Communion

by Frank Lauria

Karen Spages is brutally murdered seconds before her first communion.
Is her twelve year-old sister Alice responsible?
I love you. I don't want to kill you. I can't help myself.

Genres: Horror, Novels

179 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1977

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1977, Communion is the novelization of the 70s horror film _Alice Sweet Alice_, although I never saw the film. Set in New Jersey, the story revolves around Caroline (Kay) and her two daughters Karen and Alice. Karen is the pretty one, and well behaved, but her older sister Alice seems at first to be a bad seed. I thought this was going to be a bad seed rip-off until about a third of the way into the book.

Karen is about to have her first Communion, a right of passage if you are a Catholic, as after that you can take the holy wafers in church. Karen, however, never makes it, being instead brutally murdered in the church during Communion mass and then stuffed into a chest and burned. At first, Karen emerges as the most likely suspect; her jealousy and just about hatred of her sister, plus her 'finding' her sister's veil after the fact seem to implicate her directly. Once Caroline's sister is attacked when Alice is being held for observation, however, the suspect pool widens...

Communion must have been a good B horror film, as the book tells a pretty good slasher story, one with some intriguing twists and turns for such a short book. While I would probably not seek this one out, if you come across it, it is worth a read if you are into this sort of thing. 3 slashy stars!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communion is a novelization (under it's original title too) of the horror film Alice Sweet Alice. Being one of my favorite horror movies from the 70s I was wondering how the novelization would be. Turns out it's pretty solid.

Frank Lauria working from the original film treatment did a solid job. It follows the film quite well and the best part it's a lightning fast read. Lauria also does a solid job filling in some much needed background for the killer. You get to learn more about the killer's history and motivation and that is always a good thing. Characters are believable even if the setting and story itself might be a little hard to believe, you could see this happening in the end. It's quite an enjoyable horror tale.

And best of all the novel's cover is just a classic! I mean it's great in it's pulpy goodness. Now if only publishers would still publish books like this.

Highly recommended.

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Thrust into hell Satan and the other evil spirits who roam the world seeking the ruin of souls..."

Alice Sweet Alice was a horror film my husband had shown me a few years ago and I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it.

We had not a clue that it was a novel until we found this at a thrift store. I thought this might push my thoughts higher after reading this and it absolutely did.

I think as a pair this is 70’s horror that horror nerds need to watch and read. It was pretty decent and even better combined.

Now I definitely need to watch the movie again.

[BRNTerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOILERS BELOW

I'm comparing the film to the novel.

The film leaves out the entire beginning of the novel. In it we see more of how emotionally immature Alice is and see more of her disturbing behavior. Karen (played by Brooke Shields in the film) is outside thinking about how she's about to receive her First Communion. She takes a pink ball out of her raincoat and bounces it. Someone is watching her from two stories above (I think she's outside of her apartment building) and they're wearing a "garishly tinted mask of a woman's smiling face." Right after, at home, Alice is thinking about how she thinks her mother (played by Linda Miller, Jackie Gleason's daughter, in the film) likes Karen more. Alice hates and despises Karen for "stealing" their father's love away. Their father, who is divorced from their mother, has sent Karen a porcelain doll as a communion gift that has a rotating head with three faces on it. We see it in the film later. Alice is jealous of that. She walked into Karen's room and slapped a doll out of its carriage "then dug her fingers into its hair and savagely smashed its head against the side of the carriage. Unsatisfied, she pressed the pillow over the doll's beaming expression." She was getting ready to set it on fire with matches but was startled by her mother calling for her.

Alice is on her way to play at an abandoned factory and realizes she's forgotten her creepy clear mask. She stops by a candy store and buys another one just like the one she already has, for forty-nine cents. It's a Jackie Kennedy mask. The film just shows her looking through the window at them.

The part where Alice, in an act of jealousy from Karen getting a gold cross from Father Tom, pulls a doily containing glass figurines off the table and claims it was an accident, wasn't in the film.

