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Alicia Songbird is the main antagonist of the 1973 giallo film The Girl in Room 2A. Alicia is a cult leader responsible for violent butchery of women released from prison and jail, extreme violence and murder all out of pious rage.
She's portrayed by Italian actress Rosalba Neri.
Biography[]
Alicia worked as a social worker for women released from penitentiary systems in an Italian city. She also ran the Repentance Cult, an underground criminal sect with traditional religious extremism, turning their disgust and spite into torture and murder of victims they disapprove of. Whether justly or wrongly convicted, Alicia sought the women found guilty of misdemeanors, "sinful" from her perspective and who she was eager to "punish" with brutality. It's heavily implied she targeted other women as well, with the same petty histories that got under Alicia's and the cult's collective skin. When a woman was chosen, the cult would take them captive. If they weren't instantly killed, they'd be tied, spreadeagled, and/or stripped naked, their nude and vulnerable bodies tortured and mutilated while they were still alive. Their brutality including beatings, cutting, and flogging. If the women were drugged and snatched by the cultists sent out to kidnap them explicitly to murder them, or once the tortured women were no longer of the interest for the cult to keep alive, the women would be mercilessly beaten and butchered to death, restrained or not, also in various grotesque fashions. They would be impaled, speared, hacked with swords, or burned alive. Their home base was a castle out in the countryside, and to set the women for vetting and to terrorize them before they were brutalized, they would be housed in boarding under the supervision of Mrs. Mary Grant, one of the cult members. Alicia was directly guilty of the murders and most of the torture and battery. She wore a signature red-and-black ceremonial outfit to assert her authority in the cult, consisting of a red full-head velvet mask, a red cape, a black peacoat with red buttons, black pants, and red leather gloves and boots.
When the film begins, the latest victim is Edie Whitman, who had a brother named Jack back at home and spent two weeks in jail for misdemeanor charges while involved in a shoplifting and burglary ring. When she leaves the housing one day, the members jump and sedate her before they drive off with her. Alicia ties Edie, naked, her hands above her head, leaving her helplessly immobile while a spear pushes through a slot repeatedly pierces her body. When Alicia's done, she throws Edie back on a spike protruding from a wall, impaling and killing Edie. The cultists then toss Edie over a cliffside, her battered body left to be found in a fashion the police would later deem a suicide. Jack doesn't believe it and comes to the city looking for answers. At the same time, Margaret Bradley is released from prison on narcotics convictions she argues are trumped up, making her the cult's next target. She meets with Alicia, who discusses her allowance and directs her to Mrs. Grant's housing establishment. At night, Alicia crept into Margaret's room to haunt her in full costume, and she and the cultists would stain her floor with puddles of blood Margaret would be left to clean up. if she showed them to anyone, or to prevent them from being left there for too long, they'd scrub the stains up as if nothing happened. Later on, Mary's son Frank and one of the cult's lieutenants, Mr. Dresse, confronts a journalist reporting on them, Johnson; Dresse insults Johnson's effort's to publicize their activities, saying he should be "scourged" for his "greed". When Johnson offers a contribution to the cult, Dresse hits him and locks him in the room where they held the meeting. After sending Frank away, Dresse orders two cultists to meet Alicia in the room, where the cultists order Johnson to put the fire out. As he moves to close it, Alicia, in full costume, shuffles up behind Johnson and holds his hand on the edge of the fireplace so it burns. She then has the cultists grab Johnson and hold him still so she can impale him to death as well. Johnson breaks free and runs, but his panicked frenzy results in him jumping out a window to escape, Johnson dying when hitting the pavement. Alicia looks out the window to see Johnson broken on the street below, and her followers later disguise his death as a fiery car crash over another cliffside.
Frank ingratiates himself to Margaret so he can build a rapport to lure her to the cult. At the same time, Margaret meets Jack and hears about Edie's murder, Jack telling her he doesn't believe the report. He coincidentally is staying in an apartment across from the housing arrangement where Margaret is, and the two soon begin a relationship. Alicia sees the cult members gathering at Mrs. Grant's boarding house, and she tries to eavesdrop on their activities, but the muscles working for the cult forbid her from getting close enough to hear anything useful. Around the same time, a woman named Maria moves in, and she's targeted as another victim for the cult. Trying their best to figure out their next move, Margaret and Jack find a woman named Sarah, who's been hospitalized due to trauma she experienced from the cult holding her captive. She was rendered mute and drew pictures of the cult's castle hideout, as well as Alicia's costume, but everyone, even her sister believed she was making everything up and beyond help. Margaret tried to speak to her, but Sarah had horrible flashbacks of seeing woman tortured in the castle's basement, as well as her daring escape when she slips her ropes, running while she hears the remaining women's screams echo from the hideout. In spite of Sarah being further shaken into not talking, Margaret and Jack track the castle, but are caught by the cultists and split up. Margaret is caged to prepare for her murder, while Jack is locked in a car with a cobra and left to die from a venomous bite. While Jack escapes, Margaret sees Maria being stripped and beaten by Dresse and some of the other cultists. Margaret pleads Frank to release her, and he's convinced enough and tells her to run while she can. Margaret can't find her way out, and she ends up coming across Frank again, who's dead from being hanged by the cultists as retaliation. Margaret is taken captive and restrained, while the cultists gather for Alicia to kill Maria. She arrives with a sword and cuts off half of Maria's face in one fail swoop, Maria staggering out into the hall where Margaret is and dying in front of a terrified Margaret. Margaret is restrained and prepared for a live burning with a lit torch. However, she convinces Mrs. Grant to turn on the cult by informing her Frank was murdered by them. She's horrified once she gets over her denial, but Dresse, refusing to confirm Margaret's accusations, fights Mrs. Grant, who dies when the torch is accidentally dropped on her. Dresse suffers a fatal stab from a spear Mrs. Grant used to push him off, and he bleeds to death. Jack arrives to fight Alicia and release Margaret, and they chase after Alicia when she flees. Reaching a cliffside near the castle, Alicia tries to throw Jack off, but he gets the upper hand, even pulling off her mask to reveal she's the leader and masked killer. Margaret, shocked by the revelation, watches as Alicia can't keep her footing and plunges off the cliff, dying on the ground below.
Victims[]
- Numerous unnamed women (all tortured and murdered with the assistance of the cultists)
- At least three unnamed women (tortured by cutting and flogging, then presumably murdered, at least one impaled with a spear)
- Sarah (held captive and attempted to kill; she escaped)
- Edie Whitman (kidnapped, drugged, and held captive; tortured by stabbing with a spear, then fatally impaled on a spike; threw off a cliff postmortem and disguised her death as a suicide)
- Johnson (burned his hand on a hot fireplace cover; attempted to impale with a spear; he jumped out a window to his death; disguised his death as a car crash by the cultists)
- Jack Whitman (attempted to kill; locked in a car with a cobra, the fought and attempted to push off a cliff; he escaped and killed Alicia instead)
- Frank Grant (hanged by the cultists)
- Maria (held captive, stripped, and beaten; died from blood loss after half of her face was cut off with a sword)
- Margaret Bradley (stalked, held captive, and attempted to burn alive with a torch; was rescued)
Gallery[]
