Alice in Wonderland
has a glowing reputation as one of the greatest adolescent fantasies
ever, but most of that emanates from Lewis Carroll’s beloved children’s
books, and not necessarily the 1985 live-action small-screen production
of the same name. Though Emmy-nominated and star-stocked,
master-of-disaster producer Irwin Allen’s version musters only
fleetingly hallucinatory and largely inadvertent amusements, leaving
one to turn back to Carroll’s classics for consolation.

Directed by Harry Harris (television’s Fame), Alice in Wonderland mashes both the titular tale and Through the Looking Glass
together into one 190-minute movie. Young Alice’s (Natalie Gregory)
adventures begin when she gives chase after a very unusual White Rabbit
(Red Buttons) and stumbles into a world that grows ever curiouser and
curiouser. As she tries to find her way back home, Alice attends a tea
party with the Mad Hatter (Anthony Newley), plays a strange form of
croquet with some unusual royalty and meets a Cheshire Cat (Telly
Savalas), a Mock Turtle (Ringo Starr!) and, of course, Tweedledee and
Tweedledum (Eydie Gormé and Steve Lawrence, respectively). Grammy
winner Steve Allen, the original host of The Tonight Show,
provides the movie with an array of songs, and the rest of the
bizarrely cobbed-together cast includes Shelley Winters, Ernest
Borgnine, Sammy Davis Jr., Beau Bridges, Sid Caesar, John Stamos, Pat
Morita, Karl Malden, Sherman Hemsley, Sally Struthers, Jack Warden and
Carol Channing, who I have to admit really freaked me out as the White
Queen.

Carroll’s novels work so well precisely because of the fashion in which they stimulate flight-of-fancy imagination, and Alice in Wonderland
almost immediately paints itself into a corner with the forced
whimsicality of its interpretation; it becomes a forced march of
reliably unreliable star cameos. The art and production design are
certainly nice achievements for its era (it was notably here, after
all, that the Emmys rewarded it, with nods for Art Direction, Costume
Design, Makeup, Hairstyling and Sound Editing) and a few of the musical
numbers stand out above the fray, but just as many are creepy (Savalas’
“Meow Baby”) and misguided. By and large the movie is an excruciating
tour of duty that feels like a series of sketches strung together at
some awful awards show rehearsal holding pen.

Housed in a regular, white Amray case, Alice in Wonderland is
presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1
English language track. There are no supplemental extras here, though
the quality of the picture transfer is fairly solid. In addition to its
solo offering, Alice in Wonderland will be available in a two-pack DVD set with the 1965 version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Ginger Rogers and Jo Van Fleet. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)