Alison's Birthday (1981)

"Alison's Birthday" just feels very much like a film right out of the 70s. Just a bleak conclusion where innocence either dies or will die and a cult accomplishes everything it sets out to do. There is no victory for boyfriend Pete, packing his crucifix and pistol, entering the snakepit where the vipers plan to take from girlfriend, Alison, her body, her youth, and innocence. And I wince at the telegraphed warning signs, such as the father's spirit reaching out from the "great beyond" to warn Alison, his daughter, of what awaits her on her 18th birthday through her friend during a seance while using a makeshift spirit board, and the lie from her "aunt" that her "uncle" as a way to get her to their house in order to prepare her for a ritual concerning an evil spirit, how the two that raised her after her "parents died in an accident" go about separating Alison from Pete, orchestrating their eventual "body swap" ceremony involving a peculiar Stonehenge-like sacrificial gathering place as their cult in robes congregate to summon their god to inhabit Alison's body.

What makes the imposter aunt and uncle especially detestable is how they wait as Alison "awakens" in an elderly body of "Grandmother Thorne", as if pleased with their handiwork, taking in this teenager's horror as she looks at her wrinkled, aged flesh. So not only did their god successfully inhabit the young body of Alison, a youth these two cretins raised from birth, but the imposter aunt and uncle look on as she realizes they betrayed and deceived her. That is a special kind of evil. And poor Pete came along with Alison in support since she thought her uncle was possibly going to die, so they preyed upon her vulnerability and kindness while eventually plotting to get rid of him. Mirna, the Celtic demon these practicing Druids used their black magic to transfer into Alison's body, goes one step further by killing Pete with his dropped gun. So these two young adults with all their life ahead of them -- Pete, a disc jockey, Alison, just out of school -- are robbed by Mirna and her followers. Cult horror at its bleakest.