Customer Reviews

Alice in Acidland/Smoke and Flesh

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I own a VHS copy of ALICE IN ACIDLAND, purchased from Something Weird years ago. I am a big fan of 60's exploitation / drug trip flicks and ALICE IN ACIDLAND has always been one of my favorites.

I finally upgraded to DVD and I was completely disappointed.

This DVD of ALICE is a cut, censored version of the film. Ten to fifteen second chunks have been lifted here and there, leaving jarring jump cuts in their places. And near the end of the film, an entire scene has been eliminated. The cut footage is all shots containing full frontal nudity and/or the more brutal violence.

The cuts are obvious - no attempt was made to make them flow with the movie... the music and voice over narration cut awkwardly with each instance of trimmed footage.

The run time info on the box is even wrong... on the box, the original run time of ALICE is listed: 62 minutes. But the version on the DVD only runs 53 minutes with all the cuts.

I have been a Something Weird fan for years... But now I am disappointed in the company. They used to be a haven for unfiltered, non-PC, full-on-raunchy exploitation, horror, psycodelic, and just downright odd cinema... stuff the masses wouldn't care for. So why CUT a movie to (presumably) appeal to the masses???

I'll hesitate before I buy another Something Weird DVD.

I give this DVD 2 stars instead of one because the other material on this DVD is quite good. But I don't think this DVD is worth your money.

This DVD contains two films entitled Alice in Acidland and Smoke And Flesh. The movies both deal with the ramifications of using heavy duty mind altering drugs with some good but mostly bad consequences for the users in their real lives as well on their "trips." The cinematography is not anything special; and the choreography could have been written by a film school student.

Alice In Acidland explores the drastic downward spiral of Alice who is exposed to mind altering drugs by a teacher at her junior college. Alice, once the "All American Girl;" slowly but surely descends into an increasingly psychotic state as a result of her drug use and eventual drug addiction. The movie also makes the point that this drug use leads to promiscuity; and I suppose that was rather scandalous "front page news" at that time. The real tragedy, however, is drastically displayed as Alice loses control of herself and her mind whenever she takes the drugs. The scenes from Alice's most memorable drug trip are in color; but then you get the final shot in Alice In Acidland. This last scene is intended to be a shocker so I won't spoil anything for you here.

Smoke And Flesh explores the topic of how drugs can work for some good but mostly bad consequences. Yes, the drugs reduce inhibitions to romantic relationships; but the "bad trips" the people go on make you wonder if it was worth it. Smoke And Flesh has more of a plot than Alice In Acidland which simply shows young ladies using drugs and then getting themselves into situations that they otherwise wouldn't have experienced. Smoke And Flesh goes further; it starts out as a party with drug use and then adds in a biker group to crash the party and cause problems for the partygoers. The cinematography is much better with well thought out scenes and camera angles; and the characters are more developed and interesting. I agree with the reviewer who liked the scene where the couple takes off their clothes as the camera films only their ankles from underneath the bed.

I also agree with the reviewer who writes that this DVD gives you only a chopped up and edited version of Alice In Acidland. There are very noticeable gaps in the film made obvious by abrupt and instantaneous scene changes and breaks in the narration of the film. This may irk you so I thought it would be important to mention this.

Overall, these middling and melodramatic films try to make to point that drug use could lead you down the road to big, big trouble. Indeed, a friend of a friend of Alice's ends her life during a "bad trip." Alice herself must pay the price for taking drugs. In Smoke And Flesh the trouble takes the form of the biker group crashing the party and causing trouble.

These films are best perceived as sensationalistic films without much meat on them to make the point that drug use can be good but mostly bad; there's almost invariably a price to be paid when one uses mind altering drugs. Things in both movies get out of hand rather quickly and the problems don't always have a happy resolution. Smoke And Flesh, however, is decidedly more upbeat in its handling of drugs while Alice In Acidland appears to have been made to scare younger people into avoiding drugs. I liked the idea of human life as expressed through the lives of the fish in the aquarium near the end of Smoke And Flesh.

I recommend these films for people who enjoy films from the Something Weird series. People who want to watch movies about the dangers of drug abuse will also like these two movies.

