When Living in Neon Dreams fizzled, Manson was already at work on his own Carroll piece, turning his attention more seriously to further cinema endeavours both behind and in front of the camera. He had already provided a memorably sleazy cameo in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), and through his music videos he had developed a screen persona closely associated with dark, sexually ambiguous perversity. The origins of Manson’s Carroll project have been traced to late 2004, when – on the back of his appearance in T he Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Asia Argento, 2004) – Manson’s next film role was announced as the Queen of Hearts in another abandoned Carroll adaptation called Living in Neon Dreams. I identified with him so much because I wanted to write a story about a fractured personality like Jekyll and Hyde, which is what I think Alice in Wonderland is about … It’s about someone not knowing who they are supposed to be. At the heart of this obsession lay aspects of the outsider identity that Manson had mastered to precision: Manson stated several times that his horror version would be inspired by Polanski, Hitchcock and Bergman his fascination was less with Alice than with Carroll himself. So, when it was announced in 2006 that Manson was going to make his feature directorial debut with this particular project, few were surprised. Combine that with Carroll’s signature Victorian aesthetic, and goths and Alice were a match made in heaven. The video game American McGee’s Alice (2000), Mari Terashima’s Lolita film Alice in the Underworld: The Dark Marchen Show!! (2009) and Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation are all immediate peers when it comes to texts that emphasise the dark side of Alice. Manson – whose real name is Brian Warner – is not the only visual artist who has been drawn to the gothic potential of Carroll’s tales. It’s easy to see why Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland stories have been so tightly embraced by gothic subcultures across the globe: if ever there were twisted literary adventures that championed the sensation of not fitting in, these were it. But, for better or for worse, it never happened. The film was to be called Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, and the combination of spooky bad-boy Manson and the cherished Victorian tale should have been a commercial slam dunk – cinematic catnip for anyone under forty who had ever donned black nail polish while feeling tragic and beautiful. This is how the story goes: iconic shock-goth-glam-rock darling Marilyn Manson once tried to make a film about Lewis Carroll and Alice’s Wonderland tales, but so outraged were the public by the trailer alone that the project died a suitably scandalous death.