Alice in Wonderland (1976)

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Movie
German title Alice in Wonderland
Original title Alice in Wonderland
An X-Rated Musical Comedy & Fantasy
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1976
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Bud Townsend
script B. Anthony Fredericks
production William Osco
music Bucky Searles
Jack star
Peter Matz
camera Joseph Bardo
cut Shaun Walsh
occupation

Alice in Wonderland is an American , pornographic movie. The humorous "porno musical " from 1976 by director Bud Townsend is based freely on Lewis Carroll's story of Alice in Wonderland and is one of the classics of the genre. The music and lyrics were written by Bucky Searles and Peter Matz ( The Carol Burnett Show ), the film was produced by William Osco , whose team had already made the film adaptation of the comic Flesh Gordon with great success .

Alice in Wonderland developed into a surprise success within a few weeks. After a short time, distributors were found for many countries and the film was invited to international festivals. With his porn chic and trendy stylization, he hit the zeitgeist quite precisely, especially in Europe.

action

short version

The basic constellation is the same as in Carroll's original book, but is changed selectively to allow an adult perspective: Alice Townsends, a virginal, prudish and uptight librarian, wants to marry untouched before she suddenly finds herself in the dream world of a sexual wonderland and at the end, full of zest for life and joy, changes her attitude.

content

Alice strongly rejects her friend William, who has been courting her for a long time and who is now urging his beloved to give a clear "proof of love" in bed. She is upset and confused because she didn't really want to hurt or lose William. Then when she turns the pages of Lewis Carroll's book Alice in Wonderland and sings a song about how to learn to become free and how nice it would be to grow up again as a different person and live through life, a big rabbit suddenly appears white ears.

When she follows this, she ends up in a wonderland full of people and other human-like figures who copulate with one another or otherwise engage in erotic interaction. Her openness, sociability, playfulness, cheerfulness and spontaneity help her to intuitively find ways and means to satisfy the urge to research, the uninhibited joy of experimentation and sexual thirst for knowledge and to make her own erotic experiences step by step.

If Alice's own body was previously alien and only partially familiar, she can now experience it with all the functions of genital sexuality and develop into the basis of her feminine self. The special nature of sexuality means that instinctual decisions are often made in the heat of the moment, i.e. in a state of emotional and physical excitement, and accordingly are not the result of careful, rational considerations. Exciting, surreal discoveries in the voluptuous wonderland enable Alice to live out secret or unconscious erotic fantasies openly and to experience her own body as pleasurable and lovable and to expand this experience in contact with others. Only in the magical world does Alice succeed in exploring her own body, getting to know preferences and excitability, touching herself with pleasure, receiving erotic pleasure and giving others pleasure. She enjoys sexuality and sensual pleasure and gets to know the archaic, vital violence of the sexual organs.

Alice wanders through the country like a sleepwalker as a mixture of innocence and sensuality and retains her physical virginity even in the most bizarre erotic adventures . She longs for reality now. She finally returns to her normal world as an open, no longer uptight woman. She therefore listens to William, agrees to the loss of innocence and becomes his lover: the two seal their love with the defloration of Alice.

Staging

In his picture compositions, the director draws on subjects from musicals , fairy tales and erotic films . In the latter scenes, the camera work specifically uses the close-ups preferred in this genre . The basic visual style of the film is based on a natural color and light dramaturgy. The color scheme in outdoor scenes corresponds to careful use of light. Almost no artificial light was used, only natural light.

Locations

The film was shot in just ten days on the US east coast not far from New York in the Hudson River valley . The scenes in the public library were filmed in Athens' Lower Village Historic District at the DR Evarts Central Library; the exterior scenes were filmed in Catskill Forest near Palenville and in the park around Olana Castle .

Reviews

Kristine DeBell at the premiere for the film A Star Is Born (1976)

Alice in Wonderland is an example of an ambitious film that not only offers pornographic viewing values, but should also meet higher demands. Almost all the important English-language film magazines deal with the musical - " Variety " (USA), " Monthly Film Bulletin " (UK), " Films Illustrated " (UK), " Films and Filming " (UK), " Continental Film Review " (UK), “ Film Review Digest ” (USA), “ The Listener ” (UK) and “ Screen International ” (UK). There was also a greater echo in the mass media, the film was even discussed in reputable newspapers such as the “ Los Angeles Times ” (June 24, 1976, p. 15).

