Top Ten: Weird Alice In Wonderland Movies
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Since the early days of cinema Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has made wonderfully weird source material for movies. Many movies have used Carroll's surreal and fantastical nonsense narrative to create cinematic classics. The most well known among the Alice canon being the 1951 Disney interpretation of the novel, and more recently the dark Tim Burton take on the story from 2010. There are however many other lesser known cinematic interpretations of the novel. From musicals to soft porn, surrealist stop-motion Czech animation to Japanese anime. Faithfully retelling to inspired phantasmagorical nightmares.
Weird Retro brings you our top ten of weird cinematic versions in Alice In Wonderland, many you may never have heard of, some of which are much better and more faithful interpretations of the story than the sanitized Hollywood versions that are so beloved by the masses. |
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Alice In Wonderland At Weeki Wachee 1964 - The bizarre underwater ballet theme park in Florida, that was one of the top tourist attractions in the United States in the 1950s.
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Curious Alice: The 1971 Anti-Drug PSA - The trippiest and least effective anti-drug PSAs ever. This animation would make you want to take drugs, so you could enjoy it properly.
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Alice In Wonderland (1903): The first ever film version of the story, made over a 100 years ago in the UK. The only surviving print of the film is held in the British Film Institute (BFI) archives. The print isn't complete, and some parts of the film are lost to time. They have restored the print they have as best as they can, which can be viewed online. A strange piece of not only early cinema in the UK, but an impressive interpretation of the story, using innovative special effects at the time. Produced and directed by Cecil M. Hepworth, who also appeared in the film (as a frog), along with his wife who played the duel role of both the White Rabbit and the Queen Of Hearts.
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Alice In Wonderland (1931): (Actually titled on the movie itself Alice's Adventures In Wonderland) An independent movie, which was the first ever sound version of the story made. Therefore it was the first time that Lewis Carroll's words were heard in a movie, mostly in bad fake British accents by a cast of amateur actors. The film wasn't successful, and only played briefly in a movie theater in New York. Less than two years later a big budget version of the story was released by Paramount Pictures, with an all-star cast of the time. Were the 1931 version was made up of a cast of unknowns, the 1933 version featured actors who were or were to be come huge icons of Hollywood. W.C. Fields played Humpty-Dumpty, Gary Cooper as the White Knight, and Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle. One notable fact about the lesser known independent version of the movie is that the theme song was written by Irving Berlin. However the 1931 Alice In Wonderland dropped into obscurity, never shown on TV, it was believed to be a lost film and no print existed. However prints of the earlier version have emerged and the whole thing can now be viewed on YouTube. Link to Alice In Wonderland (1931) on YouTube.
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Betty In Blunderland (1934): One of the earliest animation version of the story and reinterpretations from the Fleischer Studios. Featuring the iconic cartoon character Betty Boop. The animation borrows elements from both Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the sequel Alice Through The Looking Glass. Betty falls asleep while doing a jigsaw puzzle of Alice and the White Rabbit. She awakes to see the White Rabbit passing through the looking glass, and follows him into a modern surreal version of Wonderland, Blunderland. There she meets many of the story's characters, and is kidnapped by the Jabberwocky, only to be rescued by the other characters. Betty eventually awakes to find herself back at home.
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Alice Au Pays Des Merveillies (1949): A little known version of the story from France, due to Disney attempting the stop distribution of the movie as they were in production of their animated version of Alice In Wonderland at the time. Disney used it's power to kill almost this version of the story once they had their own version. Thus the movie was also killed by the corporate evil that was Disney, when it was released in the United States. The French/British version is a much more faithful interpretation than the insipid Disney version. A mixture of live-action and stop-motion animation puppets, the movie makes a nod to The Wizard Of Oz. As the live-action characters in the "real" world have puppet counterparts in the Wonderland scenes, voiced by the live-action actors. The actress that plays Alice, who is 7 years old in the novel, was played by Carol Marsh who was 20 years old at the time. Again reminiscent of The Wizard Of Oz casting of 18 year old Judy Garland as Dorothy.
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Alice In Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy (1976): A pornographic musical version of the story. A weird exploration of the sexual under current that does actually exist in the novel, creating a strange and in modern context at times lightly uncomfortable movie. Alice is a virginal librarian, who purposely acts and dresses like a young girl. There are allusions to bestiality, with the Wonderland cast of humans and animals engaging in simulated sex scenes. The movie has become a cult classic of the 70s mainstream porn era, alongside movies like Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas. From that rare era when pornography actually bothered to have a storyline, scripts, and an attempt at acting. Making this one of the weirder examples of the Alice In Wonderland story in this list. But by no means the weirdest, those are yet to come!
