Review: Alice in Acidland/Smoke & Flesh

This one has been in the hopper for a while and I finally decided to tackle this double feature of drugsploitation this weekend. Why I picked this disc up, I don't know as the drug films really aren't my thing. I guess I'm a Something Weird completest.

We start with Alice in Acidland. This film is classic exploitation all the way through. From the faux moral high ground narration, to the depiction of all the depravity it is supposedly condemning, Alice is the grandchild of Reefer Madness through and through. Even the title carries the tradition of being leagues better than the picture under it.

Unfortunately, Alice is missing the goofy charm of it's predecessors. Make no mistake, this is a picture designed to show as much T&A and unattractive people dry humping as they could at the time, but it does so in the dullest way possible. I never made it to the full color acid trip scenes at the end, but I have a hunch I didn't miss a thing.

Marginally better is Smoke and Flesh. This one isn't a roadshow style exploiter, in fact it's almost arty in it's execution. Some groovy people score some pot whereupon they disrobe and have softcore sex. A gang of bikers crash the party and the hero doses the leader with LSD to get them to leave. Then everyone goes back to their cardboard tube bong and playing strip slot cars. The end.

There's not much to it, but it does have a few nice shots. It also has a garage rock track that sounds like of the Fabulous Wailers that plays over and over for nearly the entire 70 minutes of the film. And lots of shots of "the man" riding his motorcycle. Honestly, it was hard for me to pay attention to most of the film. Maybe I needed some of what they were smoking.

At least we have the special features and in this case they outshine the main attractions. First there's the usual assortment of trailers, radio ads and magazine covers. I'd buy discs of this stuff and, come to think of it, I have.

However, we also have a third featurette, Aphrodisiac: The Sexual Secret of Marijuana. Now this is something worth watching. An edited hardcore feature (I've heard it's more of a "soft" X. It's available from Something Weird on DVD-R, if you're really curious.) Aphrodisiac purports to be an educational film about the sexual properties of pot. What it is is plain and simple exploitation.

There's phony facts and figures. Silly man on the street interviews. Stiff dialogue. Early John Holmes. This one is really funny. Not worth the cost of the disc, mind you, but at least there's something worth watching here.

I love Something Weird, but I'll admit not everything they put out is for my taste. Maybe this is a case of that, but I really think with the exception of Aphrodisiac this is just a dull disc.