Go Ask Alice: The TV Anti-Drug Movie That Shocked A Nation

The most notorious made for TV movie ever made about a teenage girls slide down the primrose path of perversity. It is still fought over and has been banned in schools.

GO ASK ALICE

It's been 25 years since I first saw this infamous, anti-drug TV-movie, which, at the time, was reportedly based on the diary of a 15-year-old named Alice, who went from innocent high schooler to teen junkie (more recently, the book was exposed as a fake). A precursor of the AfterSchool Special, this sappy melodrama piles on every imaginable drug cliche; and you can tell just how effective the movie is, since I watched it as an impressionable kid, but still blissfully indulged in a booze 'n' drug-drenched adulthood.

Kicking off with a mediocre cover of "White Rabbit", Alice (a decidedly unteenaged Jamie Smith Jackson) moves to a new town, buys a diary ("a place to be me"), and hopes to fit in. Soon, thanks to peer pressure and her lack of self-worth, misguided Alice thinks that the only way to be "super-cool" is to be super-stoned. No surprise, at her first party, Alice gets dosed with LSD and soon makes mind-altering a regular event.

Meanwhile, her disconnected parents (including William Shatner as her dad, complete with a fake mustache and glasses, to match his toupee) never notice their kid is popping pills, doing lines, screwing, and dropping acid. Better still, her new friends are so patently evil that they push drugs at the local junior high!

Soon Alice's life is spiraling straight into the toilet. She's sleeping in the park, has blackouts, freak-outs, vague memories of strange sex acts, and even when she tries to go straight, her acid flashback in the middle of a babysitting gig deposits her in a hospital ward.

In the end, Alice might realize the error of her ways, but from what I could tell, this chick was so naturally vapid that drugs could only improve her personality. Heavy for its time, this combination of PSYCH-OUT and THE BRADY BUNCH (or: "Marcia Brady, Junkie"), is a fondly-remembered classic in suburbia-to-suicide drug films. Director John Korty (THE EWOK ADVENTURE) lays on the bummer plot twists with a backhoe, while Special Guest Star Andy Griffith turns up as an unconventional priest who warns the runaway Alice of possible "brain damage."

Also, look for brief appearances from future AMERICAN GRAFFITI stars MacKenzie Phillips (as a 14-year-old doper) and Charlie Martin Smith (playing a student in search of drugs), plus Robert Carradine as a long-haired stoner. All in all, a fitfully amusing time capsule, with the amount you ingested while watching it, in direct proportion to its number of unintentional laughs. - by Steven Puchalski

Behind the paywall: LSD - Trip To Where?, Route 66 THE THIN WHITE LINE

The Thin White Line

In 1961 Route 66 was the first show to make LSD part of the storyline.
Route 66 was I believe, the most consistently great dramatic shows of the 1960's. The episodes still hold up all these years later. Here, is the historic and amazing THE THIN WHITE LINE. Behind the paywall.

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The Chicago Psychotronic Film Society which begat The Global Psychotronic Film Society is quite a party. From it's earliest days with guests JOHN CLEESE, ROBERT DeNIRO, BILL MURRAY (our first dues paid member), DAN AYKROYD, SYDNEY POLLACK, RUSS MEYER, CLIVE BARKER, JOHN DUGAN, PENN AND TELLER, KENNETH ANGER, DARIO ARGENTO and many more there was nothing like it on earth. People travelled from all over the world to attend our parties or host them and none of the celebrities were paid to be at the events.

We did shows at bars and clubs LIMELIGHT, KABOOM, THE LYRIC OPERA (!), THE BIOGRAPH THEATER, THE LIAR'S CLUB and many more places. This meant you had to be 21 to attend and there were no dealer tables.

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