Wonderland (2003)

Sex. Guns. Money And Murder. Welcome To L.A.On the afternoon of July 1 1981 Los Angeles police responded to a distress call on Wonderland Avenue and discovered a grisly quadruple homicide. The police investigation that followed uncovered two versions of the events leading up to the brutal murders - both involving legendary porn actor John Holmes. You're about to experience both versions.System Requirements:Run Time: 104 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 031398211334 Manufacturer No: 21133 Product Description

Mediocre

Wonderland is a mediocrity with a poorly written central character. But
De Niro's performance as Max Cady, which could easily have gone over
the top, is the only thing that raises that trite thriller up to
mediocrity. Kilmer's Holmes does not elicit sympathy nor disdain, even
when he pimps his girlfriend Dawn to Nash, and later physically abuses
her. Yet, the scene where De Niro tries to seduce Juliette Lewis's
character still creeps a viewer out even as the written dialogue seems
absurd. THAT'S the difference!

To use a more contemporaneous actor, looking at Guy Pearce from Memento
shows the difference- as well. In Memento and The Salton Sea, both
actors shine, but compare them in lesser vehicles like The Time Machine
and The Saint. Pearce makes his character somewhat sympathetic & a
viewer almost empathizes with the hero of the unbelievable tale. Yet,
in The Saint, Kilmer lacks the suavity of Roger Moore's TV original,
and the role almost descends to parody with Simon Templar as a Lon
Chaney wannabe. He becomes a cartoon figure where Pearce's character
retains its integrity. This is why Kilmer has to be selective in roles
and films he chooses- he has a limited range and only when a role
niches in that role can his greatness shine. This is not so much a
criticism as a recognition, for Kilmer- as an actor- is like the 3
Bears' porridge. When he's in his range he's good- and he's very, very
good, but when he's not he's, well- a cool, tasteless grain-type
cereal. September 24, 2008

Gritty, Fueled-up and Decadent

Not expecting much upon viewing, the first 15 minutes of this film is fresh and the energy driven soundtrack suck you right into the under-belly of Hollywood and it's infamous history of multiple killings.
I remember hearing about the murders on t.v. and knew that John Holmes was involved somehow, but not to the extremes that the film makers took in giving us an up-close view of how brutal and deliberate the murders were.
Would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind the sex industry and a climatic and bloody ending. Very insightful. September 24, 2008

Thirteen Inches Better Than You Think

Basically, this film suffers from having been released after Boogie Nights. Where that film was loosely based upon the life and deeds of John Holmes, Wonderland attempts to detail the last public burst of attention Holmes received and why such came to pass. It is a Rashomon-like retelling of the Wonderland Avenue murders, from the viewpoints of Holmes and sometime accomplice David Lind. A third version of Holmes' involvement, that of a police detective investigating the murders, is briefly alluded to, but is relegated to an end-of-film "what if" thread. The viewer must be warned that a certain bit of dramatic license has apparently been taken by the creative team behind the film, as written and other documentary sources seem to allude to other specific details of the actual murders which either are not included in Wonderland or have been slightly altered. What is depicted, in all its sleazy, pathetic glory is the intersection of porn, drugs, and the cult of personality that grew around such "performers" as John Holmes. Where Boogie Nights leavened the first half of it's narrative with humor and a tongue-in-cheek viewpoint, Wonderland dumps the viewer headlong into a boiling stew of cocaine, prostitution, violence, guilt, and desperation. None of the acting performances can be faulted, but Val Kilmer's turn as John Holmes and Lisa Kudrow's as his estranged wife stand out in particular. Still, even with an unusually strong acting troupe and a compelling story, Wonderland just doesn't seem to come together as it should have. It's still a good film, and definitely worth a look, if only to see what the world of porn and drugs was really like at the turn of the Eighties. If possible, get the two-disc version, as it contains the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes as a bonus feature. This film documents Holmes' rise and fall in excruciating, heartbreaking detail. No matter what one's opinion of pornography is, Holmes' story is ultimately one of tragedy, and his collapse into himself is one of the cautionary tales of our time, one that should be passed on to anyone who thinks that they're going to become a "star" by following in his footsteps. This is only my opinion; yours on the subject may be far different. However, Wadd is a riveting documentary and alone is worth the price of admission. June 10, 2008

Dude, They Sold Us Baking Powder!

A policeman called it the most horrific crime scene he had ever seen: An elegant townhouse on trendy Wonderland Avenue in the Hollywood Hills whose walls and ceiling were virtually painted with blood and brains. Unknown assailants had surprised the residents at dawn and savagely bashed in their skulls with steel pipes. The four dead were almost unrecognizable; a fifth survived with permanent brain damage. Three of them were women. The horror that rippled through L.A. when the news hit the streets has been compared to that caused by the Manson Murders.

