Watch Wonderland For Free

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film explores a rough slice drawn from the life of notorious porn star John Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd). It strongly hints at his involvement with the July 1, 1981 brutal slayings that took place on Wonderland Avenue, one of the many side streets off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. Laurel Canyon is well known for its twists and turns, hidden crevices and offbeat landscape suggesting the strange and bizarre.The story is told from two points of view: Holmes' (Val Kilmer) and David Lind's (Dylan McDermott)-Holmes' dealer. Since Holmes refused to name names, what really went down in that apartment that night will never precisely be known, but this film makes a convincing case as to what happened. A top crime boss gets robbed and is out for revenge.Kilmer's performance etches Holmes into our consciousness as a man who is wallowing in the pit of what was once his claim-to-fame, the man with the 14-inch cock. Now driven by an insatiable out-of-control coke habit, he will stoop to anything to stoke it, including debasing himself and his teenybopper girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth), whom he sets up to screw Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the kingpin drug lord and the man who reputedly ordered the Wonderland murders.Holmes' nonstop motor mouth will say what is needed and promise what is needed as long as he can satisfy his craving. In addition to Kilmer's performance, the cinematography―with its speeding up of some of the frames―captures the frantic pace of someone living in that world―or to be more precise: allowing that world to live him. His coke habit constrained him to execute certain behaviors that he had no more control over than an automaton.I can't unequivocally endorse this movie since gory murders and drug-fueled parties (convincingly done) aren't everyone's cup of tea. But for what it intends, namely, to show the drug-fueled frantic mania of late '70s/early '80s LA with its anything-goes attitude, it's first-rate.It's a travesty of justice that the real villain of the whole affair―so insidious and powerful that the LA police were hesitant to touch him―got away literally with murder. But LA seems to be famous for that sort of thing.7/10PS Holmes died on March 13, 1988 as a result of AIDS.

There are so many lurid, crazy, and interesting subjects injected into this movie that it carries you along, despite itself. It is muddled and energy driven and it fails to become totally absorbing. The real-life murders were bizarre and bloody, there's the "attraction" of an involved semi-celebrity, and it is all awash in sex and drugs. This is the type of tabloid tale that it is a guilty pleasure. It has a "Gong Show", and "American Idol" attraction, with a helping of "Unsolved Mysteries".But here we have all this sizzle, and the steak is a tough swallow. There seems to be a confusion of concept going on here. It is too much "MTV" and not enough "Law and Order". The cast yells and screams and are hyper-kinetic and zip around like a crazed experiment in an actor's workshop. The color and tone of this misfire is again, attractive so to speak, but is used to the saturation point and does nothing more than give the proceedings a "post-groovy" appeal.The movie, with no lack of style, is lacking in all that it inspires to interpret. The heinous murders, the drug taking/dealing lifestyle, the decadence, the celebrity cum bum, the "horror" of it all. In the end it is a cheap high, and the crash afterward is not at all pleasant.

My girlfriend and I bought this film from a second hand shop knowing nothing about the film or the subjects being depicted. I loved the sleazy feel to the film right from the start. Val Kilmer is perfect in this role you shouldn't believe a word he says but his charm pulls you in. My only problem with the film was just as I was starting to get in to the film it ended. I wish we had seen more of the Wonderland gang and more of the reasons for them hating John Holmes. The dynamic between Lisa Kudrow and Kilmer was very well acted. But I would of liked to have seen more evidence of why it turned and sour and why she was close to the Dawn character. Too many loose ends for my liking which after further reading on the subject made sense. Hard to believe that this film and Boogie Nights are based on the same person! Still Wonderland is a bargain at only £3!!!

I decided to qualify my association with porn by watching this film about the ridiculously well endowed, scatter brained John Holmes.This is the rocking, complex story of his involvement in a brutal gang murder, via lead pipe.We're given differing versions of how the wonderland massacre may have panned out and like any decent crime movie, left me trying to fit the pieces together.Val Kilmer portrays a retro addict constantly fuelling himself with the nearest narcotic, his laid back clownish nature entertains while his mental decline disturbs.Lisa Kudrow plays John's knowing ex-wife who breathes maturity into the story as apart from the cops, she seems to be one of the only characters who isn't off her head on something.I would easily be interested in watching a film biography of Holme's whole life as this isn't the only sensational episode within it and wouldn't mind seeing Kilmer perform in that as well.An entertaining, attractive and cool movie.