Acid Flashback

Editors Note: After a conspicuous absence of more than two months (during which time he was presumed dead and taken off the employee roster), Mr. Beedon was found unconscious, dressed only in a kimono and a pair of argyle socks, on the doorstep of our offices. Upon regaining consciousness, Mr. Beedon spent fifteen minutes pacing the hallway and muttering about “the FUCKING MONKEYS”, then pulled off his socks and took out a wadded piece of Hello Kitty stationery, on which was written the bulk of this article. While we cannot speculate upon Mr. Beedon’s whereabouts during the past two months (nor would we care to), we can safely ascertain that he will be fully rehabilitated and back to something resembling normal by next week. Thank you for your patience.

There was a strange sort of reversal that went on in the world of exploitation during the late sixties. With the repeal of the Hays Code, the grindhouse suddenly became the last refuge of the square.

Perhaps some explanation is in order…

Up to this point, the exploiteers had been near revolutionary in their attempts to put taboo subjects on screen, albeit mostly for completely selfish, money motivated reasons. But now, with the Code gone, and pop culture exploding in a million different directions, the studio system went into a freefall, and the money men started hiring hippies to revamp their image. No you could go to any mainstream movie theater and see revolutionary, boundary breaking, original cinematic visions (plus plenty of tits and ass to boot).

What was a sleaze merchant to do? The answer was simple. Pander to the prurient interests of the conservatives, while delivering a big, shiny fuck you to the hippies in the process.

Case in point: Alice in Acidland. Without all the rampant fucking, this little gem could’ve been shown in classrooms to teach about the evils of drug use (and moccasins - we’ll get to that). It’s worth it for the narration alone, which pushes it’s simple, hysterically puritanical message to an almost poetic realm.
The film primarily concerns the exploits of the titular Alice, as she is sucked (nearly instantaneously) into a world of sex, drugs and really bad jazz. Seems the denizens of the grindhouse weren’t quite ready for rock and roll.
Alice is recruited on her college campus by a friend, who unbeknownst to her is already a sex starved pot zombie! But by now it’s too late. She’s taken to a house in the Hollywood Hills (that’s where the evil comes from, kids), coerced into smoking pot, and taken into a nearby bathroom to be seduced by the film’s obligatory lesbian in a whirlpool tub.
Everything goes downhill from here: “Changing her clothes, Alice donned a costume more befitting her new personality. She now belonged to another society, another world. A world of pot, LSD, and free love… She had now become a wild and provocative twilight hippie, complete with the Indian beads and moccasins.”
Alice, of course, goes on to become a recruiter herself, taking innocent girls into “the grist mill of the party scene”, which apparently always begins with one drag from a reefer and a healthy dose of sweet sapphic love.
After suffering through an hour of this, one can be forgiven for asking the obvious question. Where’s the Acid?
Thankfully, the film delivers, in the form of THE WORST ACID TRIP IN THE HISTORY OF FILM, culminating in a static shot of sweet little Alice’s dazed and bewildered face.
The narrator does his business, practically spitting the words in a froth of righteous moral disgust:
“This is Alice Trenton. A mental vegetable. For this Alice, there was no looking glass to come back through. This Alice had gone on a long, long trip to Acidland… never to return.”

Thankfully for the rest of us, there is an escape.