This anxiety wasn't only due to the posh address or the body count. The massacre occurred in the summer of 1981, which, like the Manson summer of '69, was a time of transition. L.A. was still all about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but the heady blush of the '70's was wearing off and the ground rules had changed. This theme was explored in Paul Thomas Anderson's film "Boogie Nights," which dramatized the home invasion of a drug lord that led to the Wonderland killings. Though the affair is often called a "mystery," one fact is beyond dispute: both crimes were set up by porno king John Holmes.

Mike Sager's essay "The Devil and John Holmes" tells it all, and more effectively than this botched movie: by '81 Holmes was a washed-up cokehead supporting himself by petty theft and running drugs for the dealer denizens of the Wonderland house. One day Holmes dipped into the blow he was supposed to deliver and was threatened by the gang's leader, Dan Launius. I can make it up to you, Holmes told him; I have this friend, see...Holmes was a regular at the Hollywood mansion of Arab mobster Eddie Nash, owner of the Starwood club. With Holmes's help, the Wonderland Gang invaded Nash's home, brutalized Nash and his bodyguard, and made off with $1.3 million in booty. Two days later, the reckoning (see above).

James Cox's "Wonderland" tries to tell the story of this stomach-churning chain of events. It's the classic case of a bad movie that clearly unraveled before even leaving the pitch room. Attempting an "edgy," underground novelty like "Boogie Nights," Cox made the mistake of running with every idea prompted by the source material. The murders led him to imitate "In Cold Blood," the drug use to steal bad psychedelia from "Pulp Fiction" and "Requiem for a Dream," the conflicting testimonies to parrot "Rashomon" and "JFK"..."Wonderland" tries to be so many other movies it forgets to be itself.

It starts off with a naturalistic tone, ugly but riveting, then blows it all on vagueness and silly camp. Soon you lose track of whose testimony is being dramatized, because the acts you see begin to have no relation to the characters' words and you wonder, did someone really describe Holmes as gleefully bashing heads? Or did you guys just make that crap up? The mind behind the movie starts to seem as feckless and sketchy as its characters. Meanwhile, the period design collapses beneath countless anachronisms. Your trust suffers early on when Carrie Fisher plays a Holy Roller; by the time a "hip" character starts referencing Primal Scream Therapy (in 1981!!), you have lost all faith.

David Lind, the White Supremacist biker who served as the Wonderland Gang's muscle (played with a glued-on pirate beard by a miscast Dylan McDermott) is emotionally engaging in the film's first third: he vents his anguish at the murder of his girlfriend and paints a fond picture of the party-life at the townhouse. After his bare-bulb testimony, however, he disappears and we are left with the emotionally and morally blank Holmes. The film implodes because drama requires connection, and it's impossible to comprehend, much less empathize with, Holmes or his masochistic jailbait squeeze Dawn.

Oliver Stone had the talent to do a skein; "JFK" strung its overpopulated narrative on Garrison's crusade to get to the bottom of the assassination plot. In "Wonderland," you aren't even sure whose story this is: the insufferable John Holmes? His sanctimonious wife? Dawn? David Lind? The LAPD? Every time you get interested, the point of view shifts.

The movie's main focus is Holmes, by no coincidence the only celebrity in the scandal. Though it's clear to most of the characters that his sole redeeming trait (never shown) is 13 inches long, Kilmer and the script fail to make this poignant or meaningful. Their Holmes is a cipher - a groveling, back-stabbing, wannabe-pimp with no perceptible inner life. Kilmer's attempt at "conflict" by periodically sobbing, "I'm sorry, that was wrong!" (for instance, while pimping his teen girlfriend out to Nash) only makes Holmes contemptible, and is factually wrong--the real Holmes beat Dawn until she sold her body for him, then beat her again for this "infidelity." Holmes should be the axle around which the mayhem turns, but he is a pathetically blind Eye of the Storm.

So why was this thing made? If no one in the movie cares about Holmes without his equipment, why would anyone in the movie theater?

There was an interesting tale somewhere in this muck heap, but it had less to do with the porno star than the war between Nash and the Wonderland Gang. The contrast between the two rivals is telling, braiding threads of West vs. East, domesticity vs. solitude, innocence vs. corruption, tradition vs. modernity. The first we see of Dan Launius, he's twirling a pair of antique cowboy pistols while whooping like a desperado. His gang are mad-dog outlaws, too excited or too high to plan further than the next party or daring caper. Yet Launius is married, and the group lives almost a parody of a domestic drill with breakfast nook, entertainment center, and frequent soirees. Their scenes glow with a warmth and sociality, and hint at the Hollywood fault-line where playacting and real life get blurred.

Because these outlaws seem like innocents, cowboys who followed the Wild West's call too far and ended up dazed in 1980's L.A. To what end? They are domesticated but not mature, hip but not aware, jubilant but unsatisfied.

Eddie Nash seems to be living on a different planet altogether. He is inert, meticulous, fond of lounging about his sunken rumpus room in a silk robe and a Speedo. He too has parties, but they are conducted in an eerie darkness and informed by rigid ceremony. This Nash is a repository for every hoary stereotype of the East, just as the Wonderland crew epitomizes the West. He suggests an exhausted Turkish sultan, sated by drugs and women, finding release only in acts of diabolical cruelty.

