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Wonderland

Love it or hate it, this country is extremely well-endowed with porn. But America's adult film industry didn't always offer the wealthy, glamorous lifestyle that it does these days (aside from the recent HIV scare). In the '70s and early '80s, making adult movies was a felony, and cops often infiltrated sets and broke up shoots as if the filmmakers were regular bootleggers. (Although Bootyleggers wouldn't make such a bad title for a movie set in the Prohibition era.) Actors had to run onto sets, do their business, and scram before the police busted things up.

You won't learn any of these tasty tidbits without listening to Wonderland's chatty, informative commentary by director/co-writer James Cox and co-writer Captain Mauzner. The film focuses instead on the brutal quadruple murder that took place July 1, 1981 on Wonderland Avenue, intertwined with the love story between Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth) and John Holmes (Val Kilmer), the porn legend who stood trial in connection with the murders (he was acquitted).

The details of the real-life crime remain fuzzy to this day, and Wonderland emphasizes the ambiguity in the various testimony given to police. It is first narrated by David Lind (Dylan McDermott), who casts himself as a relative innocent in the scenario. Holmes paints a far different picture, however, in describing the circumstances that led to the robbery of Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian) and the murders of Ron Launius (Josh Lucas), Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo), and Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner).

Despite a non-chronological structure and the mystery lying within the contradicting versions of the story, Wonderland suffers greatly from decisions made in the writing process. The film begins after Holmes' career ended and treats the porn industry as little more than an undercurrent to a tale of drugs, guns, and betrayal. It isn't that Wonderland needed to show Holmes at work in order to present its violent centerpiece, but skimming over his career makes it difficult to understand how and why he ended up as part of the Wonderland gang. By focusing only on the crime and framing the events as a police investigation, this flashback doesn't flash back far enough and creates a story not about people, but about criminals.

Consequently, you become occupied by the film only as a re-enactment of specific, true-life events rather than as a compelling insight into beguilingly dirty lives. Kilmer flourished as Jim "The Lizard King" Morrison in The Doors, and here he's similarly electric as John "The Porn King" Holmes. (He clearly enjoys playing sex, drugs, and rock n' roll royalty.) This time, though, his wild tendencies are balanced out by lovelorn, drug-addicted vulnerability, and Kilmer makes you wish the film offered a deeper look into Holmes' turbulent life. The robbery of Eddie Nash was re-interpreted as a violent, rock-bottom

Sure, it's decently interesting, as any true story of a porn star doing drugs and planning robberies would be, and the sun-baked L.A. visual style and classic-rock soundtrack keep things flashy and spry. Still, the enlightening commentary reflects just how much information the film leaves out. Cox and Mauzner provide countless details that would have significantly broadened the narrative and given more character to the characters.

They describe Schiller's background and how she met Holmes and explain that Sharon Holmes, John's estranged wife, didn't learn John was a porn star until she saw his name on a marquee. The writers also recount the story of how Holmes only agreed to talk to police about the murders in the room of a posh L.A. hotel, where he allegedly scored coke from a busboy. Too bad the movie's presentation of John's interrogation is as familiar as a Law and Order rerun.

The fresh, honest commentary also acknowledges the film's shortcomings, as Cox and Mauzner admit that some shots have "style for style's sake" and question if it was a mistake to make a movie about porn with no porn in it.

The DVD provides lots more juicy features, including real 1981 crime scene video footage from the murder site, which is slow-paced but nevertheless startling to see shots of the actual victims. Deleted scenes and interviews with the cast are brief and forgettable, but the enclosed two-hour documentary entitled “Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes" dives much further into the life of the star who often starred as Johnny Wadd and allegedly slept with 14,000 women. It contextualizes the rise of the adult film industry into the sexual revolution and supplies a much-needed, sexually frank companion piece to Wonderland, which, as it turns out, might have done a better job of getting inside Holmes' head by also getting in his pants.

Movie Grade: C+DVD Grade: B+
Overall Grade: B-

Synopsis:

On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call at 8763 Wonderland Avenue and soon discovered a grisly quadruple homicide, later compared to the gruesome slaughter at the Tate household at the hands of the Charles Manson family 10 years earlier. Four people were brutally murdered, and one was left in critical condition. The police investigation that followed would unearth a seedy world of drugs and violence, ultimately revealing a motley crew from LA’s underbelly including the most unlikely of American heroes – porn legend John Holmes.

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