Customer Reviews

Wonderland

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This film gives you two points of view of the Wonderland murders. One from Dylan McDermott and one from Val Kilmer (as John Holmes). I think the sheer brutality of these murders are enough to captivate, but the film basically goes nowhere. You don't learn anything about Holmes other than the fact that's he's a major drug addict. The film has nothing to do with porn or sex. It's a true crime movie that just never really gets off the ground. The second disc is a documentary on Holmes himself. That is the better disc. It gives you an in-depth look at the life of a guy with a practical-joke sized piece of anatomy. This documentary is far more interesting than the film Wonderland.

There is a 25 minute crime scene police video included as well. It is as graphic as graphic gets. The bodies are still there as the police carefully document the bloody scene. I assume it's there for shock value. Don't let your kids anywhere near this.

I felt that this movie was unfairly bashed by newspaper critics. I got the impression that none dared venture anything positive once a consensus had been established.

I was so curious about this affair after reading the Rolling Stone article years ago that I saw this movie when it was first released in theaters; I wanted to see if it corroborated the article. So did it? That's the movie: two different versions of the heist are presented --John Holmes' and David Lind's. It's one thing to hear a story, but something else to see it enacted. John Holmes' version was amusing to see enacted because it made his lies obvious; some things could not have happened as he told them (ridiculous) and the audience laughed on those. Toward the end is a chilling Roman holiday of a murder scene that I believe, all things considered, is as close to the truth as we will come. For example, I believe it was Deverell who answered the door, and I am convinced that Holmes was there and probably coerced into participating in order to implicate him and thus prevent him from turning against Eddie again by testifying.

This two-disc set also includes omitted scenes, a Crime TV segment, and telling interviews with Sharon Holmes, Dawn Schiller, and people who knew Holmes from "the industry." There are photos taken of the victims when they were alive which I found very interesting, just to see what they looked like. The LAPD crime scene video was not as hard to take as I had expected, mostly due to the then-poor quality of video tape (it has come a long way since 1981 and this will jog your memory); three of the four just look like they're sleeping except that their hair is caked with blood. There are also interviews with some of the actors. I didn't know who Josh Lucas was before seeing this; his performance was outstanding.

There are two different releases of this out there. One is the movie (with, I think, a few extras) on one disc; the other is a two-disc set which includes the documentary "Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes". Watch the documentary FIRST, as "Wonderland" will make a lot more sense and be ten times more enjoyable if you do. That said, "Wonderland" is a fantastic, gritty film that I can count as one of my all-time favorites! Val Kilmer is so good as porn star John Holmes, you won't believe it. Lisa Kudrow, Kate Bosworth, Dylan McDermott, and EVERYONE in the cast is outstanding! Watch for a cameo by Paris Hilton as well. Everyone chews the scenery in this realistic film that went unnoticed in theatres but is becoming a cult classic thanks to the magic of DVD! I can't recommend it any more highly!

In the 1970s, when pornographic movies became increasingly available to mainstream consumers, John Holmes (1944-1988) parlayed his supersized endowment into stardom. Those who knew him well describe him as likeable but somewhat dim; when his stardom began to fade he had nothing on which to fall back, and he became just another drug-addicted has been, trading on what was left of his dubious celebrity for a line of cocaine here and a line of cocaine there. In 1981 Holmes tended to bounce between big-time drug dealer Eddie Nash and a group of smaller-time dealers who lived on Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles--and found himself greatly over his head.

Police described the Wonderland murder case as the most gruesome murder scene since the 1969 Manson family killing spree. Although theories differ in details, they are consistent in outline: Holmes set up Nash for robbery by the Wonderland dealers; Nash responded by having Holmes set up the Wonderland dealers for a mass hit, carried off by people weilding pipes. Four people died, one survived with serious injuries and without memory of the attack. The 2003 film WONDERLAND attempts to portray both the crimes and the conflicting stories that Holmes, Nash, a Wonderland insider, and others gave during the course of the investigation.

