Alison's Birthday

**** POSSIBLE PLOT SPOILERS ****

Australian entry into the 1970's demonic/witchcraft horror cycle. Film starts with a prologue ( similar to 'Halloween' or 'Prom Night'), where 16-year old Alison is warned, whilst doing a Ouija Board, that she must get away before her 19th Birthday.

Film moves forward a couple of years to find Alison invited to her Aunt and Uncle's to celebrate her birthday which is fast approaching. Film has similarities to 'Rosemary's Baby' with vulnerable young girl falling foul of a witchcraft cult, personified by much older, normally trustworthy characters. Her Aunt makes Alison drink her 'herbal chocolate', in the same way as Ruth Roman brought Mia Farrow concoctions in the Polanski classic.

The film has basic production values and the acting is poor, but the storyline is well thought out and quite complex, remaining true to its horror roots. The middle section of the film concerns Alison's boyfriend (an annoying character who drives around in a feeble yellow buggy), trying to uncover what is going on and save Alison. He goes through old newspapers and searches hospital records, slowly piecing things together, as Gregory Peck did in 'The Omen'.

If you're not mad about the genre 'Alison's Birthday' will be barely watchable, but for horror fans there is more than enough here to keep the interest from waning. The storyline is quite strong and manages to carry the film along. The ending seems a foregone conclusion - but in a final effort the film keeps the horror dark and provides a bleak, nightmarish finale.

Great video cover with a naked girl lying on an altar before a horned demon.

In case you are - like I was - somewhat reluctant to watch "Alison's Birthday", then hopefully this review can help persuade you to give it a fair chance! Admittedly, it looks and sounds rather boring at first sight, but it's a surprisingly good and intense piece of occult horror from the land of Oz. The Aussies were perhaps a little late with their cashing in on the success of "Rosemary's Baby", but at least their contribution is far better and more memorable than the vast majority of cheap & trashy rip-offs that were released throughout the 70s.

"Alison's Birthday" has a really powerful opening sequence and a staggeringly bleak climax. That's already more than other movies have to show for, and everything in between isn't too bad, neither, albeit a bit slow, derivative and predictable. The intro is fabulous! I usually don't like séance sequences or Ouija-board horror, but this particular scene knows quite a grisly and effectively shocking twist.

A few days prior to her 19th birthday, Alison is begged to come home to the aunt and uncle who brought her up since she became an orphan. The girl has doubts, because a nightmarish séance on her 16th birthday (the one from to the intro) forewarned her to stay away from there at all costs. Boyfriend Peter accompanies Alison, but he's unsubtly shut out by the overbearing aunt and uncle. With Alison further and further out of reach, Peter discovers strange and mystic occurrences, involving a demonic cult, Stonehenge rituals, modern Druids and a 103-year-old granny wandering about! "Alison's Birthday" is far from perfect, but it's one of those rare horror movies that manages to be atmospheric and genuinely unsettling without featuring a single drop of blood. And that final shot, oh man, ... magnificent!

I spent the first twenty or so minutes of Alison's Birthday trying to figure out where I had seen the lead actress before; I eventually gave up and consulted IMDb, and it's only Joanne Samuel - Mrs. Rockatansky from Mad Max! That sorted, I settled down happily for what turned out to be a very enjoyable occult horror movie in a similar vein to Rosemary's Baby.

At age 16, Alison Findlay (Samuel) and two school friends decide to hold a seance, contacting Alison's dead father, who warns his daughter to not attend her 19th birthday party. Despite her friend Chrissie (Margie McCrae) dying during the seance (crushed by a falling bookshelf), Alison seems to forget about the warning, and, a few days before turning 19, travels to the home of her Aunt Jennifer (Bunney Brooke) and Uncle Dean (John Bluthal) to celebrate her impending birthday. Joining Alison for the trip is her boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown), who, as the party draws nearer, comes to believe that Alison is in danger from her Aunt and Uncle, who might not be who they claim to be.

Yes, we've seen this sort of thing done before, and yes, the story develops as we expect it to, but with likeable leads, a strong supporting cast, and capable direction from Ian Coughlan, plus a neat, downbeat twist ending, what you have is a consistently entertaining 97 minutes of supernatural thrills. Furthermore, zero nudity and gore means that the film is ideal to introduce your kids to the horror genre.

7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

A 16 year old girl named Alison receives a deadly warning during a seemingly harmless ouija game. It tells her that at age 19, she will be in serious danger. It appears that Alison's Birthday at age 19 will be a deadly one.

After playing the ouija game that warns 16 year old Alison of the upcoming danger, the film take us three years forward to Alison's 19th birthday. Alison is a well put together young adult with a job and charming boyfriend named Peter. Her Aunt Jenny calls and begs her to come home for her b-day celebration. She decides to go home to visit them.

Once there, she is startled in the middle of the night by an old woman in a wheelchair who her Aunt Jenny claims is her 103 year old great grandmother. Something seems fishy to Alison (and to me as well when I was watching it). Alison also stumbles upon some weird stonehenge looking stones in the backyard which she starts having nightmares about. The whole place starts to freak her out and she can't figure out why. Eventually, the aunt and uncle are exposed as not so innocent people and it's up to Alison's boyfriend Peter to save her from a horrific fate that was predicted three years prior during the ouija game.

What an unexpectedly interesting little Australian horror flick from the 80's! Alison's Birthday is spooky and has an eerie feeling at all times. In the first half, you get the sense that Alison is in serious danger despite the seemingly loving aunt and uncle who welcome her with open arms to their house to celebrate her birthday. Once the film exposes what is really happening around Alison, we learn some family secrets and things get very creepy leading to a bit of a disappointing ending.

If you can catch this on VHS somewhere I would grab it for sure! It's a fun and at times scary evil presence/ritual type horror film that is pretty unknown at this point in time.

6/10

This movie was part of a Down Under horror mini-boom that took place for some reason in late 1970's and early 1980's and included some pretty decent if low-watt films like "The Survivor", "Thirst", and "Razorback". It was kind of a little late therefore in getting into the whole satanic cult craze that started with "Rosemary's Baby" in the late 1960's. The cult in this movie though is not technically a satanic cult, but a Druid cult relocated from the British Isles, and they aren't trying to pass the devil's seed into an oblivious virgin, but some kind of ancient centuries-old spirit.

The movie starts with a Ouija board session, involving "Alison" the teenage protagonist, that goes horribly awry. One of Alison's friends starts speaking in her dead father's voice. She/he warns "Alison" not to "go with them" on her nineteenth birthday. Then a bookcase falls on the possessed friend, killing her. You would think she would heed this very compelling warning several years later on her nineteenth birthday when her creepy "uncle and aunt" invite her out to their country estate for a party, but then we wouldn't have much of a movie, would we? Once there "Alison", who is not the sharpest tool in the garage, is remarkably unperturbed to see that her relatives have a miniature of Stonehenge on their property. And what's up with her dessicated 104-year-old great grandmother?

Her slightly smarter friends eventually find the truth and ride to her rescue, and they turn out to be every bit as effective as Scatman Crothers in "The Shining". The ending is great and ALMOST redeems the occasional absurdities and periodic lulls of the earlier parts of the movie. Still, all in all, this isn't a bad little horror flick from the land of Oz.