His destruction of the Wonderland Gang is emblematic of the turn of the decade. There's a maxim that you can tell everything about an American cultural moment by looking at its cars. 1970's car bodies were romantic, individualistic; by the early '80's they had turned efficient, uniform, dull. If the '70's had a lifestyle fixation and outlaw brio, the '80's were the age of conformity, professionalism, and ruthless downsizing. Beneath his torpor Nash is a cautious and efficient mobster. The fact that Holmes, porno pioneer, sold out his Jesse James buddies to The Man says a lot about the decade of Michael Milken.

But Cox's script eschews psychological as well as cultural depth. The real Dan Launius was a brutal thug suspected in 28 separate murders, a Vietnam Vet who allegedly smuggled dope in the corpses of his comrades. The biggest mystery here is, why did this psychopath spare the lives of Nash and his bodyguard? Any marginally hip Los Angelean knew this to be synonymous with suicide. Dealers tend to rob other dealers because they know the cops won't be summoned, whereas murder is different. But Nash was a real-life Keyser Soje, an Eastern Mafioso with a line of nightclubs, millions of dollars in drug connections, and a blood-feud approach to payback. The LAPD were a basketful of kittens in comparison.

The answer seems to lie in the reality bubble drugs create, a limbo that feeds delusions and blinds users to changing times. Launius & Co. were so busy mainlining they didn't notice they'd grown old and soft. "Wonderland" hints at this in a sad moment when Launius and his wife argue over drugs, sounding weirdly like Blondie scolding Dagwood for the size of his sandwiches. But this sparkle, like the others in the film, quickly fades.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" asks, what happens when you reach that golden Western shore, and have to turn back? What's left for a race of freebooters when the frontier ends and the adventure is done? Were you really just after the booty (as it were), or was there a deeper meaning that got lost along the way? For Gatsby, the answers came in a torrent of blood. "Wonderland" seems to take the same path, but gets lost in a swamp of bad casting, pretentious narrative, and sleazy shallowness. It promises meaning, then burns its customers. At least straight horror flicks like "Halloween" didn't get our hopes up.
June 9, 2008

THE SEEDY SIDE OF HOLLYWOOD

True life crime stories based on real events often make for a compelling and yet disturbing experience. Such was the case years ago when television viewers first experienced the horror that was HELTER SKELTER. That movie came to mind while I was watching this one. I was horrified at the story unfolding before me, but felt that I had to watch at the same time.

Don't let the hype be the only thing to draw you in here. Most publicity focuses on the fact that porn star John Holmes was involved in the murders that took place on Wonderland Avenue. But the story is so much more than that.

In the summer of 1981, four people were brutally murdered on Wonderland Avenue. Another victim survived. The truth of what happened there has been pieced together and charges filed, but the results of those charges and trials were far from satisfying to the public.

The movie takes the tact of telling the same story from various points of view, beginning with that of Dawn (Kate Bosworth), the current girlfriend of John Holmes (Val Kilmer). An addict just as Holmes was, her focus is on the next fix and the attention that Holmes showers on her when he can see straight. She is young and in love and that is all that matters. What is actually happening around her is only caught in glimpses.

The second set up is seen through the eyes of a biker hoodlum named David Lind (an almost unrecognizable Dylan McDermott). Lind was not at the scene of the crime when it took place, but claims to know what went on to cause the events to unfold. His take revolves around Holmes being the center of the storm, the whole person responsible for the murders. Of course, his girlfriend was one of the victims and he has a grudge to bear.

The last full look at the crime comes through the eyes of Holmes' himself. As portrayed by Kilmer, Holmes' is actually a sad character, filled with insecurities and unsure of himself, relying on the small amount of celebrity status he has yet embarrassed by it at the same time. He looks at the world around him as a group that takes advantage of him while the viewer sees up close the user that he was, using drugs and people to get whatever it was he needed.

The film ends with a tie up of all of the stories and viewpoints that give us a possibility of what truly happened. This version includes information all parties concerned haven't given to the police via Holmes' wife Sharon (Lisa Kudrow). What happened that night at Wonderland affected her as well, even though for all purposes she and Holmes' were separated.

What makes this film one to watch is the raw look at what went on behind the scenes there in Hollywood. No look at the glitz and glamour, no look at the world of pornography, but a look at the seedier side, the low level criminals and how the operated, what they were interested in. It looks at how people involved with one another, offer no amount of loyalty to one another, always looking out for number one.

And perhaps the most simple of the reasons we watch is that innate sense of wonder that we all share, rubbernecking as we drive by an accident, afraid of the gory details, yet for some reason compelled to look. And in that sense, we are offered a glimpse into the world of Wonderland and what happened.

My expectations for this film were to find one that relied on the sensational image of John Holmes and not on the events of that summer evening. Instead I was given a solid film that told the story of a night filled with murder and what paved the way for that event. And in that story is a chilling tail that deserves to be watched.
March 15, 2008

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