Val Kilmer is unexpectedly convincing as the whining John Holmes, unable to focus beyond the next score, coming up with one silly idea after another. Lisa Kudrow is particularly memorable in the role of Holmes' estranged wife, Sharon; Kate Bosworth equals her as Holmes' current girl, Dawn Schiller. Although the movie is littered with cameos that actually tend to distract--Paris Hilton and Carrie Fisher, among others--the supporting cast is also quite fine. But the script, editing, and overall concept lets them down: it begins well and finishes well, but the middle portion of the film is weak and the overall movie lacks emotional or psychological depth.

WONDERLAND's characters are not likeable, and director and co-writer James Cox doesn't even attempt to find a means of bringing us inside their heads and lives in a way that makes them understandable, much less sympathetic. The film instead attempts to jump from character to character and idea to idea while also sliding back and forth in time--and in the process never quite stays in one place long enough for you get a firm grip. Everything does eventually link up, but all the same you'd better not blink too often as the movie plays out: if you do, you'll be lost when the final credits role.

The film is also plagued by a lot of hand-held-camera cinematography, presumably in order to convey the drug-laden atmosphere through which the characters move; there are also quite a few graphics, split screens, and so on. I find that a little of this goes quite a long way, and between the camera tricks and the constant shifts WONDERLAND looses focus and at times becomes a little wearing.

Even so, WONDERLAND still manages to be an interesting film, the sort of film that you wish had been undertaken by a great artist instead of director and co-writer James Cox, who would be most gracefully described as somewhat unpolished. There are at least two DVD issues of the film, one that is the film alone, another which also includes a documentary on John Holmes that is actually more interesting than the movie itself; if you have to pick between the two, go with the latter. Recommended, just don't expect too much.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Wonderland (James Cox, 2003)

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in the review of Suspect Zero a reviwer for another publication who had described the movie as "physically hideous." To be blunt, that may have been the single dumbest comment I'd ever read in a movie review, as applied to the relatively benign Suspect Zero (a film which lacked even as many curl-up-and-mewl-softly moments as The Silence of the Lambs). Having seen Wonderland over the weekend, however, I can't think of a more apt description for it. I rush to add that in the case of Wonderland, "physically hideous" is a high compliment.

Wonderland may be the most maligned movie to come out so far this decade. I have read some of the most scathing reviews ever written on this movie, things that make Mike Nelson and Roger Ebert's attacks on the true underbelly of the film world look like Univision's review of Battlefield Earth (which I think was the only good review Battlefield Earth ever got). For the record, Ebert (who gave the movie a two-star review) voiced much the same complaint as many of the other reviews: he couldn't figure out what was going on. I don't know if the majesty of seeing this movie on the big screen made it harder to understand, or whether people just weren't paying attention, but I didn't have of the continuity problems others did. There were a couple of times where I couldn't place a particular character, but all were resolved within a minute or two.

For those not up on their porn-star history (and there is a fine deconstruction of the whole mess at Luke Ford's website, which may be the most literate porn site on the web), John Holmes was, in some way, connected to the 1981 Wonderland murders. The five victims of the murders (four deaths, one surviving with permanent brain damage) had recently robbed Eddie Nash, one of LA's underground kingpins. To this day, no one is sure of the whole truth of what happened, so it's pretty obvious that any factually-based account is going to have some unanswered questions. Cox and his co-writers do attempt a definitive account based on the testimony of Holmes' widow (who served as a consultant on the film, along with Holmes' longtime girlfriend Dawn Schiller) and a synthesis of the conflicting stories given by two of the principals, but there are still questions. No one seemed to have a problem with it in the Aileen Wuornos documentaries. Why they do here is, well, another unanswered question.

Cox's hyperkinetic style also draws a good deal of criticism, even from those familiar with his direct-to-video feature-length debut Highway, shot in much the same way. But, let's face it, most of the characters here are coke fiends. What better method of filmmaking?

