Alice In Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (1933)

Runtime: 76 minutes

Directed by: Norman Z. McLeod

Starring and from: This was made by Paramount; way back in these days and the “studio system” the studio picked the movies you appeared in so you had many of their biggest stars here, such as Gary Cooper, Leon Errol, W.C. Fields, Sterling Holloway, and way early in his career Cary Grant

I'll explain in the Letterboxd review why I am reviewing a pretty obscure film (albeit one that is noteworthy due to how odd it is and how until a few years ago it was real hard to find); I'll admit that personally the entire Alice in Wonderland story hasn't always been my favorite. That's just me talking. Still, I've had a copy of this movie for a long time and while thinking of an old movie to watch I figured it was about darn time I check this out.

The plot synopsis... wait, everyone knows the Alice in Wonderland story so I won't recap that; it's not a tale that takes massive liberties with the Lewis Carroll tale or puts a weird new spin on things. So, onto me copying and pasting what I said about it on Letterboxd, after I show the trailer to the movie.

Don't ask me how but for a long while now I've had a copy of this live action film, back when it was pretty obscure and real hard to find. Now, it's on DVD & you can pay a few bucks to watch it on YouTube or Amazon. The reason why I got it is that I heard it was quite strange and I was amused that back in the studio days they could put whoever they had under contract in their films so that's why this has a famous cast of familiar at the time guys (Leon Errol, W.C. Fields, Sterling Holloway) and some actors who would become a lot more famous later on (Gary Cooper, Cary Grant).

This isn't an adaptation of the classic story that goes too far from what Lewis Carroll wrote, so that's not another noteworthy aspect, but what is... the costumes that are used in the movie. They are terrifying! They're liable to give nightmares to adults in 2014, let alone the poor kids that saw this in 1933. I realize that costuming back then is different from what is available today but believe me it just comes across as incredibly creepy and bizarre; between that and the sets this comes across as a surrealistic acidtrip of a nightmare. I suppose that's appropriate as many people have made a connection between any of the film adaptations/the original story and drugs, but still...

Then, there's how with the costuming you can barely even tell who most of the actors are unless you recognize their voices. What hampers it is a rather slow glacial pace. Thus, weirdness aside I can only rate it as being about average, even if the novelty of seeing some of those famous faces in aberrant costumes is high. I mean, Fields as Humpty Dumpty, Cooper as a knight with a giant fluffy mustache and Grant as a turtle with a cow's head... images I'll never forget.

I'll return tomorrow night.