Alice in Acidland

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.

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.

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.

This is a kind of spoof of Reefer Madness. I hope they got govt funding for this, that would have been a great joke. This is on the surface a movie warning you against the dangers of doing drugs. There are two things which belie that. One, there's an awful lot of nudity in it, like half the screen time. Two, supposedly Alice does the voice over but at the end she's shown to have lost her mind because of drug use, so how can she do the voice-over.

The other problem is the lead. While Alice might've been a beauty from afar, she's far from beautiful. She's chubby, very much so, even by the standards of 1968, since the other girls are at least NOT chubby. Fair's fair, the men are also chubby, and rather unappealing too.

Plus, these women look way too old. The lesbian partner of Frida looks not a day under 38, and the other 'school' girls all look 25.

I bet in 1968, this could have been arousing, but now? Not so much.

And I take offense to the phrase "a known lesbian". As if being a lesbian is a crime! 40 years ago, you say? We don't do that anymore, you say? What do you think about:

• "in a COMMITTED gay relationship" and

• "openly homosexual" and

• "gay LIFESTYLE" ???

this movie is very accurate, as every girl i have met that smokes weed instantly becomes a bisexual nymphomaniac. scientific studies have actual proved this many times over. the accuracy is phenomenal (i.e. how the men have sex with their slacks on, which I do as well). the parties look like any other raging party in the 60's where people sit together in a well lit room smoking weed and immediate having sex with everyone as soon as they walk in. i also want to compliment the editor on his jump cuts to build up the tension, very french new wave. i enjoyed the cut about a minute into the film where it cuts from one scene to another in the middle of a sentence but i have to say my favorite cut is during one of the many drawn out sex scenes, it suddenly cuts to a girl lying on the floor with no top, while all the men in the room are ignoring her and the voices over says something like "...lost her virginity." i don't normally rate movies so high, but this movie deserves to be on the top 250!