Alice in Acidland . Austin Chronicle . 10-20-97

Alice in Acidland

DIRECTED BY: Cheshire Cat

REVIEWED: 10-20-97

This nudie masquerades as a cautionary quasi-documentary; Alice goes to parties, smokes weed and disrobes with her friends, turning into a "wild and provocative twilight hippie, complete with the Indian beads and moccasins." Actually, though, they look more like girls from the steno pool pairing up with fellas sporting Bobby Kennedy hair to go off and rub their underwear-clad crotches together. Alice eventually does too much acid and comes unglued, of course. Not really living up to the lurid title, Alice in Acidland is more suited for playing with the sound off at parties. The ultra-annoying retardo-jazz soundtrack is full of drum solos that sound like a box of pots and pans getting kicked down a flight of stairs. Plus, didn't hippies not really wear much underwear? More worthwhile is the second unnamed feature on the tape, in which a true-blue, square-john, Ken-doll type guy goes to a party and tries a whiff of reefer while everyone dances to a record that makes the Ventures sound like MC5. The grass makes him stumble around like a shambling zombie, and soon he quits sports, his grades plummet, etc. Soon the dork falls in with the wrong element, who get him strung on heroin and then his life really goes to hell. You can almost hear the whir of the 16mm projector over the stern narration in this stiff educational yarn.

--Jerry Renshaw

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