The part where Alice drops a pitcher of milk when she's in the kitchen with her aunt Annie, in the book when Catherine gets into the kitchen to see what's happening, Annie has Alice by the shoulders and is shaking her, but that doesn't happen in the film.

The part where obese landlord Alphonso is pressing Alice up against the wall/door with his body in the novel, in the film he's got her backed up to the wall/door and is trying to kiss her.

The part near the end when Mrs. Tredoni's in the confession booth, the film leaves out the part where she masturbates as she's talking to Father Tom, "Listening to his vibrant voice, she understood she was the bride of Christ in his body and blood. Her soul was illuminated by a burst of holy light as her fingers stoked the inferno steaming her flesh." That part of the scene was pointless and I'm glad it was left out of the film.

The novel goes into Alice's parents, Catherine and Dominic's, background. They met and began dating in high school. Dominic went off to college and they married during his junior year and Alice was born before he graduated. Their pastor, Tom Hale, is their friend from high school. Catherine is thirty-five. Dominic owns an advertising firm.

The novel goes into the background of Mrs. Tredoni. She's from Italy and her family was killed off during WWII. She was raped by both American and German soldiers. She came to New Jersey, where the book and novel are set, and took refuge in a church. She became the mistress of Father Giovani. She became his secretary. She got pregnant with a daughter by him, Michaela, who died from a blood clot to the brain at age eight. When she got pregnant, he got her a fake marriage license to a fictional Ralph Tredoni, sent her to Washington, D.C., then after the baby was born, got her a fake death certificate for Ralph and brought her back to New Jersey to act as a widowed mother of an infant, where she resumed being his lover and secretary at the rectory.

In the novel, Dominic and Alphonso and stabbed in the crotch as well as other places but the crotch parts are left out.

Film is set in 1961 but no date is given in the book. In the book Alice, at age twelve, is only one year older than Karen but Wikipedia says in the film Karen's only nine years old. I'm wondering if they changed it because Brooke Shields, who was really ten while filming, looks younger than eleven.

MY THOUGHTS: I like the novel better than the film because of all the extra information on the characters. I especially like the added content about Alice's behavior. The film didn't capture anything more than just major hostility with her. I don't like who the killer is nor the reason for the murders and attempted murder.

This was filmed during the summer of 1975 and released about 1.5 years later, in November 1976 under the name Communion, then rereleased in the USA in 1977 under the title Alice Sweet Alice, which is when the novel was released under the original movie title. I have no idea why the novel came out then and not in 1976 and why it didn't have the movie's title of Alice Sweet Alice. I don't know either why it was reissued in 1977 under the title Alice Sweet Alice when it had already been released earlier that year under the title Communion.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first bought this used paperback, I didn't realize it was a novelization of the movie "Alice, Sweet Alice" -- a movie I have not seen, but now I want to.

I can't say too much without giving away some plot points, but it is a story of a young girl who gets murdered in a church before her first communion, and the main suspect is her older sister, a troubled child, who has always been very antagonistic toward her.

It's a fast, suspenseful read with a great denouement.

[Mikepottz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Communion will be a major theme with a little girl burnt to death just before her first communion by a person wearing a mask and yellow raincoat. This person will continue to slash and kill until the reasons come forward at the end.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the novel upon which the film Alice, sweet Alice was based

I don’t recall seeing the film but I may have to get a copy now that I’ve read the book.

A good quick read, although I did spot the killer quite early on

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good! A bit more in-depth than the movie was.

[CasualDebris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should not have read this book. If only because the movie appears decidedly better. Directed by Alfred Sole and released in 1976, Communion has the reputation of being a little-known thriller that deserves to be well-know, a "lost classic," essentially. It deals with a horrifying murder and touches on issues of repression, child abuse and the ills of organized religion. The novelization is simply unnecessary. But the cover is quite nicely creepy.

For my full review, please visit Casual Debris.