Alice in Acidland

The first part of this film is extraordinarily inept. It has a voice-over instead of dialogue, and tells the tale of a college girl who smokes marijuana and becomes a crazed lesbian. At the end of the film she drops acid and has a full-colour lesbian fantasy, that inevitably drives her insane. The wild lesbian fantasy is not too badly done, and requires extensive use of the pause button.

The college students Alice and Kathy are invited to a pool party by the lesbian Frieda. Alice gets drunk and uses acid and does not feel well. Frieda takes a bath with Alice and they have a lesbian relationship. Alice joins a group of hippies, uses acid and drugs with them and has sex with every man and woman in orgies.

"Alice in Acidland" is among the worse (if not the worst) films I have ever seen. This boring and annoying film is complete garbage, from the writer and director to the cast and crew. Poorly shot associated to bad acting, and even the naked women are not worthwhile watching since they are fat and flaccid "actresses". The exploitation is ridiculous, with the men wearing shorts while shagging the women. The message is trash, without scientific basis, and only a pretext for a cheap exploitation. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Alice na Terra dos Ácidos" ("Alice in Acidland")

Alice in Acidland (1969)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

How "entertained" you are by this 55-minute nudie will be determined by how badly you need to see nudity. Alice (Sheri Jackson) is taken to a pool party by her friend Frieda and it turns out that this party is being hosted by a lesbian. Not only is a lesbian hosting the party but she's serving up alcohol and weed, all of which are things that our young Alice has never tried. Soon the beautiful teen heads down the dangerous world of sex and drugs. Take out the nudity and ALICE IN ACIDLAND would be just like those exploitation pictures from the 1930s. Films like REEFER MADNESS, SEX MADNESS and THE COCAINE FIENDS are exactly what this movie is going for but of course the biggest difference is that this one here has wall-to-wall nudity. If you're just being released from an unknown country and haven't been able to get access to any sort of nudity then you might be entertained by this thing. All others are going to be bored out of their minds because outside the nudity there's really nothing going on here. Heck, even the nudity itself gets boring after a while even at just 55-minutes. The biggest problem is that there's really no sort of story going on here as we just get random scenes of people doing drugs or making out. The film's "story" is told via narration and this too gets very boring after a while. The title and poster art makes you think that you're getting into something wild but even by 1969 standards this thing is dull. The film's B&W images turn to color for the final ten-minutes but this doesn't add anything.

The recent revival of Grindhouse-cinema (courtesy of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez) thankfully brought some lost and presumed missing horror and exploitation gems of the late 60's and 70's back in to the spotlights, but inevitably it also helped bringing some awful and righteously forgotten stinkers to the surface. Some brand new DVD-label in my country – clearly inspired by the success and oddity value of Something Weird Video – even released this "Alice in Acidland" on disc and promoted it as a true highlight of the rancid exploitation era. Well, it isn't really. This is a terrible film, rapidly shot and edited together to further cash in on the huge success of other (and better) contemporary drug-movies like "The Trip" and "Head" and basically the LSD-version of the classic anti-propaganda joke "Reefer Madness". That particular 'documentary' – whether government funded or not – taught us that Marihuana is responsible for potentially intelligent teenagers to commit adultery, cause hit-and-run accidents, play with guns and even kill themselves. "Alice in Acidland" keeps it all a little sleazier and more easy-going, though. Apparently, all that LSD does is stimulating young and innocent girls to have random sex with strangers; whether guys that nickname themselves Animal or fellow naughty girls. As you can guess, "Alice in Acidland" is merely just an excuse to show a series of gratuitous soft-porn sequences and delirious color-effects. The set-up is similar to the one of "Reefer Madness", with a voice-over narration from a psychiatrist and the poor intoxicated Alice herself. That is kind of weird, since the end of the movie clearly states that the LSD messed up poor Alice beyond repair, so how would she be able to narrate her version? There's absolutely no dialog in the entire film, presumable to save the viewer some really terrible performances, but the ladies are quite luscious and keep the sex footage at least endurable. 55 minutes might seem incredibly short for a long feature film, but believe you me, in the case of "Alice in Acidland" is more than long enough and perhaps even a bit overlong.

Alice in Acidland is a waste of time. More than forty of the movie's sixty-seven minutes are spent building up to the point where Alice drops the LSD. These minutes can easily be spent with the vcr on fast-forward. There's little dialogue, but a lot of needless porn. It doesn't get much better once Alice drops the LSD and the film changes from black and white to color. About the only interesting thing about this film is noting the vocal lines that have been sampled by musicians.