"The King was not -- from what I gathered during the time that I knew him -- a particularly violent man," says Margold in Holmes' defense. "He was the King, and his transgressions off-screen have nothing to do with the legend he laid, literally, at the feet of a nation which gobbled him up in glee."

Fellow porn legend and former magazine publisher Gloria Leonard takes a dimmer view of Holmes. She witnessed Holmes' addiction firsthand and thinks Holmes may have been involved in the burglary of her own home just prior to the "shit hitting the fan" at Wonderland. Leonard believes that, under the influence of drugs, Holmes could have aided in the Wonderland killings.

"He was just a guy with a big dick who was in the right place at the right time," Leonard remarks. "He was, in my opinion, an inveterate liar, or at least a colossal bullshit artist." That said, Leonard's willing to give the devil his due.

"Let's face it, with the exception of Ron Jeremy, no other name registers that kind of recognition," she says. "You say 'John Holmes' to people who've never even seen an adult film, and they know who he is. We jokingly refer to him as the King, because he was. He reigned supreme for many years in this industry."

One wonders if everything had to end so badly in the bloody abattoir of 8763 Wonderland Ave. Is there anything at all to be learned from this sordid tale of porn, drugs, theft and murder? Or is this just another lurid Hollywood story sans moral?

"It's basically the [story of] a young man with a dream who gets that dream, and it spirals out of control," Anderson concludes in an interview for Paley's "Wadd" documentary. "I don't think there's anything in John Holmes' story that strays from the clichi. It happens over and over again. It doesn't just happen in porno. It happens anytime anybody gets any kind of success. It's a very slippery thing to deal with -- especially if you throw drugs into the mix, and if you've got a 13-inch dick and that's all anybody cares about."

Indeed, there's something of a Dostoyevskian dilemma in Holmes' tabloid narrative leading to his downfall and to the killings at Wonderland Avenue -- the one that posits that unhappiness results from a multiplicity of options. John Holmes had it all -- success, a big dick and all the chicks he could ball. And he still blew it.

Given everything, and the appetite to consume it, we could all end up in the same gilded gutter. It's a moral as old as the human race: Beware what you wish for, especially if it's 13-and-a-half inches long.

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