While the cast itself is often cited as the only good ting about the movie, Cox's portrayals of them are often criticized. Funny, that. To me, a good makeup job combined with a few changes in one's appearance so I can't recognize a big actor is a GOOD thing. In this film, Dylan McDermott is completely unrecognizable. I like that in a movie. Val Kilmer could never be mistaken for anyone else, but he's so in the role (Kilmer, who lives and dies by Stanislavsky, was said to be so unlikeable during the shoot that many of his co-workers were constantly uncomfortable around him) that you forget this guy was, well, Madmartigan. Lisa Kudrow gives, by a mile, the performance of her career; Kate Bosworth is a long, long way from Blue Crush and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! here. And the list goes on, way on (Natasha Gregson Wagner, Ted Levine, Josh Lucas, Janeane Garofalo, Paris Hilton, Eric Bogosian, Faison Love, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Applegate... you get the idea.) In fact, it's not only Kudrow. Of the bunch, Kilmer (in Tombstone and, arguably, Heat), Garofalo (whose role here is too small to really give her comparison), Ted Levine (in The Silence of the Lambs, natch), and Michael Pitt (in Bully) haven't turned in performances that outshine anything they've done previously.

The story itself is complex, unsolvable, and told from different perspectives in flashback (the movie is often compared, unfavorably, to Rashomon), but pay attention and you'll figure it out. As long as you do that, it's entirely possible that Wonderland will end up being one of the best films you see this year. ****

John Holmes who, as a detective in the movie describes as, "a mile worth of d--k but no balls," is at the center of the murders of four people on Wonderland Avenue. Its a true story, but the only problem is finding out just what role Holmes (convincingly played by Val Kilmer) had in all this blood and gore. THe movie offers a number of scenarios, but in all of them one thing is clear; John Holmes, the kind of porn stars, was just as sick and sordid as many of the other people in Los Angeles. On the screen they exhibit characteristics that generate envy among the insecure populace; but their private lives, stripped of its pomp and rather impious ceremony, is nothing more than daily wastes of skin, blood and bone. Holmes comes across, for the most part, as a coward and as someone who is so hooked on cocaine and crack that he can't see straight half the time. You will remember that he died of AIDS in 1988. But despite the moralizing, this is an interesting movie from beginning to end, and it is made all the more interesting by the fact that other people, not Holmes it seems, were more caught up and mesmerized by his sexual endowments, going to far as to ask (or order)him to "see it." There has not been a movie like this one, because this one is based on incidents that actually took place. If you want a REAL "date movie," rent this one and show it at home with your love interest. You'll finally have something to talk about.

I appreciate the guts of the producers of WONDERLAND to bankroll this movie, since it is not the kind of mainstream stuff Hollywood usually finances these days. Almost all of the characters are sleazy scumbags, drug addicts and criminals. The main character is porn's first superstar John C. HOLMES (convincingly played by Val KILMER)at the end of his career, a pathetic loser, manipulative, pimping his young girlfriend and due to his drug habits hanging out with the wrong guys.
It is a bit tricky to give a brief plot synopsis for this one without giving too much away, but I'll try it anyway.
WONDERLAND is a true crime story about the horrifying murders that occured on July 1st, 1981 in a house on Wonderland avenue in LA and left four people dead and one woman seriously injured. The victims were beaten to death with lead pipes. One of the residents, who was not present at the time the killings occurred, turns himself in to the police and tells the cops a story involving drugs, the robbery of a nightclub owner named Eddie NASH (terrific performance by Eric BOGOSIAN) and XXX movie star John C. HOLMES. Questioned by the cops, HOLMES gives his version of the story. Needless to say it is very different...
I won't tell more about the plot, just add that it is terrific.
All actors deliver powerhouse performances. Aside from KILMER and BOGOSIAN, I particularly liked Josh LUCAS as criminal Ron LAUNIUS. The movie is also exceptionally well shot. I also like to give kudos to the scriptwriters for their efforts.

