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Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

Animal
a fucked up cat, man






Outfit: beret / ascot / wonky eyeball

Tagline: "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Plot summary: The most frightening cultural event of the American 1960s, besides all of the assassinations and Vietnam, was when Hanna-Barbera Productions decided to start remaking classic Walt Disney animated films as musicals for television. The most disappointing cultural event of the American 1960s is that they did not get to remake all of them. Presented by Rexall Drugs, 1966's "Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" debuted on ABC TV and gave us a delightful look at Alice's adventures in Wonderland, follows her journey through the looking glass, and shows us how she learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. It is exactly like the Disney version, only Fred and Barney Flintstone show up as a two-headed caterpillar, there are extensive jokes about sixties gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and Sammy Davis Jr. voices a beatnik Cheshire Cat. If you can find the strength to expound upon that, you're a better man than me.

There comes a pause, for human strength will not endure Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This; and everyone must reach the point at length of absolute prostration. But I wish they'd done a Hanna-Barbera Aristocats. It would've just been an hour and a half of cats that sound like Walter Matthau or some shit riding around in a jalopy. (more)

User Comments: In addition to voicing the bongo Cheshire Cat, Bojangles also provided a song entitled "What's a Nice Kid Like You." Joey Bishop, playing the role of, let's say, Bill the Lizard, provides a song entitled "Doing in a Place Like This."

Sammy's song had more life than the special and was a novelty hit, and I have not been able to get it out of my head for 35 years even though I was born in 1980:

"What's a nice girl like you
Doing in a place like this?

Oh, I've got a feeling,
You won't like it here.
The potato chips are soggy
And they water the beer."

I like the idea of a rabbit and some playing cards in a world made of candy and shitty literary metaphor rushing to weaken the Heini before an adolescent girl dressed like an antique doll stumbles foppishly from a dirt tunnel. Especially since the entire thing is sponsored by Rexall Drug, and the Mad Hatter has to stop mid-raven/writing desk to save Alice pennies-on-the-dollar on buffered aspirin.

The next year's special, "Woolworths presents Saludos Amigos, and Everyone in It is a Donkey" (1967) was aired, and the world went, "haha okay stop it srsly."

User Rating: 5.5/10 (458 votes)