Wonderland
(Lion's Gate Region 1 DVD)
(2003)
review by Don't Feed the Dead

I’ve been anticipating the release of Wonderland on DVD for quite some time. Not so much because the movie revolves around the John Holmes – Wonderland Murders scandal, but because this is the most recent release with Val Kilmer being typecast as a non-fictional drug abuser. For those of you that saw the Salton Sea, you know that Kilmer can put forth one hell of a performance when he’s strung out on heroin. In Wonderland, we see Kilmer in the role of the post porno crack/ cocaine addicted John “Wadd” Holmes, and his performance in this film falls nothing short of magnificent.

John Holmes was the original King of pornography, cast in over 1,000 movies, whilst skin flicks’ current hero Ron Jeremy was just getting into the mainstream. Holmes boasted a sexual rap sheet of over 14,000 female partners, which makes for 1,000 women per inch of his penis. Yes, the man was hung like a mule, and he used his unusual endowment to gain world wide notoriety. However, far from a saint, John Holmes frequently hung with the wrong crowd, which led to the notorious Wonderland Murders.

The movie, which can be deciphered as a cornucopia of accounts of the actual events, is sequenced in a way that each character introduced brings with them a piece of John’s memory to the film. The movie opens with John’s girlfriend, Dawn, sitting in a hotel room awaiting his arrival. He abandoned her for set amount of days, and she unfortunately gets evicted by the hotel manager onto a hooker infested street. Sitting on the corner, sobbing her woes away, Dawn is picked up by holy roller Sally Hansen (Carrie Fisher) and taken in until she can contact John. She finally gets a hold of Holmes, who rushes to pick her up with a hefty briefcase in tow. The two rush into the bathroom to “discuss” matters when John breaks out a wicked brick of coke and the affair quickly turns into a sex party. Sally bursts into the bathroom after hearing Dawn’s groans and chases the duo out of her house. Welcome to Wonderland.

Holmes and Dawn flee to a hotel in the Santa Monica area where he again abandons her for several days, returning a drugged up mess with a heavy burden on his mind. <> turns on the tv and a newsflash boasts of a gruesome murder scene at a house on Wonderland Ave, familiar to both Holmes and Dawn. We then cut to a bar where a biker is watching the same telecast. He rushes to the phone and makes a call to check up on a girl. Meet David Lind, career criminal and star witness in the Wonderland Murders case, who has just found out that his girlfriend was in the house at the time the murders took place. Lind rushes out of the bar and to the house where he is intercepted by detectives and ultimately find out that his girlfriend died in the attacks.

While the Wonderland story unravels, we see the event replayed over and over through the memories of varying characters including Lind, Holmes, Dawn, and ultimately the true story through Holmes’ wife Sharon (played by Kudrow). Each account has differing details, which adds to the mystique of the murders throughout the movie, leading the viewer to attempt solving the murders on their own. It is only at the end of the film when Sharon Holmes reflects on the incidents that the viewer finds out the “truth” behind the Wonderland Murders and decides on whether or not Holmes, viewed mostly as the archetypical hero throughout the movie, deserves sympathy or shit for his actions.

The John Holmes story, which has inspired movies such as Boogie Nights, can only be seen as a collection of stories, the truth only known to a handful of individuals, including Holmes (deceased since 1988), notorious crime lord Eddie Nash and Nash’s henchmen. Wonderland, although providing a tremendous amount of insight as to the circumstances surrounding the murders, can only speculate as to the true events. Being that everyone was coked up during this period of time, facts became blurry and a jury could not convict either Nash or Holmes for the murders, their verdict based on the testimonies being “here-say”.

Regardless of the viewer’s opinion of Holmes’ character, Kilmer gives the performance of his life as the cowardly addict. Frequently delving into serious mood swings, Kilmer’s portrayal emits reality as Holmes ventures in and out of fixes. His interactions with Dawn and Sharon develop the characters wonderfully, to a point where the viewer relates to all parties. Even minor roles such as Eddie Nash, Gopher and Ron Launius become familiar as the movie progresses, giving the viewer satisfaction in inclusion, eve though this is one group I wouldn’t encourage befriending.

As shown on the gore gauge, Wonderland fronts an incredible amount of blood and violence, more so than one would assume a “biography” of a porn star would entail. The latter stages of the movie treat the viewer to very brutal accounts of the murders, especially when characters recant the aftermath of the crime scene. Another extraordinarily morbid and grotesque feature of the disc is the original crime scene video at 8763 Wonderland presented by the LAPD in the extras section. This fucked up video gives in great detail the layout of the Wonderland house, complete with corpses and blood splattered backdrop. Similar to a Faces of Death documentary, the camera often zooms in on the victims’ injuries, but unlike Faces this is all real!

I believe what will really captivate the viewer is James Cox’s ability to switch between the personal accounts of both Lind and Holmes, creating conflict on who’s story to believe. I agree with one IMDB post that neither character is likeable, but Cox’s depiction of Holmes as a vulnerable coward breaks down barriers that would prevent sympathy from reaching his character.

Wonderland sports a magnificent array of extras, including the LAPD footage noted above, a ton of deleted scenes, some bio work and commentaries. I give Lion’s Gate a great deal of credit for being ballsy enough to even show the archived LAPD footage of the crime scene, something rarely seen in a major movie production.

Again, I can’t say enough about Val Kilmer’s performance in this movie. At times he will strike you with a pity blow, other times you’ll despise him, but in the end Kilmer solidifies Wonderland as a must see.

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