The DVD also has great extra features. There are some brief interviews with actors Val KILMER, Josh LUCAS, Eric BOGOSIAN and Tim BLAKE-NELSON. There are seven brief deleted scenes, but none would have added much to the film had they been included. Another extra is a photo gallery, but it is nothing to write home about. Then there is a short documentary about the Wonderland-murders called COURT TV: HOLLYWOOD AT LARGE. As a true crime fan my favorite among the extras is the 20 minute original crime scene video from the LAPD. We see the horrifying crime scene, while a homicide detective comments ("We are now in the residence, the first level living room area, wherein the first victim was found. Apparent bloodsplatterings are evident on the walls and on the sofa located on the west wall of the living room.") Not for the squeamish!

The second DVD contains a feature-length documentary about John C. HOLMES, titled WADD. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN C. HOLMES. There are lots of interviews with XXX stars (Annette HAVEN, Kitten NATIVIDAD,...) and snippets from HOLMES films. (Note that it is the R-rated cut of the documentary, so the included scenes from HOLMES films are softcore.) Suffice to say, the documentary (as well as the WONDERLAND main feature) are not for the easily offended.
Two thumps up for this DVD!

Before viewing 2003 sleaze-fest "Wonderland," be prepared to wallow in a Hollywood-created world of drug addiction, bad hair, crappy clothes and blood-splattered walls. All of this excess is spiced with frenetic quick-cut editing in order to create the drug high of freebasing for three straight days. I liked "Wonderland," but then again I have a morbid fascination with crime. The story plays out in a he-said-she-said, "Rashomon"-like fashion confusing more than aiding. Three versions of this story are shown, so the viewer can decide for themselves. Director James Cox has gone to great lengths to make a stylish film about the most unsettling cretins in Hollywood history.

"Wonderland" is a true story that happened in 1981. Four people are found brutally murdered in a house on Wonderland Avenue, pounded by lead pipes and a baseball bat or two. Johnny C. Holmes, one of the most famous porn stars in history, is a prime suspect. The Wonderland house was a drug den, and Johnny who hadn't made a film in two years, hung around often. Investigators haul Holmes in and get a convoluted story detailing robbery, double cross and dope. It appears the Wonderland victims had robbed the home of Eddie Nash, Los Angeles nightclub owner and drug king. Nash suspected Holmes was involved, and forced the weaselly drug addict to lead his own goons over to the Wonderland house to exact revenge.

Everyone in this film is sleazy, and it's surprising such a strong cast to include Kilmer, Dylan McDermott, Lisa Kudrow, Josh Lucas, Kate Bosworth, Jeneane Garofalo, Carrie Fisher and Christina Applegate would take on such shady roles. The performances are uniformly good, though a lot of fine actors disappear in the shadows of communion dope smoke and coke snort. Some of the best scenes in "Wonderland" are when Kilmer (as Holmes) is figuratively flogging himself for the unparalleled loser he's become. He repeats over and over, "Please forgive me. I'm sorry. Please forgive me." But you will have to look quick to see this great scene because Cox, in obsessive MTV fashion, cuts away as quickly as possible. We eventually see the entire scene, only in snip-snip pieces, inter cut with Holmes' girlfriend sleeping with another man.

If you pick up the "Wonderland" DVD, you have a lovely little extra which is the actual LAPD crime scene video taken at the scene. In all its crimson, hand-held glory, you can see the infamous Wonderland pad, complete with close-ups of the dead kids. I turned it off quickly, and am frankly stunned such an insensitive extra would be included. Dope dealers and criminals granted, but these kids deserve a bit more respect than to have their indecent murders serve as an extra on a DVD.