  • In the “ Chicago Sunday Times ”, the critic Roger Ebert described the film as sexy and attractive rather than intrusive. Most of the gags, dialogues, choreographies and costumes are funny, the lively dance interludes and rousing songs are varied and helped the lively musical to its success. Bud Townsend assigns certain musical motifs and melodies to the people and moods, which connects the events on the film set with the songs and thus forms a framework around the representation of the events and the musical "packaging". Ronald M. Hahn writes about the film: "A professionally made erotic musical, which one does not see its low budget" ( Ronald M. Hahn : Das Heyne Lexikon des erotischen Films , Munich 1993, p. 13).
  • The praise also came from the trade journal of the entertainment industry Variety (September 8, 1976, p. 20): “Bucky Searles' lyrics and music are surprisingly adroit, lending strong support to the bouncy, innocent air the film tries for.” The Catholic “ Lexicon of international film ”, as expected, judged more severely:“ Tasteful and craftsmanship attempt to prepare Carroll's children's book for adults. The trips to the regions of the erotic musical are rather painful. "
  • Berndt Schulz , on the other hand, in his book " The story of erotic film - love and lust in the cinema: From a tender kiss to hard sex " the opinion that the individual episodes are charmingly mastered by the actors and that Kristine DeBell is - with her erotic charisma - in the role of the young naive girl fresh, natural and convincing. The Playboy model presents herself as a relatively inexperienced but very talented debutante even in sexually direct scenes in which she experiences very frightening things, spirited, sensual and enchanting. Thanks to Townsend's cautious directing, she appears inwardly soft, vulnerable, tender and very soulful in the atmospherically staged soft and hardcore open-air recordings accompanied by romantic music (typically 70s , like the entire soundtrack in the film) . Fellatio and sexual intercourse do not degenerate into athletic performance, boredom and routine, but rather emerge from a series of successive situations - one step after the other. Sincere, humorous and without self-censorship, the film tells in beautiful pictures of Alice's most intimate experiences and fantasies, her joy in experimenting and the burning longing that drives her. “A bizarre entertainment fun, which, of course, reveals the subtle nature of the original with all its qualities” ( Bernd Schulz : Die Geschichte des erotischen Films , Hamburg 1992).

Versions

The film is something special in the porn sector, not least because the film is designed as a musical. There are even versions of the film in which all hardcore scenes were cut. In Germany there is an 88-minute long version and a 72-minute short version. The abstracts are distributed as erotic musicals. In December 2007, the US film publisher Subversive Cinema Inc. released the film in two versions ( X-rated - soft version and XXX-rated - hardcore version) in a technically reconstructed version as Region 1 DVD .

Remake

In 2012, a low-budget production, Adventures Into the Woods: A Sexy Musical, with Allie Haze , Monica Mayhem and Ron Jeremy , directed by Rolfe Kanefsky, was created. This remake of the material reveals the need to copy the successful and popular film Alice in Wonderland with Kristine DeBell with a few variations of the plot. The remake remains true to the genres of softcore comedy and musical. A recognizable echo of the acting by DeBell shows that the director knew the work of Bud Townsend and often alludes to the individual episodes of his film.

literature

  • Ronald M. Hahn : The Heyne Lexicon of Erotic Films: over 1600 films from 1933 to the present day . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-453-09010-1 .
  • Berndt Schulz : The story of erotic films - love and lust in the cinema: from a gentle kiss to hard sex . Kino Verlag, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-88199-941-8 .
  • John Elliot: Elliot's Guide to Films on Video . Boxtree, London 1999, ISBN 1-85283-299-1 .
  • Robert H. Rimmer: The X-Rated Videotape Guide I . Prometheus Books, New York 1993-99, ISBN 0-87975-799-X .
  • Eric L. Tribunella: From Kiddie Lit to Kiddie Porn: The Sexualization of Children's Literature. In: Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Volume 33, No. 2, 2008, pp. 135-155.
  • Helen Pilinovsky: Body as Wonderland: Alice's Graphic Iteration in Lost Girls. In: Christopher Hollingsworth (Ed.): Alice Beyond Wonderland: Essays for the Twenty-First Century. University of Iowa Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-58729-819-6 , pp. 175-198.
  • Kevin M. Flanagan: Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy. In: Porn Studies. Volume 4, No. 3, 2017, pp. 311-318, ISSN  2326-8743

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adventures Into the Woods: A Sexy Musical in the Internet Movie Database (English)