Final rating: ★★★ (Three stars out of five—one for ambition, one for the soundtrack, and one for the sheer audacity of making the Cheshire Cat a mime who only appears during orgasms.) The film is currently available on several cult streaming services (like Something Weird Video) and has been released on an unrated Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome, fully restored from the original 35mm negative. Viewer discretion is strongly, strongly advised.
However, one cannot ignore the film’s production value. Budgeted at roughly $150,000 (a fortune for a 70s adult film), it features elaborate costumes, multi-camera setups, and actual location shooting. The Mad Hatter’s tea party was filmed on a standing set that looks genuinely expensive, with oversized chairs and melting clocks borrowed from Dali-esque prop houses. For decades, Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy was relegated to the dusty shelves of adult video stores, viewable only by those with the courage to ask for “the dirty Alice tape.” But the rise of home video in the 1980s, followed by the digital restoration boom of the 2010s, has given the film a second, very strange life. Alice In Wonderland An X Rated Musical Fantasy 1976
Director Norton claimed in a rare 1998 interview that he intended the film to be a “feminist critique of Victorian repression.” He argued that Alice—by saying “yes” to every adventure, sexual or otherwise—was taking agency in a world that wanted to silence her. Most critics, then and now, roll their eyes at this. The film is not The Story of O . It is a commercial product designed to get a reaction. Final rating: ★★★ (Three stars out of five—one
In her dream (or is it?), she spots the White Rabbit—not a frantic, waistcoat-wearing puppet, but a bearded, nervous man in a fuzzy suit who keeps checking his pocket watch. She follows him down a literal "rabbit hole," which the film inelegantly portrays as a dark, damp tunnel. Budgeted at roughly $150,000 (a fortune for a