John Holmes is one of those unique figures that pretty much everyone has heard about but no one really knows about. The adult film star with a thirteen inch penis, his name is synonymous with the American pornography industry, with the subculture that surrounded it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and for true crime buffs, with the gristly Woderland/Four on the Floor Murders. However, one would be hard pressed to find many people who have actually seen one of his films, except for clips featured in documentaries and gag internet downloads that do nothing more than display his erect member like an exhibit in a modern-day sideshow. Likewise, even if one can track down individuals who actually viewed any of his films in the theater when he was still the king of porn, those individuals would probably not be able to tell you much about him beyond a description of what was between his legs.
"Wadd" aims to fill in the gaps in what turns out to be the rather fascinating life story of John Curtis Holmes, the Ohio farm boy who grew up to be literally and figuratively larger than life-- while not really having a life of his own.
The topic was first touched upon in 1981's "Exhausted," a video biography of Holmes produced by one of his admirers. That movie, parodied as the "love letter" that Julianne Moore's character makes in "Boogie Nights," was produced during Holmes' lifetime, shortly before he became one of America's most wanted fugitives, and affords viewers the unique opportunity of hearing Holmes tell his own story in his own words. Unfortunately, Holmes, as "Wadd" demonstrates, was a tremendous liar, even when it would be more beneficial to tell the truth. As such, "Exhausted" only functions as a novelty piece, or for the psychoanalytically inclined, as a porthole into Holmes' ever blackening soul. For the real story, one must go to "Wadd;" and it's one hell of a story.
Starting in the middle with Holmes' heyday as the undisputed "King of Porn," Wadd seamlessly moves through the various chapters of Holmes' life, from his childhood as an all-American boy to his salad years as a forklift driver. The segments on Holmes' early life come across as equally shocking to those depicting his involvement in the Wonderland Murders and the revelation that he knowingly exposed other adult film starts to HIV. The reason, perhaps, is that there is little indication that the Holmes of 1975 would do the things that the Holmes of 1983 did. Before he was "Johnny Wadd" he was a bashful kid driving a forklift who had to have his mother sign a form permitting him to get married, since his all-American, Cat's-eye-glasses-wearing wife was a few years older than him and he was a minor. His progression to a drug-fueled, soulless monster is well documented and believable; interviews chronicling his abusive childhood demonstrate that the capacity for evil was always festering in Holmes, not in the form of malicious intent but in the form of weakness. For all of his on screen prowess, "Wadd" shows Holmes as someone who was ultimately impotent. What began as a quest to quash an inferiority complex became an addiction; Holmes got so much gratification from the porn biz that Holmes as an individual ceased to exist. The beast whose painful, AIDS-related demise is recalled in the film's closing moments is not an evolution of the scrawny, crew-cut kid; it's what the kid left behind.
That is the heart-- and tragedy-- of Wadd: Holmes' demons could easily be anyone's, but he was given the unique opportunity to have them unleashed and nurtured in fantastic fashion. Despite the fact that he succumbed to them and became someone else, the people who loved him remained themselves, and were left to deal with the aftermath. The film's end, juxtaposing interviews in which the same people describe Holmes as both a drug-fueled maniac and as someone for whom they felt genuine love, is jarring and heart wrenching. Even if there is no sympathy to be felt for Holmes, the pain his loss caused his family and friends is real and startling.
According to the IMDb, one of the directors of "Wadd" chose not to be credited, instead opting to have his/her name listed as "Alan Smithee," the pseudonym used by anyone in the film industry who is so displeased with his or her work that they do not wish to be associated with it. That's a shame, because "Wadd" is an incredible feat of biographical film making. Opting not to use voice-over narrations or anything that creates the illusion of an overarcing narrative, "Wadd" is entirely composed of interviews with Holmes' friends, family, enemies, and acquaintances, all of whom are permitted to tell their side of the story in their own words. The result is a film with no agenda other than to give the viewer as unbiased a presentation of Holmes' life as possible-- and the result is utterly fascinating.
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