by Francis Friel

This thing is weird as shit!

The first cinematic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's batshit fairy tale and the first movie (as far as I can tell) to feature a Mad Hatter dunking a giant stuffed mouse into a cup of tea.

This movie is strange too because so much of it looks like a modern production, mostly because Alice's face and the little boy Playing Cards' haircuts look strangely contemporary.

It's almost unsettling, really.

It kinda zips right along, too. No real fat or downtime on this one.

And, typical of the era, the creature designs are absolutely terrifying. The Frog Dudes are gonna keep me up at night maybe for the rest of my life.

If you watch this on YouTube, make sure you check out the color-tinted "restored" version. This is one of the many "lost" films from the turn of the century and the only print that exists is pretty well destroyed. The remaster at least cleans up some of the debris but the print is hopelessly torn up.

They say about 70% of all films ever made are now completely lost to the ages, whether from only a few prints being produced in the first place that eventually were lost, destroyed, or recycled, or from a series of studio fires in Hollywood that wiped out most of film history.

So watch these movies while you can! Scorsese ain't gonna be alive forever and more and more the crusaders who want to preserve all these old prints are losing interest or are moving towards digital/RED as the only medium that matters.

Moral of the story: Watch More Movies!!!