Alison's Birthday (1981) — Triskaidekafiles

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY

WRITER: Ian Coughlan

DIRECTOR: Ian Coughlan

STARRING: Joanne Samuel as Alison Findlay

Lou Brown as Peter Healey

Bunney Brooke as Jennifer Findlay

John Bluthal as Dean Findlay

Vincent Ball as Dr. Jeremy Lyall

QUICK CUT: A young girl returns home to see celebrate her birthday with her remaining family, and they do not approve of her new boyfriend.

THE MORGUE

Alison - A young girl on the verge of her 19th birthday, whose parents died when she was very young. She has since lived with her aunt and uncle, until moving away recently. She’s a happy, friendly girl, who bears the weight of a cryptic message of doom in her future.

Pete - Alison’s boyfriend who works for the college radio station. He’s loyal, determined, and clever.

Uncle Dean and Aunt Jennifer - Alison’s relatives, who know more of her past than they are letting on. They give off the vibe of friendly older parental figures, who are always there to help.

They got her a Stonehenge birthday cake!

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are ending January, as we do, with my close enough to my birthday for horseshoes and hand grenades special pick. And since the back end of 2024 was filled with uncomfortable movies, I'm continuing to treat myself with a movie I HOPE isn't trash, Alison's Birthday. I first heard about this early Australian folk horror movie a few years ago, and was going to do it then, but saw it was part of Shout! Factory's huge folk horror box set. That was a bit out of my price range. However, they just released it as a single release, so here we are!

The movie opens up on an artsy shot of a DIY Ouija board being set up, using a series of tiles with letters written on them, through the bottom of a glass table. We also see up Alison's nose, and are informed that she is sixteen years and four months old. So...not her birthday, then.

Alison and her two friends put their hands on an overturned glass, to use as the planchette, and start talking to the spirits.

Alison remains sceptical of this whole thing, which makes it all the more surprising when not only does a ghost possess one of her friends, but it turns out to be Alison's father! The…the ghost. Not her friend.

Dear old dead warns Alison not to go home for her 19th birthday, because "they" want her for "Mirne".

Before he can elaborate any further, a bookcase falls over, killing dad's schoolgirl costume, and into the credits

The credits take three years to scroll through, as we next meet Alison when she's just four or five days away from her 19th birthday

We also meet her boyfriend, Pete, just before her aunt calls to tell her they're looking forward to seeing her come home FOR HER NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY!!

Alison remembers the warning, and tries to weasel out of it. But oh no! Her uncle! He's deathly ill and won't survive the year! She MUST come home! How coincidental!

So she ignores her friend's sacrifice, and she decides sure, she'll come home, I'm sure it'll be fine!

I think I had a tablecloth with the same pattern as their car's upholstery.

Pete drops Alison off at home, and she catches up with her aunt Jennifer and uncle Dean, who doesn't look sick at all! He must be handling his illness very well!

Alison decides to go take a walk through the back yard, and her aunt warns her to be careful, and watch out for snakes, spiders, and yes yes we know. This is Australia.

While she takes some time to relax on the swingset, a mysterious figure peeks out from a window, before Alison delves deeper into the forest behind the house, and explore beyond the stone wall.

Is she gonna take a trip to Terabithia?

Alison does not run afoul of any of the deadly Australian wildlife, but she does find a smaller version of Stonehenge, of all things, hidden amongst the overgrowth of the backyard.

Which, if we're being honest, would have been a much bigger surprise if they hadn't shown it during the opening credits.

And, I know she was warned away from going beyond the stone wall into Narnia, but it still feels shocking this is the first time she's gone back there, and is only just now discovering she has freaking standing stones in her backyard.

She tells Uncle Dean about what she found, and he explains the house was built by an amateur astronomer, and had the scale model built to test his theories that it could have been an ancient observatory. Seems legit!

That night, Alison gets woken up when the mysterious window watcher reveals herself in the middle of the night. She screams, waking up everyone else, and that's how she met her great grandmother Thorne

Whole lotta things going on being casually dismissed. Not unreasonably so, but still, there are red flags creeping up. Also, isn't this just the plot of A Touch of Satan?

Her family wants to make plans for her birthday, but Alison has decided to go spend the day with Pete. She's acting all normal at home, but when she's with her boyfriend, Alison reveals this all has her very creeped out, and she wants to spend as much time as possible not around her family. At least she's picking up on the bad vibes.

Dean grabs Pete before he goes, and tries to ask him to let the family spend time with Alison. He's reluctant to do so, since Alison has made it clear she's weirded out by all this. And Dean does not take it well when he lears Pete was invited to his girlfriend's birthday party. All right, it's time to get outta town.

That night, Alison has a nightmare of a cult at Stonehenge, or the Minihenge, chanting what I wish was Excaliburne But instead it was something more to do with Mirne. The lead woman of the cult prays to one of the stones for Mirne to possess her, and wouldn't you just know it? Wish granted!