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Alice Ou La Derniere Fugue (1977): (Alice Or The Last Escapade in English) Starring famous 70s soft-porn actress Sylvia Kristel as Alice Caroll (a play on the Alice and Lewis Carroll). A strange piece of European cinema, that moves from expressionism to realism, via existentialism and a surrealist aesthetic. Directed by Claude Chabrol, who was part of the French New Wave film-making movement. The movie is a loose interpretation of the Alice In Wonderland story, but is yet very much influenced by themes from the novel. Playing with themes of what is reality and what is a dream. The movie tells the story of Alice, who leaves her husband. While driving away her windscreen cracks. She seeks help in an old mansion, where it seems she is expected. She stays the night, next day the owner and his butler are gone and she appears to be trapped with no way out. She stays another night, and the next morning the old man returns. Alice is able to leave, but has she? Can she ever leave?
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Malice In Wonderland (1982): An independent animation short directed by Vince Collins, and with graphic design by Miwako. A seriously twisted surrealist trip, that isn't for the faint-hearted. A psychedelic roller-coaster of distorting and grotesque bodies, twisting and turning inside out. The short description of the animation that is both on IMDb and Wikipedia states, "A jet-propelled white rabbit flies through the vulva of a supine woman into a wonderland where people and objects turn inside out, changing shapes and identities at warp speed. Events roughly follow Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts make appearances, as does Alice. Images and symbols are often sexual. At the end, Alice says, "Oh, I've had such a curious dream."
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Alicja (1982): Alice (in English) is a Polish take in the Alice In Wonderland story. Weird doesn't even begin to cover this one. Alice falls in love with a jogger called Rabbit, after at first not liking him at all. He takes Alice to Queenie's party, where the Rabbit finds out Queenie wants to kill him. He leaves the country, and on finding this out Alice a heartbroken Alice commits suicide and finds herself in the bizarre "Wonderland". Or some such thing. It's not an easy watch by any standards. A real WTF?! gem of European cinema. As odd as the bizarre narrative of the film itself is that this Belgium/Polish co-production is in English, even though dubbed. Featuring British actors of the 70s and 80s, such as Susanna York as Queenie, Paul Nicholas as the Cheshire Cat and Caterpillar and Jack Wild as the Mock Turtle. The latter who works in the same factory as Alice. As did I mention that the movie is also a musical, with the voice of Alice being sung by British singer Lulu. A truly weird tripped-out take on the Alice In Wonderland, that manages to be even more surreal nonsense than the novel itself.
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Něco z Alenky (1988): Released in English as Alice, the translation of the Czech title is Something From Alice. A starkly uncompromising take on the Alice story, that utilised stop-motion animation with a live-action Alice. Directed by Czech surrealist animation film-maker Jan Švankmajer (his first feature-length animation), this is one disturbing piece of cinema that was supposedly a children's movie. Though it would likely damage any child that watched it, and has become a cult classic among adults. Exploring the darker themes of the novel, it's unremittingly in its creepy surreal absurdity. Claustrophobic and intense, the whole movie seems to occur in Alice's bedroom or other rooms in her house that she falls and crawls into. The drab sets shift and alter in size and shape, creating a sense of nightmarish confusion for the viewer. Švankmajer claimed that he was interpreting the story of Alice as he believed Carroll intended it, a representation of a dream, of the human unconscious, an exploration of our secret wishes and desires, saying "My Alice is a realised dream."
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Miyuki-Chan In Wonderland (1995): (不思議の国の美幸ちゃん) is a Japanese animation based on a manga series released between 1993 - 1995, by an all female group of manga artists. The animation, despite being created by an all-female team does edge towards hentai. High school student Miyuki (Alice) accidentally travels to Wonderland, in which all of Lewis Carroll's characters are parodied as beautiful women. Every single character in the entire movie is a pretty girl in some sort of fetish costume, and most if not all of them seem to be lesbians. The White Rabbit, for example, is a playboy bunny on a skateboard. The Queen of hearts is a dominatrix. You get the picture! The manga version of the story has been described as some of the worst manga of all-time, said to be "inane" and no-more than a cheap "pretext for [the artists] to draw scantily-clad beauties engaging in vaguely naughty behavior (usually making a pass at the vaguely horrified Miyuki or inviting her to play strip poker)."
Also in 1995 a second animation was produced of the second chapter of the series, Miyuki-Chan In Looking Glass Land (sometimes referred to as Miyuki-Chan In Mirrorland). |
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Elephant On Acid: Tusko Takes A Trip - The infamous and sad story of Tusko the elephant from Oklahoma Zoo , who in an experiment took a massive "trip" of LSD and died.
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Henry Darger: In The Realms Of The Unreal - The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
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