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Alice in Wonderland

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1933 / 1.33:1/ 76 min.

Starring Charlotte Henry, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper

Cinematography by Bert Glennon, Henry Sharp

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod

Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made.

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the movie began production in 1932, the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Carroll’s classic was ripe for Paramount – the studio on Melrose was ground zero for absurdist humor in the early ’30s. McLeod had just wrapped the Marx Brothers’ sublime Horse Feathers while the Mankiewicz-scripted Million Dollar Legs was released the same year – both...

"Wtf Value"

By Raymond Benson

Only serious film history aficionados and perhaps viewers of Turner Classic Movies will be aware that there was once a live-action version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland adapted by Hollywood in the early pre-code years. It was released in 1933 by Paramount and directed by Norman Z. McLeod, the guy who had helmed the Marx Brothers’ comedies Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932). McLeod would go on to make such titles as It’s a Gift (1934), Topper (1937), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), and The Paleface (1948).

The production of Alice in 1933 boasts a screenplay by none other than heavyweights Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the man behind Things to Come and a production designer whose hands were all over Hollywood and British productions over the next two decades. The script also borrows heavily from the popular and then-current stage production written by Eva La Gallienne and Florida Friebus,...

25 Days Of Christmas: Television Specials and Holiday Films

Throughout the month of December, TV Editor Kate Kulzick and Film Editor Ricky D will review classic Christmas adaptions, posting a total of 13 each, one a day, until the 25th of December.

The catch: They will swap roles as Rick will take on reviews of classic television Christmas specials and Kate will take on Christmas movies. Today is day 2.

Day 2: Babes in Toyland/March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934)

Written by Frank Butler and Nick Grinde

Directed by Gus Meins and Charley Rogers

What’s it about?

This Laurel and Hardy musical, originally titled Babes in Toyland but later retitled March of the Wooden Soldiers, follows the misadventures of several of the residents of Toyland. Mother Peep, the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe, is about to be evicted by the evil Silas Barnaby, who is scheming to coerce the beautiful Bo-Peep into marrying him,...

We decided to start our little research of immortal young lady Alice in Wonderland, that still, after exactly 145 years, has a power to inspire directors all over the world.

You all guess that the main reason for this certainly is the latest, Tim Burton’s new incarnation of this story.

But let’s start from a beginning. We were all young, we all liked fairy-tales (well, some of us still do), and enjoyed so many characters, we all had our special heroes. Then, what’s so magical about this story, when it still manages to stay on the top of the list?

Ok, we all know the facts, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is written by the English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who used a pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The story tells what happens to a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world which is populated...

Paramount.s big budget adaptation of Lewis Carroll.s classic finally finds its way from Wonderland and onto DVD. The affair is a star studded one, but you.ll have a hard time making them out. Alice (Charlotte Henry) is spending a rainy afternoon fighting boredom. She wonders what the world on the other side of the looking glass (mirror to us yanks) and falls asleep. She goes into the looking glass and discovers a world of wonder and mad characters. She doesn.t find Johnny Depp however, but she can thank Johnny and Tim Burton for getting this 1930s adaptation onto DVD (as well as many others). Paramount studios were struggling and one idea was to mount a big adaptation...

Yesterday I took you on a tour through Johnny Depp’s long and storied film collaborations with director Tim Burton. Why? Because new images from Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” popped up online, including a clear look at Depp in full costume as the Mad Hatter. I didn’t sleep last night, thanks to that image.

Now I want to give you something a little bit different. Burton’s “Alice” is hardly the first one. There have been no less than 20(!) film adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s story, including several foreign versions, an anime reinterpretation and a porno. After the jump I’ve inserted a bunch of images from “Alice” across the years. Is the porno in there, you ask? You’ll have to click to find out (it isn’t).

This isn’t the first “Alice in Wonderland,” but it’s the earliest still I could find. This 1933 version...