Another interesting title in the Something Weird series, but interesting mostly only as a late-night curio of sleazy 60's weirdness.

"Alice," a low-budget skin flick, is about an ordinary L.A. teen and her swift descent to the looney-bin once she's lured by her seductive female teacher into the world of drink, drugs, sun and sex.

That description makes it sound much more engaging than it actually is: Alice is... to put it delicately... not overly attractive and not excessively talented as an actress. The film quality is sketchy (lots of jump-cuts and segments without audio) and the action is glacially paced. We're talking slow going and most of the sex involves Alice writhing and making spastic "oh!" faces in response to simply being held by her lovers (no touching, basically).

A sequence in which Alice drops acid is presented in color and it's so slow and dull it makes you wonder if the filmmakers mistook Ny-Quil Liqui-Gels for LSD.

If you're looking for funny sound-bites or want a wacky, unseen film to project on the wall of a loft-party, this is all you. It's not good for much else.

"Smoke and Flesh" is actually a lot more interesting. Editor, director, cinematographer Joseph Mangine had clearly seen, and been influenced by the French New Wave and also movies like "Touch of Evil." The story (one hipster's swingin' party is interrupted by volatile bikers on acid) ain't much but visually there's style to spare. The opening motorcycle ride through New York is so cool and atmospheric it could've been filmed by some video wunderkind circa 1998 and there are other highlights as well -- a "Pulp Fiction"-esque joint rolling, a spooky attack in an attic and a nicely-shot sequence in which whip cream is applied to the body of a young party girl. Scriptwise, they got nothing but compared to "Alice" it's practically Godard.

A hidden feature about the aphrodesiac effects of weed is a hoot, though it grows boring.

The best part is a collection of about 10 previews for similar movies ("The Pusher," "The Acid Eaters" and "Confessions of an Opium Eater"). That alone makes it worth netflixing or buying used at a low, low price.

The first thing you need to know about this particular Something Weird DVD is that it definitely puts its worst foot forward. I cannot speak to how badly "Alice in Acidland" has been edited/censored, but any additional footage would have to be an improvement. The title character is Alice Trenton (Colleen Murphy), who is turned on to drugs and sex by her college French teacher, a lesbian who appears to be actively recruiting. Before long Alice, in the words of the narrator, "proves she belongs in the sex for pleasure inner circle."

This 1968 sexploitation film is one of those where the main point of the plot is to show naked women, by which I mean that eventually the women end up entirely naked, the men are down to boxers (or boxers and black sox for one unfortunate guy), and what ever they end up doing the key thing is not to obscure the camera's view of the naked breasts. After a lot of slapstick foreplay it becomes clear that writhing is a big thing in this movie. Then, remembering that the point here is supposedly drug more than sex, the film shifts to a lot of pot smoking and then Alice goes on her acid trip. Suddenly the movie is in color (I guess Alice is over the rainbow rather than down the rabbit hole) and what follows is a lot of stretching, lots of eye makeup, and a whole lot of writhing against music that is not particular psychadelic before the movie ends with a heavy handed moral lesson and the word "END" written on a drawing of a bikini bottom.

"Smoke and Flesh" is easily twice as good, mainly because first time writer-director Joseph Mangine is really a cinematographer who would go on to shoot "The Lords of Flashbush." There is actually some decent example of montage in this 1968 film, working in shots of goldfish and other items around the house with what is happening on the bed as seen through an aquarium. Mangine knows that he cannot go too far in showing things, so he makes a concerted effort to suggest more than he can actually show. At one point a husband is going to watch his wife with another man, but Mangine shoots the first part of the scene, in which the pair undress, from underneath the bed. It might not be particularly sexy, but it certainly qualifies for art (especially compared to "Alice in Acidland").

