How can one of the scariest films of all time be a children’s story? The answer to that is owed to us by a Czech stop-motion master.
I’ve known since watching the Sandman segment about the little mole that Czech children’s fare from the past can be quite creepy. I’ve never trusted that red-nosed insectivore. But there is a much more disturbing version – a grotesque film adaptation of the fantasy children’s book classic Alice in Wonderland.
The imaginative material from the pen of Lewis Carroll was taken up at the end of the 80s by the ingenious stop-motion artist Jan Švankmajer, who created his first long-term work with Alice. You have to decide for yourself whether this belongs in a museum or at your next Halloween party. In any case, the film has haunted me for years and whenever I dig it out as a horror insider tip for Halloween, there’s always a big hello.
Pure horror: Alice in Wonderland with animal cadavers and the scariest girl in the world
It’s easy to imagine Alice, played by Kristýna Kohoutová, being friends with the two girls from The Shining and Samara from The Ring. Her disturbing version of Wonderland is a series of barren, depressing rooms inhabited by stuffed animals, animated skeletons and creatures made from Frankenstein’s objects. As in the original story, the daydreamer follows the white rabbit, who in this version loses more and more sawdust from his stuffed body when he digs into his pocket watch.
alice
The bizarre appearance is complemented by the monotonous narrative voice of Alice, whose lips appear in close-up on the screen as she repeats the phrase “…, said the white rabbit” over and over again. Not even David Lynch could dream up a more surreal nightmare. But if you can tear yourself away from the terror for a moment, you have to appreciate the technical mastery every now and then. The way Švankmajer brings the various creatures to life in harmony with the live-action Alice is still unparalleled in the entire film world.
And of course, no visit would be complete without a traumatizing tea party, the effects of eating various delicacies, and a showdown at the court of the decapitation enthusiast Queen of Hearts. These highlights are complemented by many more ingenious and unsavory ideas that will keep not only a child audience up at night. Just ask my Halloween guests from a few years ago, who couldn’t get over the unexpected Wonderland horrors.
Excerpt from Jan Švankmajer’s Alice:
The whole thing ends with Alice having just awakened in Wonderland and narrowly escaped being decapitated by the playing cards. Finding a pair of scissors, she considers cutting off the head of the late rabbit herself instead.
This article is part of Horror Month at Moviepilot.
Švankmajer, who later made Faust with Puppets or the Eastern European fairy tale of the all-devouring root baby Little Otik, is well aware of the eeriness of his works. In a video on his YouTube channel, he explains:
All my films are on the border between the grotesque and horror. That’s the mood I feel most comfortable in, walking that line and sometimes falling into the grotesque, sometimes into horror, because you can’t keep the balance.
