Critique: Marketing alert! The circa ten year old Brooke Shields is just a bit player in this one. Pretty bad production values, but they do an adequate job of keeping things going. Alice's mask and slicker outfit makes a nicely horrifying image. (see Don't Look Now for a similar effect). The way Alice is painted by her family as the bad girl while Karen (Brooke Shields) is given all the attention strikes us as an all too plausible precursor to what follows. Such events as the gruesome communion scene in a small town service shock us still. That riveting scene alone is worth the price of admission. The absent father is also a nice touch. There are slow points at which the movie threatens to become a detective thriller, which of course is the ultimate sin, but things pick up again toward the end. The last scene, however, is ultimately unsatisfying, culminating in another, particularly glaring case of an inadequately prepared solution.

Plot Summary: On the corner of James and Ryerson, Alice amuses herself during Karen's galling confirmation party by frightening the house keeper, Mrs. Tredoni, by putting on a slicker and semi-opaque mask and jumping out at her. We soon learn that the opaque mask is the disturbed pubescent Alice's trade mark. Karen is the favored daughter to the mother and estranged father and Alice the bad one. Alice hadn't had a first holy communion while Karen is getting hers. Karen gets the antique cross from Father Tom--who else would he give it to? Not Alice. The jealous Alice has squirreled away Karen's doll and some other trinkets in a hidden trunk. Karen goes running after Alice to scary music in an abandoned garage. The two of them have yellow slickers on: the yellow slicker is another of Alice's trademarks. Downstairs, the untrustworthy Mr. Alphonso is visually spectacular at a bald six hundred pounds. Alice enjoys tormenting him by pushing herself at him and insulting him, and he her as well. When Alice tries on the holy communion veil, Karen begins screaming and Alice is driven from the kitchen. It appears that we don't need to wonder long about whether all this has affected Alice adversely. Alice is nowhere in evidence at the communion and as the girls line up for their big moment Karen is nowhere to be seen. In a horrifying, riveting scene, one of the nuns smells smoke. Afterward, Alice gathers up her sister's veil and sits at the alter awaiting communion with her tongue extended. At the funeral, it looks as though Auntie Annie doesn't have much sympathy for the bad girl. Anne notes that the police have been asking about the veil and how Alice got it. We learn that Anne will be staying with the family and her tubby daughter Angela will take care of father. Dominic (Alice's father) calls Father Tom to try and find out what the story is with Alice while the nosy Mrs. Tredoni who takes care of the old monsignor listens on the phone. Dominic learns that Alice is indeed troubled. The old monsignor complains about children in the house when there are none. Dominic mentions that Angela was also not there at the communion. Perhaps she was the culprit. Tensions continue with the carping Auntie Anne bringing out the worse side of Alice. Kathryn and Dominick won't even consider that Alice is guilty in spite of all the evidence against her. Alice continues heading down to her macabre reliquary in the basement with a jar of cockroaches, her father's picture in swimming trunks and Karen's stolen doll. Oh, the mask and slicker are there as well. Auntie Anne heads down the stairs and meets the masked and slickered knife wielder. Afterward, Alice is found cowering in the basement. She tells her father she saw Karen who wants her doll. When Anne fingers Alice from the hospital bed it's reform school for Alice. At the lie detector test she apparently really believes it was Karen who stabbed Anne. The pressures of the situation do seem to have had an effect of bringing the estranged husband and wife back together. They begin getting phone calls in which the caller hangs up. Has Alice escaped from the facility? Dom gets a call from his niece, Angela, who claims to have run away from home...or is it Alice disguising her voice? Dom is drawn toward the abandoned building by the masked and slickered killer.