An Interview with Dante Tomaselli and Alfred Sole

Posted on 24 April, 2007 by Superheidi

When Alfred Sole sees that people are still watching this film 30 years later, he says “I'm always amazed and I'm certainly very flattered.”

Anyone who has seen Alfred Sole’s 1976 slasher film Alice Sweet Alice knows that they’ve seen something special. A movie that introduced creepy masks on killers and little girls who might be deadly was certainly groundbreaking, and still makes us shudder. This might be the reason that the original director Alfred Sole has asked Dante Tomaselli (Horror, Desecration, Satan’s Playground) to direct the remake, slated for 2008. With all the crappy remakes going on in Hollywood now, why not throw in one that doesn’t suck?

“These new remakes look way too light and modern with the cotton candy casting...CGI silliness,” says Dante Tomaselli. “They look like fucking television commercials! Soon all of our favorites will be zapped out, every last one. So Alfred and I thought with Alice, Sweet Alice, we just want to beat everybody to the punch.”

Alfred Sole adds, “I'm always disappointed in the writers. I'm tired of recycled movies that don't offer new ideas.”

But I don’t want to mislead you. The only reasons these two filmmakers want to recreate Alice Sweet Alice is not all about the money. They both have some very convincing and noble reasons for wanting to bring it back to modern audiences.

Tomaselli’s main reason is “Because Alfred asked me to remake it and I love Alice, Sweet Alice with all my heart and soul. It's etched in my psyche; I grew up on the film.”

“I would be very proud and happy to see Dante direct the movie,” says Sole. “I think he is very talented and I'm so proud of him. To think my movie made him want to become a film director… that's quite an accomplishment, I would say.”

“I said, 'Alfred you should direct it',” says Tomaselli. “But he doesn't want to. I know for sure many people would love to see him direct a film again, and hopefully we will see him in that role again. He genuinely loves being a Production Designer, and he's extremely successful at it. Right now he's the Production Designer on Veronica Mars.”

Dante Tomaselli was very heavily influenced by the movie as a child. There are traces of this influence in all of his indie horror films. Alice, Sweet Alice (AKA Communion and Holy Terror) “made its Paterson, NJ world premiere in 1976 when I was 7,” says Dante. “As you know it was originally called Communion. The film was a huge deal in our family and everyone was very supportive, real proud of Alfred.”

Alice Sweet Alice is the story of Karen and Alice Spages, two young sisters who live with their mother, Catherine. When a masked individual wearing a yellow rain slicker kills Karen, Alice is the first suspect. As the body count rises and the mystery thickens, it’s not clear who the murderer is, or what their motive is, until the shocking ending smacks you in the face with a twist. Starring Brooke Shields in her very first role, it was one of the first slasher films that really took artistic risks as opposed to being a straight-out kill-a-thon.

Alice Sweet Alice “is not just a slasher movie”, insists Sole. “It's really a story about a little girl and an older woman who just wanted to be loved by someone. It shows religion in America in the 60's, the time when divorce was a sin. I think it has all the elements of a good story jealousy, loneliness, suspense and death.”

“Alice, Sweet Alice is a film that is really about evil passed on from generation to generation, so he thinks it makes sense for me to remake it, a kind of passing on of the torch...or the knife,” laughs Tomaselli. “There's something so elusive and multi-layered about Alice, Sweet Alice. It's a textural film, very disorienting, very enigmatic... it's a trippy, disorienting ride that has atmosphere galore. At the center, there's a family drama. It's like a Giallo, one of those Italian murder puzzles. You'll have no idea where it's taking you and won't really know until the final frame. Even at that point you'll probably be perplexed! Also, the masked killer ranks as one of the creepiest in horror history. That chilling mask! I wouldn't want it to lose that mysteriousness. It's also a genuinely creepy film with spine-tingling music, so I'd have a lot to live up to, definitely.”

There are certain elements that would have to be changed in order to warrant a remake of the film. But what elements would Sole and Tomaselli want to keep? 

“We know we'd like to have Brooke Shields in at least cameo” insists Tomaselli, adding, “We'd definitely want to retain the look and feel of the 60s and 70s...”

And they definitely won’t take out the mystery and suspense of the first Alice, Sweet Alice.

“[It] has such a powerful climax,” says Tomaselli. “Alfred definitely delivered the unexpected. There's really no closure at all, at least on a conscious level. It's a maze with many different ways out. And that's what I admire most because I feel what I have to offer is a kind of surrealism.”

Watch Alice Sweet Alice Now Free for a limited time on UHMN

Comments

Gunslinger

Wed April 25, 2007 at 15:44:07 PDT Very well written. I have known Alfred my whole life, he is my uncle and I will never ever forget when he took me to the original Friday the 13th in westwood when I was like 12 years old. Then I had to go back to their house in the hills where I slept in a room with that Alice Sweet Alice poster. I know for a fact Alfred has a new movie in the works that I am working on producing right now. Let me tell you its his best work ever. More on that later.