Alice

I believe this is the second movie called Alice I've reviewed for this blog. But while the other Alice was a coming of middle age Woody Allen dramedy, this Alice is a mostly stop motion Czech nightmarepiece.
The movie starts with Alice (who, apart from a few animals near the end of the movie, is the only live action character) in her playroom, tossing rocks into a cup of tea when suddenly her taxidermied rabbit comes to life, puts some clothes on, busts out of his glass case and jumps down a desk drawer.
Despite the rabbit being the most horrifying creature I have ever seen, (who also has a hole in his chest where he keeps his watch and is perpetually bleeding sawdust) Alice follows him down the desk drawer and into his realm of terrifying stop motion creatures and a similar series of events to Alice In Wonderland.
It occured to me about midway through the movie was a sort of cross between Alice In Wonderland and a haunted house movie. It centers around a wide eyed, expressionless little girl who is following a white rabbit through the rooms of a decrepit, abandoned house. There's one room full of sock monsters burrowing through the floor. When Alice grows too big to get out of the white rabbit's house, the taxidermied bunny has stop motion animal skeletons help him get her out. This is the only version of Alice In Wonderland I've ever seen that actually features beheadings, and the fact that they're performed on paper people doesn't make it less disturbing. When Alice shrinks she turns into a doll and in one scene she grows back to her normal size but remains in doll form and her human self has to tear its way out of its own doll body.
There were parts of Alice I really enjoyed, and the little girl in particular was a lot of fun to watch for some reason (I hated it when she turned into a doll). Overall I'd say it's a much more honest piece of work than Tim Burton's CGI heavy Alice In Wonderland, which felt more like a cynical attempt to bilk pseudogoth teenagers out of their money.
Alice is also one of the creepiest movies I have ever seen. It's not scary but it has an overlying blanket of heebie jeebies, which I think really works for it. It's a very interesting movie, dark without being bleak, and one of the most memorable Alice adaptations I've seen.
It did have one infuriating touch, however. Every time any character said anything, it cut to a closeup of Alice's mouth saying "Said the White Rabbit," or "Demanded the Queen Of Hearts," or whatever. Every single line of dialogue that wasn't said by Alice (and even a few that were) had that followup and that got very old very quickly.
Other than that, though, it's a fine movie indeed, but not one I think I'll ever watch again (unless I follow the suggestion someone on an IMDB message board posted and watch it while listening to Mr. Bungle's third album. That sounds like a lot more fun to me than Pink Floyd and The Wizard Of Oz).
That rabbit is going to give me nightmares.

End of line.
-Sally