If you’re looking for high art, look elsewhere. But if you want a time capsule of 1970s sexual politics, campy musical numbers, and a genuinely committed performance from a woman who looks like she wandered off the set of a Coca-Cola commercial into an orgy, Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy is a must-see. Just don’t expect to hear “Jabberwocky” recited with a straight face.
Unlike most adult films of the era, the 1976 Alice featured choreographed dance numbers and musical scores. These numbers aimed to enhance the dreamlike, surreal quality of the source material.
Yet, to praise the film as a clever deconstruction is also to acknowledge its profound limitations. The 1970s “Porno Chic” movement, for all its talk of liberation, was overwhelmingly male-gazed, and Alice is no exception. The female body is the primary landscape of exploration; male pleasure is the narrative’s invisible engine. While Alice is never presented as a victim—she is curious, consenting, and often the one who initiates the next adventure—her journey is one of relentless objectification. The film’s happy ending, in which she awakens from her “dream” and smiles at the camera, suggests she has learned a valuable lesson about sexual openness. But the viewer may wonder: whose lesson was it, really? The film struggles to reconcile the 1970s feminist ideal of female sexual agency with the porn industry’s need to display that agency for a paying, predominantly male, audience.
Ultimately, more than forty years later, Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy remains a film that defies simple judgment. It is too professional to be dismissed as mere trash, too weird to be a conventional porno, and too sweet-natured to be cynical. It stands as a wonderfully strange and unique document from a bygone era of adult filmmaking, a time when there was a genuine attempt to fuse high-concept narrative, musical production numbers, and explicit sex into a coherent whole. While it may not be a masterpiece by any traditional measure, it is an utterly unforgettable piece of cinema history.
, a film that remains one of the highest-grossing adult movies ever made. A Librarian’s Curious Awakening In this "bedtime story for adults," Alice (played by future Kristine DeBell
Film critic Roger Ebert, in his review, was captivated by her: "Kristine De Bell projects such a freshness and naivete that she charms us even in scenes where some rather alarming things are going on. I think she has a future in the movies, and not just X movies, either".
One of the most striking aspects of "Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy" is its use of surreal and often disturbing imagery. The film features a range of bizarre and fantastical creatures, including a giant spider, a group of singing and dancing playing cards, and a Queen of Hearts (Helen Mirren) who is both terrifying and mesmerizing.
