Wonderland

Last night, my Netflix movies arrived and one of the movies I had rented was Wonderland, a movie about the brual 1981 murders that had porn legend John Holmes as the main suspect. I have seen plenty of bad movies based on infamous murder cases (The Black Dahlia, From Hell) but to my surprise, Wonderland was not only a good movie with some of these actors giving their best performances, in my opinion, but this is one of the few movies that I can think of that stick to the actual events and do not glamorize them Hollywood-style. It doesn't show how sexy drugs, porn and murder can be in a movie. It is dark and grimy and the scene that shows four people being bludgeoned to death, I couldn't even watch it.

The four people murdered in the infamous drug house at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles' rustic Laurel Canyon on July 1, 1981, were not good people. The people who lived there were drug dealers, addicts and thieves but to this day, it is not entirely sure what happened in that house on that night and if even John Holmes, a severe cocaine addict at the time of the murders and a frequent visitor to Wonderland, was present at the time of the murders and if he aided the killers.

I may not like Val Kilmer but this had to be one of his best performances I have seen as drug addicted porn star Holmes. Josh Lucas and Dylan McDermott as Ronald Launius and David Lind, drug dealers, addicts and two people the lived in the Wonderland house are incredible. These people are probably some of the worst people one could ever meet but they play their roles with such fire and passion, they were the best in the movie. Lind was not there the night of the murders but went to the police willingly to tell what he did know and to finger John Holmes in his involvment. Even the next day, I can't believe how closely this movie followed the real story. Sometimes, reality is better than fiction and "Hollywood"-ing the plot.