overuse of a brand spanking new ad campaign that highlighted the appearence of the budding young actress, model and then girl of my dreams.

Since I was only eleven years old I had not yet begun to understand the deceiving methods in which films would sometimes advertise themselves to capitalize on a hot actor or actress. So certainly you can imagine my surprise and shock when I raced into my chair filled with glee and ready to gaze at my honeypot of movie screen adoration, only to be lost and confused minutes later as the so called "starring Brooke Shields" role came and went within a fluttering of my eyes.

In fact, Brooke Shields wasn't starring in anything. In reality this film was to be her first screen appearence and to amount to roughly 5-7 minutes of actual screen time. She smiles and eats cookies. She does a lot of whining and crying, and has her sister scare her and threaten her. Then she is strangled and dragged across the floor and tossed into a cabinet,where she is set on fire and burned to death. The End. For me and Brooke Shields at least.

Yep, that was it. My sole reason for seeing this film would be set aflame within the first ten minutes and I would be left to watch a Shields-less slasher movie about a crazy girl who may or may not have killed her sister and is now, maybe, running around stabbing people. But, as luck would have it, I have always been a horror fan and I happened to love slasher movies even back then. They were some of my favorites. So despite my whole purpose of interest in this film being the presence of Brooke Shields, she did whine an awful lot and I truthfully wasn't so glum when she was set on fire.

The movie would also be released yet again in 1981 under the title of Holy Terror, yet for many years it would remain somewhat rather elusive on video and dvd. I did manage to see it again in the late 80's thanks to a very cool video store. But, here it is all these years later and I have finally managed to track down an un-cut version on dvd and was delighted to be afforded the luxury of re-visiting this spooky little gem from my youth.

Often times movies that we tend to remember enjoying from our youth can be somewhat disappointing upon current viewings. This is luckily not the case with this nifty little shocker of a film that turns out to be quite a rollicking experience for any film fan. Religion, youthful angst, and a tense and spooky atmosphere are all blended together quite well by first time director Alfred Sole, who would later go on to make the infamous Tanya's Island.

That would be the movie where Vanity gets it on with a gorilla.

After the young Brooke Shields is burned to death in the opening moments, her troubled sister Alice is suspected to be the murderer.

Alice likes to hang out in the basement of her building and wear a creepy looking mask and a yellow slicker, both articles of clothing that coincidentally the killer will be seen wearing.

She seems to be building a sort of religious shrine that has candles and her sisters doll.... oh yeah, and a jar of cockroaches.

Pretty soon more people start dying and Alice is thought to be the culprit.

The killer is actually revealed about two thirds of the way through the film, which is an unusual method of suspense, but it all works quite wonderfully in my opinion.

One thing that I always remembered from this movie, even all these years later, was the landlord.

A morbidly obese and horridly creepy cat loving guy named Mr. Alphonso who always has appeared to have pissed his pants each time he is shown. He constantly tries to fondle young Alice and becomes a major source of the creepy here. Believe me, this guy would creep anybody out and then some.

Something else that I always remembered about this movie was the violence. Though not exactly graphic by todays standards the stabbings in this movie are particularly brutal. Knives are shown being plunged up to their hilts into stomachs, shoulders, legs, feet and necks.

There is much slasher fun to be had, and after all this extreme knifeplay, I found myself completely over my former crush little Miss Shields.

I truly enjoyed everything about this movie, both then and now. It's dark. It's unsettling at times. The story is well done. The acting is effective. It's a very underrated and sadly overlooked gem of a film. The whole thing holds up really well all these years later and I highly suggest that any horror fan, particularly of the slasher variation, track it down and give it a look. It still seems to be relatively unknown. Copies for sale are a bit pricey on various retail outlets but they do have it for rent over at shitflix.

Another interesting tidbit is that I have recently heard through the horror movie grapevine that a remake of this film is planned. I do so loathe these things and this one in particular sort of brings me up a bile taste. Still, maybe if this is going to be the latest classic to receive the royally horrendous unneccesary remake treatment that will focus more attention on the original and make some people seek the original out. As for me, I have my digital copy of the original film set in regular rotation and this horror loving manboy is set for life.

***Original blog post date 4/28/2010***