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.

Review: X From Outer Space

This is probably going to be the worst review I've written so far. Reason being, I fell asleep multiple times while watching this movie. I'm fairly confident that I got enough of it to accurately convey what's going on and if it's worth your time.

Honestly, this is a very simple movie. Some people go into space, they unknowingly bring back a monster egg, which hatches and wrecks stuff. That's pretty much X from Outer Space right there. Of course, it takes the first 45 minutes of the movie to actually get to the point where anything really interesting starts happening. Hence my naps.

Long the way we have a small love triangle featuring two women who can't put professionalism above their personal feelings and male object of affection who doesn't seem to care much either way. There's also enough pseudoscience and scientific coincidences to equip a cheesy comic book for a whole year.

The monster, who is for some reason christened Guilala (there is no X from Outer Space in this movie)is pretty dang goofy looking. Imagine a bee stung Godzilla with a stingray for a head. Then put a pair of those bopper antennas on him.



The model work isn't too bad, at least not until you get close up. To Shochiku's credit, the sets are pretty big. There's lots of crap to stomp, it's just not that detailed. Of course, there's some horrible green screen work any time the monster has to appear with humans. Obviously, they only made the man sized suit and not any scale models for scenes that needed them.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but let's just say it involves one of those coincidental scientific discoveries I was talking about earlier. Really, you're better just to forget about the plot and enjoy the monster.

Two other things. One it looks like this movie was filmed either with a fish eye lens or to be shown on a curved screen. Everything looks a little stretched and it gets worse near the edges of the frame. Frankly, it about drove me nuts, though other than that the picture looks pretty good (and it is original aspect ratio.)

This disc doesn't have subs but it does include the English dub. I don't know who did it, but the dub is pretty good except for the fact that all the Caucasians in this movie have some really over the top Hogan's Heroes German accents. At times, it was difficult to figure out what the hell the white folks were saying!

Given the fact that this isn't available here in the US (and I'm surprised some public domain company hasn't tried to release it yet like they have with Gamera and Yongary) I'd really say only if you're a kaiju completest should you track this down. There isn't anything here kaiju fans haven't seen dozens of times already and what is here is really average at best.

(I almost forgot, there is one classic scene of an astronaut plugging a hole in the space ship with his ass. That was pretty much the best part of the first half of the movie right there.)