How excited are you about the prospect of Val Kilmer playing a porn star? You'd imagine he'd bring that same raw-Jim Morrison in the Doors-sexual energy to the role, right? Now, how about Val Kilmer playing a washed up porn star who's now really into drugs and may be at the center of a grizzly murder? Sounds great right? It is.
Wonderland tells the story of a grizzly quadruple murder that took place in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood type district in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area (my new home). Back in 1981 this murder went down and a lot of evidence suggested that former porn star John Holmes was involved.
Good god. Look at that man. It's almost enough to make me grow out a mustache... almost. When the well endowed subject of Wonderland was actually making his films, the legal status of pornography was kind of unclear and accordingly, Mr. Holmes did what any rational porn star and drug addict would do to avoid getting in trouble: he became a police informant for the LAPD.
The movie focuses on a couple of eventful weeks when John Holmes ripped off some drug dealers living on the eponymous Wonderland Drive in Laurel Canyon. Kilmer plays Holmes as a totally sleazy and desperate cokehead and liar who betrays absolutely everyone at some point in the course of events. The murders and the subsequent investigation is told in a kind of interesting noir-ish nonlinear manner. It's a pretty enjoyable crime drama and Val Kilmer plays a man in a deep professional downward spiral (meta!).
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