If a horror movie starts out with the recitation of a Catholic prayer by children, RUN. Actually if your day starts that way, you should immediately move out of your house because it never ends well. Wanna fuck with someone? Record a bunch of second graders saying the Our Father in Latin and make it someone’s alarm.

My Catholic education PTSD aside, this movie is very unnerving. I know nothing of this director (Alfred Sole), but when his first film credit on Wikipedia is a porno, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Despite the fucked up storytelling, I actually appreciated his filming techniques. The canted angles and disturbing closeups added to the uneasiness of the movie. I couldn’t tell if I was nauseous by the end because of the shots or the communion wine I was slugging while watching this. Blood of Christ would have been a better title for this movie, but I unfortunately/fortunately wasn’t around in 1976 to offer that suggestion.

The plot involves a divorced mom of two obnoxious teenagers in early 1960’s Paterson, New Jersey. Karen who is 12 and about to make her first Communion, and Alice who is 14 and about to become a beautiful young psychopath. Their mom is carrying on a mildly inappropriate relationship with their priest, Father Tom. He’s young and handsome and showers Karen with gifts and praise, while Alice looks on, seething in jealousy. And right behind her seething in jealousy as well is the priest’s housekeeper, Mrs. Tredoni. It’s a very seething movie.

Karen gets killed by a candle on her Communion day. I appreciate the murderer’s alliteration. The killer then stuffs Karen’s body in a bench in the church and lights her corpse on fire. Strangulation and arson are hard to pull off simultaneously, so you have to applaud their talents. The extremely inept police suspect Alice right away, and don’t bother warning the public that a child killer might be on the loose. Maybe this is what life was like before Vatican II. Perhaps dead kids in the sacristy was good luck, who knows. Either way, the next victims are not kids.

First it is Alice’s horrible aunt, then the deadbeat father who left the family. Next is the extremely obese pervert landlord. Alice has a motive for each one, but the only problem is, she has been locked in a mental institution at the request of a school psychologist who has been begging Alice’s parents to get her help for months. While the mom (Catherine) tries to defend her child, it is hard to take her seriously. Especially since every time one of her loved ones is attacked, she dresses sexier. By the end of the movie, she’s very smoldering (I assume to attract the eye of much-too-cool Father Tom).

There’s a lot of gross scenes, and I learned after the movie that there was ONE prop knife used throughout the entire film. I need to know where that knife is. I secretly hope the director buried it somewhere in Paterson as a love letter to all the jealous seething that definitely happens in that town.