Pete shows up in the morning to pick up Alison, and finds her still asleep. When she gets up, she's woozy and out of sorts.

A doctor comes by and says Alison just has a bad case of nerves, and should stay in bed for a couple days and get some rest. Convenient, that.

Pete gets suspicious of this, and more so when Dean says the party will have to be cancelled, so no point in sticking around!

The International Drainage Commission, you say?

He sneaks over to Alison's house that night, breaks in, and finds his girlfriend. She's worried about all this, knows something is up, and the couple try and sneak away under the cover of darkness.

But before they can get out the door, Alison's aunt and uncle and doctor are there and...wow, I wish I had a doctor that dedicated to house calls at 2am.

They knock out Pete, and force Alison back to bed. If things weren't clear before, they sure got the message now that something Very Bad Indeed is going on here.

Doctor Lyall hypnotises Alison so she'll back up their story when the cops show up, that Pete tried to kidnap Alison against her will.

At this point, Alison falls out of the plot for a bit, and we instead focus on Pete trying to figure the plot out, which is a bit of a shame. It's Alison's story, and she just got shunted aside.

Pete visits an old friend into the occult, and he passes along what he knows. She tells him about Mirne, an ancient Celtic entity, who's favourite number is 19.

Since Alison's turned against me, wanna be my new love interest?

He digs around and discovers around the time Alison was born, a baby went missing. He gets some vague confirmation thanks to privacy laws, but it's good enough for him.

Unfortunately, the Mirnites have had Pete followed, and decide since he hasn't played nice, and continues to meddle, it's time for him to meet an untimely end.

He chases the guy following him into a cemetery, which seems like a bad idea, and runs into a whole bunch of cultists that make the hunter into the prey.

Uh oh, the ushers are coming to show him the way out.

Pete gets cornered, but before the cult can kill him, he tells them that Lyall got the wrong baby, and the one they want is happily with another couple. He hands over some papers to prove his lie, and uses it as a distraction to escape.

The cultists debate what to do, but it's too late for Pete to stop them, so they believe, and they let him escape.

Lady Exposition tells Pete that the cult came over from England, and this whole thing started when Isobel Thorne summoned Mirne, and the entity has lived all these years by possessing the next girl in line, born at the right time of the right day in the right year, and each time taking the name Isobel Thorne, like granny creepy.

Alison, wake up sweetie, you’re needed back in the plot.

Jennifer and Dean awaken Alison for the big party, and take her to granny Thorne's room, since she's too ill, and again, red flags.

Lyall hypnotises Alison again to keep her complacent, and commands the cult to prepare her. They take her out to the stones, and perform their ritual.

Pete arrives just past the nick of time, and tries to save Alison, rushing to the backyard and the stone circle.

He grabs Alison and they try and escape, but he trips and twists his ankle. He hands her the gun he borrowed from dad, and tells her to get away, but OOPS All Mirne.

Curse your sudden but inevitable possession!

The possessed woman shoots Pete, and the cops which have already been primed to suspect Pete of wrongdoing, believe their story that Pete tried to abduct Alison again, and it was in self defense.

But oh, what has happened to the original Alison? She's been ushered off to granny's room, and she has no idea what has happened, until the new Alison steps into view, and the final twist of the knife, reveals she has body swapped and now inhabits the old woman's body.

Happy birthday!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Pretty good for an early 80s Australian movie, I wager.

Audio: Sounds good to me.

Body Count: A very light on death movie.

1 - Allison's friend crushed by a bookcase about six minutes in

2 - The original Isobel Thorne dies, presumably, when she is possessed by Mirne.

3 - Peter gets shot by Alimirne

Best Corpse: Slim pickin’s this week, but the shock value and visceral nature of Chrissie being crushed by the bookcase gets the prize.

Blood Type - F: Very very little blood or effects to speak of.

Drink Up! every time someone dismisses one of Alison’s concerns.

Movie Review: I’m grading this one on a slight curve of enjoyment, since I can admit it’s not that scary, and maybe a bit slow, but for something with nowhere near the budget of an American movie, and made for Australian audiences, I think it’s pretty effective. The acting is good, the story isn’t super original, but handled quite well, and I like how you know SOMEthing is up, even the characters sense it, but everything is mostly reasonable, and only slowly builds to the point of run away. There’s an undercurrent of colonialism that I probably would’ve missed if I hadn’t listened to the behind the scenes material on the disk, and once you see that, it does add a nice layer to the movie. Three out of five mystical pendants.

Entertainment Value: It’s another one of those sorts of movies that is just good enough to not be laughably bad, but also not bad enough to bring entertainment that way. A solid movie that has a nice story to tell. Three out of five herbal cocoas.