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Wonderland

Lowlife-and-Death Matters

By Gene Seymour | STAFF WRITER

October 3, 2003

(R). A "Rashomon"-style recounting of a 1981 mass murder in L.A. and the degree to which porn-movie star John Holmes (Val Kilmer) was culpable in the killings. Flashy, visually dense and clinically fascinating to those who like watching slimeballs stew in their own toxins. (As for the rest of us, well...) With Kate Bosworth, Lisa Kudrow, Dylan McDermott and Josh Lucas. Directed by James Cox. 1:44 (violence, sexuality, coarse language, drug use, etc., etc.) At select theaters.

Back in the 1970s, when porn-movie star John Holmes was living large (euphemistically speaking, of course), there were rumors flying around that he was the same guy who played Eddie Haskell on "Leave It to Beaver." The rumors were proven false, but the confusion turned out to be prescient.

Because the events chronicled in "Wonderland" show Holmes, who died in 1988 of AIDS-related illnesses, to be as much a two-faced, lying, manipulative sociopath in his back-alley universe as Eddie Haskell was in his relatively bucolic one. James Cox's visually strident, multilinear account of a 1981 mass murder in Los Angeles even persuades his audience that Holmes was a killer - or, at the very least, a willing and active co-conspirator.

It's an intriguing premise for a late-night cable documentary. It's probably even worth an interesting full-length feature. But "Wonderland," whose screenwriting credits Cox shares with three others, piles on the narrative devices, sonic distortions and gritty images to the point where all you want to do is reach out and wipe away some of the mess so you can decide if there's anything worth seeing.

Val Kilmer's interpretation of Holmes in early 1980s decline as a grimy, twitchy-eyed dervish is, in many ways, emblematic of the whole enterprise. He gives an impressive-looking autopsy of someone who came out of the other end of an indulgent decade as a burnt-out case. But there's nothing in the performance that strongly indicates this polyester hustler, the erstwhile "Johnny Wadd" of song and legend, was ever anything special in his past or present.

The more intense - and grandiose - turn is delivered by Dylan McDermott, almost unrecognizable in goatee and slicked-back hair, as biker-doper David Lind, whose four friends were found bludgeoned to death in a Laurel Canyon apartment in the summer of 1981. Lind spills his guts to LAPD detectives (Ted Levine, Franky G) about an armed robbery he and a couple of the dead men pulled off against crime kingpin Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian). Lind tells the cops that Holmes helped set up the heist and, at the very least, may have set up the murders.

Holmes, needless to say, has his own version of the story. Even Holmes' estranged wife Sharon (Lisa Kudrow) knows more than she's letting on. The movie goes into "Rashomon" overdrive to the point where you're way past caring who's right or what happened. And when it's over, you feel as if you've been staring at an insect collection whose specimens were hastily plucked from beneath several rocks. It's fascinating for a while. But how long do you really want to look?