Go Ask Alice

I remember watching this with my sister and parents when it was first broadcast on TV. For it's time it pushed the envelope though realizing by today's standards it's kitschy with innuendo and a carefully crafted script to keep it within broadcast standards of the time. It was very good, and did a fair job of scaring some kids to not try drugs. I think the most our group did as teens was 8 people sharing a joint which had no effect; though, sadly I did know friends and kids in school to totally screw up with drugs, a couple died. It served it;s purpose at the time, it would be fodder to today's teens that hear much worse watching television commercials, that are barraged worse than the drug culture of the late 60's early 70's. I love Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplanes original version of Go Ask Alice "White Rabbit" which they did not use in the film.

This movie would only be appealing to me if I were on drugs just like the main character Alice (Jamie Smith-Jackson) was. At times, I could barely follow the story line because the scenes jumped around quite a bit. In these scenes, the acting seemed as if the actors will still reading off the scripts. The emotion just wasn't there. The characters just stood there, said their lines, and a new scene was up. The jumping from one scene to the next caused some editing problems. Not enough of the story was told. For example, when Alice meets Chris (Jennifer Edwards) in the shop. Alice is dressed and her hair is done. The next scene Alice and Chris are dressed like twins with their hair ironed. I was confused on how she would change so fast. The dialogues between all the characters were short and not a lot of important things were said. One line was, ` Now you're holding,' said by Jan (Ayn Ruymen) and then it was the end of that scene. The movie didn't grab my attention. This may have also occurred because I read the book before hand. The movie switched a lot of the scenes around and removed some of the characters. But they can only do so much with a movie taken from a book.

When this film first came out I watched it and it scared the crap out of me. There are a few movies in my life that had a real impact on me and this was one of them. I hadn't seen it since then but recently watched it again and thought I didn't understand really why although saying that when I hear the music that was played during it sang by Grace Slick I still get that sinking, sad, depressed feeling that it originally gave me. Is the quality great compared to today's movies? No, I can't say it is and I've seen better telling of this type of story. Is the acting the best? No, again seen better? Is the storyline based on half-truths? Yes it is. Did it do it's job to scare the crap out of me when I was a youngster. Heck yes and I think was a big influence in the fact that now at 48 years old, almost 49, I never touched a drug in my life. So it may not have been the best acting, most truthfully storyline, the best quality but I think in it's way it saved many of us from ever even thinking about starting down the path of drugs.

In the early 1970s, America was still in denial about drugs. Like the parents of Alice in this film, "other" kids use drugs and the risk to their own kids is minimal. So, this film where the fictionalized "girl next door" and her fall into drug dependence is meant to wake up folks to the potential horrors of drugs.

Jamie Smith-Jackson stars as Alice, though oddly established actors like William Shatner, Ruth Roman and Julia Adams are listed at the top of the credits--and Jamie in the middle. I say this is odd because Shatner, Roman and Adams really were barely in the movie at all and the film is about Alice! As for these screen veterans, Shatner and Adams especially did great impersonations of blocks of wood. Perhaps the film made them too out of it--and they were a bit hard to believe as their characters weren't fully established. As for newcomer Smith-Jackson, she did a pretty good job helming this film.

The big star of the film, however, is the writing. The story didn't come off as trite or that whitewashed (at least for a made for TV movie) and was good entertainment and a nice public warning about drugs. A very good and well made film overall. And, considering I have worked in drug rehab and with prison populations, I have seen first hand the horrors that might befall those who make the choice to use drugs of all types--including alcohol.

I saw this movie when it came out on television in 1973. I was 13 years old at the time. I would rate this movie as a 10. The reason being, it scared the hell out of me when I saw it. It came at a very influential time for me. I knew nothing about drugs, I knew no one who had taken drugs and I had never experimented with drugs at that time.

I was later exposed to drugs, they were very prevalent in the seventies. They were everywhere. I had tried marijuana, and a couple other drugs, but never acquired them for myself and never made it my lifestyle. Because of this movie, I was afraid of where it would take me, and that I wouldn't be strong enough to come back from it.

The characters were strong enough, the movie was good enough, the story was told well enough. well enough in fact to haunt my dreams every time I stepped over the drug line and I think that's why it was made, and it did the job it was supposed to do. I'm sure I'm not the only one.