Alice, Sweet Alice - Arrow Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Set in 1961, Alice, Sweet Alice begins with the murder of a young child named Karen on the day of her first communion. Her body is dragged and hidden within a bench and then set on fire. Everyone, it seems, suspects Karen’s sister: The jealous, peculiar young Alice. Alice is just a little odd. She collects cockroaches in a jar and has a hidden stache of oddities in the basement of her apartment building. Soon, the bodies begin to pile up. People close to Alice start getting stabbed, maimed or killed. Is Alice committing these violent acts, or is she being set up by someone?

Alice’s parents are separated, but her father comes back into their lives to help figure out what’s going on, as the entire family is breaking down over the death of Karen. He doesn’t know what to believe. Alice’s mother refuses to believe she could have killed Karen, or anyone else for that matter. Is she right, or is she in a deep state of denial?

Loaded with Catholic imagery from the school the girls attend and the important rituals in their lives, Alice, Sweet Alice is one of the all-time great proto-slashers. I’ve always loved this era of film, where the true “slasher” genre, as we know it, had not yet been clearly defined, but various films leading up to it flirt with the formula in various ways. Alice, Sweet Alice combines elements from popular American horror films, as well as European horror films like Don’t Look Now and Italian Giallo mysteries.

The problem with a lot of films of this type is that they’re bogged down, needlessly, with a story that spins its wheels until it reaches a familiar conclusion. Alice, Sweet Alice understands its audience and knows they’ll guess most of the twists that are coming, so it’s in on the fun. It delights in toying with its audience. Director Alfred Sole also gives us some incredible atmosphere and palpable dread in some of its more shocking moments.

There are red herrings galore, false starts, and clues that lead to nowhere, but we’re in confident hands with a film that knows how to pay it all off. The film wisely doesn’t wait until the very end for its biggest surprise, which would ordinarily come about right before the big climax. Alice, Sweet Alice reveals it at the top of the final reel and milks it for all it’s worth. The camera lingers on the knowledge we know but that the characters aren’t privy to yet. We linger on extreme close-ups of faces hiding information just barely under their twitching surfaces.

Alice, Sweet Alice is available in three very slightly different versions on this disc. Under its original title, Communion, two quick shots of brutal violence are left intact, unedited. Alice, Sweet Alice is the more famous theatrical title, with just a few brief moments trimmed for violent content. The film was finally re-issued in the early 80s under the name Holy Terror to capitalize on the fame of costar Brooke Shields. Alice, Sweet Alice, and Holy Terror are nearly identical, with only minor modifications made to the title sequence and a setting card introducing us to the year the film is set in.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Please note, that this review was written from a check disc, so I did not have access to the packaging. However, details from Arrow’s website indicate that this is a single-disc release on a 4K UHD Blu-ray. The standard case is held in a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx. There is also an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Blyth.

Here's an introduction to the cynical skeptic that I am. I first saw Alice, Sweet Alice on Arrow’s Blu-ray a few years back and, at that time, I thought it looked very good. Nice, sharp details. Great color. You couldn’t ask for much more. That Blu-ray was from a 2K scan of the film. When I saw Arrow announcing plans for a 4K release, I thought, “Again?” It didn’t come out that long ago and I just didn’t see how much it could be improved upon.

For this release, Arrow has restored Alice, Sweet Alice from its original camera negative for a 4K scan and… wow. Honestly, just wow. It’s the best the film has looked on home video, by a wide margin, but not only that, I think this is a high-water mark for film transfers in general. Everything about it is exemplary. The details are razor sharp. The colors are brilliantly realized in Dolby Vision HDR grading and low-light sequences with exaggerated shadows are shown in dazzling, beautiful detail. The film has a naturalistic color palette and lighting scheme and, per its intent, feels genuinely lifelike. Other sequences that emulate European horror, with saturated colors in the set design and lighting, look terrifying in its removal from reality.

Like the previous Blu-ray, Alice, Sweet Alice has just the one audio option, which is an uncompressed LPCM mono track in English. I have zero complaints with this option. It sounds great. For a single-channel soundstage, it’s quite robust. The score, by Stephen J. Lawrence, is intricate and complex is surprising ways, and while it can get powerful and envelop the action, it never becomes distracting. Dialogue always takes center stage and conversations are crisp and intelligible. Much of the film takes place in the walls of a church, so the sound design gets a lot of play from echoing voices and other ambient sounds.

Special features and supplements are more or less the same as Arrow’s previous release of Alice, Sweet Alice on Blu-ray. A notable difference is that this 4K UHD does not have the alternate TV-edited cut of Holy Terror. It does, however, have a split-screen comparison of the three different title sequences under their alternate names, and a new interview with the film’s composer.

• Audio Commentary – Alfred Sole, Edward Salier and William Lustig
• Audio Commentary – Richard Harland Smith
• First Communion (HD 18:45)  – Interview with director Alfred Sole
• In the Name of the Father (HD 16:03) - Interview with actor Niles McMaster
• Alice on My Mind (HD 14:59)  – Interview with composer Stephen Lawrence
• Lost Childhood (HD 16:03) – The locations of Alice, Sweet Alice
• Sweet Memories (HD 11:19) - Filmmaker Dante Tomaselli, cousin of Alfred Sole, discusses his longtime connection to the film
• Deleted Scenes (HD 2:43)
• Version Comparison (HD 2:13) – Split-screen comparison between three different opening title sequences
• Trailers
• Image Gallery

With the exact same audio track as Arrow’s previous release and about 95% of the same supplements, the decision as to whether or not to upgrade Alice, Sweet Alice on 4K UHD Blu-ray rests entirely on its new video transfer (sourced from the original film negative). My opinion on this is that, with an emphatic yes, the upgrade is justified in this case. The video transfer is absolutely superb, graded beautifully in Dolby Vision. And while there’s not much “new” beyond that, the audio and the supplements carried over are excellent. Alice, Sweet Alice from Arrow Video is Highly Recommended.

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