This film explores a rough slice drawn from the life of notorious porn star John Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd). It strongly hints at his involvement with the July 1, 1981 brutal slayings that took place on Wonderland Avenue, one of the many side streets off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. Laurel Canyon is well known for its twists and turns, hidden crevices and offbeat landscape suggesting the strange and bizarre.
The story is told from two points of view: Holmes' (Val Kilmer) and David Lind's (Dylan McDermott)-Holmes' dealer. Since Holmes refused to name names, what really went down in that apartment that night will never precisely be known, but this film makes a convincing case as to what happened. A top crime boss gets robbed and is out for revenge.
Kilmer's performance etches Holmes into our consciousness as a man who is wallowing in the pit of what was once his claim-to-fame, the man with the 14-inch cock. Now driven by an insatiable out-of-control coke habit, he will stoop to anything to stoke it, including debasing himself and his teenybopper girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth), whom he sets up to screw Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the kingpin drug lord and the man who reputedly ordered the Wonderland murders.
Holmes' nonstop motor mouth will say what is needed and promise what is needed as long as he can satisfy his craving. In addition to Kilmer's performance, the cinematography―with its speeding up of some of the frames―captures the frantic pace of someone living in that world―or to be more precise: allowing that world to live him. His coke habit constrained him to execute certain behaviors that he had no more control over than an automaton.
I can't unequivocally endorse this movie since gory murders and drug-fueled parties (convincingly done) aren't everyone's cup of tea. But for what it intends, namely, to show the drug-fueled frantic mania of late '70s/early '80s LA with its anything-goes attitude, it's first-rate.
It's a travesty of justice that the real villain of the whole affair―so insidious and powerful that the LA police were hesitant to touch him―got away literally with murder. But LA seems to be famous for that sort of thing.
7/10
PS Holmes died on March 13, 1988 as a result of AIDS.
The story is told from two points of view: Holmes' (Val Kilmer) and David Lind's (Dylan McDermott)-Holmes' dealer. Since Holmes refused to name names, what really went down in that apartment that night will never precisely be known, but this film makes a convincing case as to what happened. A top crime boss gets robbed and is out for revenge.
Kilmer's performance etches Holmes into our consciousness as a man who is wallowing in the pit of what was once his claim-to-fame, the man with the 14-inch cock. Now driven by an insatiable out-of-control coke habit, he will stoop to anything to stoke it, including debasing himself and his teenybopper girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth), whom he sets up to screw Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the kingpin drug lord and the man who reputedly ordered the Wonderland murders.
Holmes' nonstop motor mouth will say what is needed and promise what is needed as long as he can satisfy his craving. In addition to Kilmer's performance, the cinematography―with its speeding up of some of the frames―captures the frantic pace of someone living in that world―or to be more precise: allowing that world to live him. His coke habit constrained him to execute certain behaviors that he had no more control over than an automaton.
I can't unequivocally endorse this movie since gory murders and drug-fueled parties (convincingly done) aren't everyone's cup of tea. But for what it intends, namely, to show the drug-fueled frantic mania of late '70s/early '80s LA with its anything-goes attitude, it's first-rate.
It's a travesty of justice that the real villain of the whole affair―so insidious and powerful that the LA police were hesitant to touch him―got away literally with murder. But LA seems to be famous for that sort of thing.
7/10
PS Holmes died on March 13, 1988 as a result of AIDS.