There's not much character development in "Wonderland," and motivation is about as thin as a sheet of recycled toilet paper. Brief stardom and falls from porn grace have been brilliantly documented in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 film "Boogie Nights." In fact, Dirk Diggler was based on Johnny Holmes. The robbery of Eddie Nash was covered in the unforgettable scene where Alfred Molina dances around to Night Ranger in sweaty speedos. I suppose "Wonderland" is the seedy next-day truth to "Boogie Nights," as Diggler-er-Holmes is forced to go to Wonderland Avenue and pound out a bloody revenge against his friends. To "Wonderland's" credit, we never see Holmes' member. He is forced to pull it out at one point - away from camera view - for party guests.

"Wonderland" accurately portrays a horrible crime and the days leading up to its resolution. Like watching a crime scene video, you'll find yourself wanting to look away. But like the party-goers staring wide-eyed at Johnny's infamous member, you won't.

Val Kilmer has a reputation for being a difficult-to-work-with jerk with debatable (in my opinion) acting ability. But he is outstanding in "Wonderland", giving us what is easily the best performance of his career. He excellently handles a couple of very difficult scenes. Maybe he's a self-obsessed creep, and is only "playing himself" in this movie, but nevertheless, I was impressed.
John Holmes was indeed a self-obsessed cretin, as proven by the in-depth documentary included on the DVD. But he makes for a fascinating character. The movie wisely does not focus on his porn career, dismissing it with a very revealing (no, not THAT kind of "revealing") scene which shows how Holmes's once legendary anatomy has been reduced to a pathetic novelty item. Instead, the movie plumbs the mysterious depths of the Wonderland Avenue drug-related murders and what role Holmes may have played in it. It's a gruesomely fascinating case.
The movie is capably directed, tightly scripted, and excellently acted with a strong supporting cast which includes Lisa Kudrow, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Applegate and Jeneane Garofalo, to name a few.
My only real complaint is that we're never really sure how we're supposed to feel about Holmes' character. Does the movie want us to have sympathy for him? This is not only unclear, but unlikely as well, since he was a pathetic drug addict who pimped out his underage girlfriend for drug money and certainly played SOME kind of role in a brutal robbery and/or multiple homicide. The movie's last scene is the one that bothered me: Holmes and his girl gleefully driving off into the sunset to escape prosecution. Is that commendable? Are we supposed to think of him as some kind of hero? Anti-hero? Loser? Jerk? Wrong guy at the wrong place at the wrong time? We're left to wonder. But I blame the script, not the actor. Kilmer acts the hell out of the role, and viewers who are interested in a morbidly fascinating true story could do far worse than check out this movie, which is all in all pretty darn good.

Wonderland was a pretty good film, based on the true story of one of the biggest Porn Kings, John Holms. This story was a bit too much for me, mainly cause it has(mostly)exessive amount of drugs being used and it got annoying but that isn't the point. This film was pretty good. It was cool to see Both sides of the two mens story. Which is true?...Honestly they both had there pros and there cons. Lets put it this way...THEY BOTH LIED at some point of the story.

The cast in this film was superb. Especially Dawn played by that girl from the movie Blue Crush. Lis Kudrow did an awesome job too, very convincing character. Besides this raw, real Story on Crime and Drugs lets not forget this still happends in the world, but this time it happend to happen to John Holms. Val Kilmer did a great job as the Porn King, acctually all the characters did a superb job.
NOTE:Now just because this is based on some porn start don't expect some graphic scenes of sexual behaviour and nudity because you ain't gettin' none in this except for one lil' sex scene which is nothing.


Besides the good acting the film was just plain good, and yeah it didn't have a wrap up ending BUT WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING. Now if you wanna' know the real story behind the WONDERLAND murders you can GOOGLE it up on your net and find some good articles about it....The only thing I know that's true for sure is that Nash(the arabian)is YES still out there...some were in LA..Creepy isn't it..And if you don't think so, I think you should RE-watch this film.

Besides the a good crime story, porn stars, good acting, LISA KUDROW, This film was pretty good....I give it a

4.0 out of 5 stars....$3.50 Well spent....

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