"The Man" shows up at a party bearing gifts and the fun begins. We then learn that using a sifter and the tube from a roll of paper towels you can create a bong, which takes forever to be passed around. A haze of smoke fills the room while in another part of town some bikers are playing pool. Eventually they crash the part where the chief sources of entertainment are arguing the preference of Butter Brickle ice cream over whipped cream, and racing models cars as a substitute for strip poker. Drugs come into play when the host of the party decides to send one of the bikers on an acid trip, which is this film consists of negative images and close-ups of eye balls. This is one of the few sexploitation films you will ever see where what the director does with the camera and in editing the film is a whole better than whatever is happening in front of it. There is a point where one of the intruding bikers attacks one of the girls at the party when he finds her in the attic. The scene is shot light by a wildly swinging light and given that I am not interested in watching a woman being assaulted Mangine's approach provides a sense of distance from the event that decidedly works against the voyeuristic goals of the genre. No wonder he did not direct another film for almost twenty years (1986's "Neon Maniacs"). But, hey, Vilmos Zsigmond shot lots of exploitation films and he went on to win an Oscar for shooting "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Now, the short for this Something Weird DVD, "Aphrodisiac! The Sexual Secret of Marijuana" is way better than the first feature. This "factual documentary dramatization" mixes sections on the history of marijuana (e.g., doctors in China first gave it to surgery patients, George Washington grew hemp as a cash crop) with street interviews with ordinary folk who talk about their drug experiences and sequences where actors show how marijuana has spiced up people's sex lives (e.g., David marries a virgin and after their first night of hell he learns how marijuana makes things better; he is told this by a psychiatrist at a go-go bar and the next thing we know his wife is dancing naked with the lights on). There is even a token attempt to present the other side (it does not work for everybody), but clearly the thesis here is that an aphrodisiac like marijuana is a lot better for your sex life than a depressant like alcohol. All things considered this is a rather fascinating little documentary that certainly makes a prima facie case for its argumentative position.

The other extras are the "Gallery of Underground Sexploitation Movie-Magazine Covers with Audio Oddities," and a whole bunch of trailers. Besides "Smoke and Flesh," this includes other exploitation favorites "The Pusher," "Devil's Harvest, and the "Hard Road." There is also the Vincent Price film "Confessions of an Opium Eater," and studio anti-drug films such as "The Narcotics Story" and Cameron Mitchell in "Monkey on My Back." Then we have trailers for "Hopped-Up," the 1930s semi-classic "Marihuana," and "The Acid Eaters" ("a film of anti-social significance"). So, two stars for "Alice," four for "Smoke and Flesh" because of Mangine's cinematography, and three-and-a-half for "Aphrodisiac!" I substitute the short for the bad first feature, throw the trailers into the mix to justify rounding up, and end up with four stars.

classic midnight movie and as most of these type movies they go over the top

Alice in Acidland: 2/10: Filmed with only narration and a jazz soundtrack that sounds like a lot of bad smack was involved Alice in Acidland is your Daddy's porn.


There is no acid per see in the first two thirds of Alice in fact the girls become lesbian potheads with a few drinks of rum. This is an old black and white bump and grind shoot. It contains a fairly unattractive cast, pretentious narration, missing characters let alone scenes, mind numbingly boring sex and a plot out of a C-grade Quincy episode.


My favorite scene an unnamed girl in a group shot looks directly into the camera with a true deer in headlight stare gets her direction shouted at her does something for thirty seconds then forgets and stares at the camera again.


Of course, 1968 was a long time ago and this was a one-off for most of the cast. So sit back and ask yourself one question. "Honey, that second lesbian isn't that Mrs. Peterson from our church is it?"

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Smoke and Flesh: 3/10: Let us see, a motorcycle gang that drives around in Mom's station wagon; check. A different gent, this one with an actual motorcycle, who buys his cycling leathers at the bondage store; check. Strip slot car racing and swinger porn, complete with a man who could be an alien, no make-up required; check. Wow! sounds like my kind of film.


So why only 3 out of 10 score? Well the music sounds like a mentally challenged beach band. The black and white cinematography is a little too artsy with too many shots of both fish tanks and slot car racing. The station wagon gangs eventual appearance turns the movie from a pseudo-trippy fun party into a bit of a downer; (Very much an expression of the sixties era as a whole.)


The first half of Smoke and Flesh is cool, albeit disjointed. The second half had me reaching for the fast forward button.