Alice na terra dos Acidos

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 (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.

Some say "Alice in Acidland" is a bad film, and while they're right--the pornography that comprises half to most of the picture is exceedingly dull and not particularly filmed well--in another sense, this is innovative filmmaking. It's as though someone found a silent stag film and decided to add two voiceover narrator tracts, one a cautionary tale from a supposed psychiatrist and the other from the Alice protagonist, along with minimal sound effects, to sell it as a self-contradictory narrative feature on the exploitation film circuit à la "Reefer Madness" (1936). A so-good-it's-bad tale that pretends to advocate and educate against the so-called evils of drugs and sex (including the lesbian variety, as depicted with copious amounts of nudity in this one), but, in fact, celebrates those very activities and can be quite laughable in the process. On top of all that, we get a final ten minutes of psychedelic art in color (as opposed to the rest of the picture's black and white) seemingly from a film student with access to an optical printer and the illicit substances the film warns us about. This is what cinema is all about: taking disparate materials and editing them together into something original and at least semi-coherent.

The "Alice in Wonderland" connection is a nice touch, too. The male narrator tells us this acid trip is no fairy tale, but here's a young woman named Alice going down the rabbit holes of drug and sex parties, led astray by the White Rabbit of her lesbian professor, meeting (and mating) a (sex) "animal," smoking as much as the hookah-fixated Caterpillar and otherwise ingesting as much as Lewis Carroll's Alice did magical mushrooms and other desserts, until the entire edifice crumbles like a deck of cards around her. No fairy tale for children, sure, but there's no pretending that drug and sex parties aren't the fantasies of every other mature viewer. Once again, the film tells us one thing, but shows us another.

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")

At its root, the filmmaker's dilemma has two fangs.

One challenge is to take things that people know and bend and filter them in ways that can be seen as "natural" when it gets to the other side, past the set, the film, the beam, the retina, the neurons. In other words, most filmmakers struggle with us to show us what we know.

On the other hand, some filmmakers attempt to show us what we don't know, or think we know but have never seen. Possibly love falls in this category, but that's another story. The challenge of this game is developing a vocabulary to take us to the unfamiliar, using bits and pieces of a vocabulary from the familiar.

Its the first challenge that the theatrical types love: truth, passion and all that. But its the second that fascinates me, at least this week.

In this "other world" category are the standard parade of movies about mathematics, mysticism, afterdeath, art (sometimes), or mental deviance (when we get the first person view). Oddly, the same conventions are usually used for all of these, making many of these possibly the worst films in existence.

And then there are the hallucinogenic drug movies. These are fascinating. I might make a special study of these, starting before the period when some significant number of viewers actually could be counted on to be experienced in this regard.

If you were to start such a study, dear viewer, you need to start with "Easy Rider," "Head" and this, all made in the same year.

This one is in a different camp from the others because it chooses a sexual metaphor. The story is contrived to set us up by establishing a sexually driven trace, a call into the viewer's mind to memories that we all have about transit to another world while having sex.

I'm really impressed by the idea. We do end up with all the standard bumph of colored lights on bodies, not much different than say the psychedelic scenes in "Behind the Green Door," which used the same sex and psychedelic formula. Except by that time filmmakers were showing penetration.

"Green Door" takes a slightly different formula than here: the story is about a movie of a show. This Alice case is instead a different type of show: a documentary, a warning, along the lines of "Reefer Madness."

By the way, people laugh at "Reefer Madness," thinking it an inept, stodgy piece of misinformed propaganda. Look again folks and see that it is constructed according to a strictly psychedelic model, obviously by someone who knew. Its a "Saragossa Manuscript" in mufti.

Okay, back to this. There is no reason to watch it unless you are into these things, these cinematic challenges. But if you are interested in film, and other worlds, try this concoction of visual science fiction as charmed up by entranced lesbian sex.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.