Directors/Screenplay – Tony Trov & Johnny Zito, Photography – Rory Hanrahan, Music – Mike Vivas, Makeup Effects – Tammie Castagna, Kaitlin Kennedy, Ruby Muro, Lauren Palmer & Steve Saturn, Production Design – Maggie Ruder. Production Company – Woodshop Films/South Fellini.
Cast
Falon Joslyn (Morgan), Beverly Rivera (Casady), Nicole Cinaglia (Juliet), Kara Zhang (April), Nikki Bell (Veronica), Victoria Guthrie (Ms. Grace), Ron Jeremy (Father Benito), Schoolly D (Detective D.), Patrick Maitino (Detective P.), Norman Shultz (The Lawyer)
Plot
In Philadelphia, Morgan signs in to the prestigious Alpha Beta sorority as a pledge. She is placed in a tiny dorm with three other pledges, Casady, April and Juliet, where they are ritually humiliated and tormented by the sorority head Veronica. Casady then finds the society’s book of occult rituals and gets them to make a sacrifice and ask for what they most want. They soon start to receive these things. However, the others believe that Casady is taking things too far when she wants to kill and take revenge on people. As they take a stand, the things they have each asked for begin to turn back on them.
Alpha Girls was a low-budget film shot in Philadelphia. The film was a debut for co-directors Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, who subsequently went on to make American Exorcist (2016).
The film initially starts out seeming as though it is going to be another sorority horror. There are plenty of these, almost all of the slasher movie variety. In this case though, Alpha Girls resembles more something like The Initiation of Sarah (1978), a tv movie about occult rites going on in a sorority house. However, it is not until around halfway through that the film reveals its true colours and that it is in fact a copy of The Craft (1996).
Both here and in The Craft there are almost identical plots where four girls come together to form a witchcraft circle and enact a series of spells that give them some personal boon. In both films, one girl goes over to the dark side, while three girls unite against one in a magic battle. The Craft had one girl going over to the dark side, the other two joining her and uniting against the one who refuses, while this has one girl going over and the other three uniting against her. There are a couple of minor changes to the mix here – there is the choice of a sorority as opposed to a high school setting.
Veronica (Nikki Bell) (c) leads the sorority rituals
In short course, we see all the things the girls have wished for turning against them, while Alpha Girls also involves the girls being dragged into acts of murder and seemingly guided by dark entities (not enough is explained about the occult book and rituals the sorority engage in). Alpha Girls is definitely made on a low-budget – the dorm room where the four girls are located is a cramped room that has one bunk bed and a single bed where Falon Joslyn is required to sleep on a mattress on the floor between two beds.
The main actresses are okay. There is nothing particularly amateurish or that lets the side down among them. The one who owns the show ends up being Beverly Rivera in a wonderfully bitchy performance that eats up most of the scenes she is in. The eyebrow-raising name in the cast is that of porn star Ron Jeremy cast as a priest who takes confession, where surprisingly enough Jeremy is okay in the role. Rapper Schoolly D makes a brief appearance as one of the detectives.
