★ 6 / 10
**_The good, the bad and the psychedelic of
Wuchak
**_The good, the bad and the psychedelic of the Counterculture in the 60s_** A deaf teen (Susan Strasberg) runs away to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district…
**_The good, the bad and the psychedelic of the Counterculture in the 60s_**
A deaf teen (Susan Strasberg) runs away to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to find her artist brother, known as The Seeker (Bruce Dern). She befriends the members of a psychedelic band through whom she’s introduced to the hippie subculture. Jack Nicholson plays the leader of the band. Dean Stockwell, Adam Rourke and Max Julien are also on hand.
“Psych-Out” (1968) has a bit more story compared to Roger Corman’s “The Trip” from the previous year, which featured Peter Fonda running around doing crazy things on LSD (although it’s a pretty good simulation of an acid trip with fantastic visuals using the technology of the time). Despite the warning at the beginning of “The Trip,” it’s basically pro-LSD whereas “Psych-out,” produced by Dick Clark, has an anti-drug message in that it dares to show the awful truth, like bad trips, squalor and so on.
Since it was shot during the actual era and area, it’s a pretty authentic look at the Counterculture movement, which you can compare with the real-life people of the documentary “Woodstock” (1970). Some of the attitudes of the movement were good and stand the test of time while the libertinism was a foolish path to ennui and self-destruction (mentally, spiritually or physically).
A lot of the psychedelic music is pretty good, mostly performed by the Storybook, a San Fernando Valley garage band, but also The Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Seeds and Boenzee Cryque. Surprisingly, there’s a blatant rip-off of Hendrix’ “Purple Haze” and a little “Foxy Lady,” two songs released just before the flick was made. I’m not sure how they got away with that; I guess the ’60s weren’t as litigious as in the decades since.
Winsome brunette Strasberg (Jenny) is a highlight, but blonde Linda Gaye Scott (Lynn) arguably steals the show in the feminine department.
One weak point in the script is the ambiguity concerning The Seeker. Even Bruce Dern said he was unclear about the character’s role despite his being pivotal to the story. He’s supposed to be a leader of the hippie movement and has attracted enemies due to his controversial influence, yet the damage was done by this point in which he comes across as a drug-addled loser who can hardly construe a sentence of coherent words. I suppose that’s the message.
If I'm in the mood for 60's youth entertainment, I'll go with "Lord Love a Duck," starring Roddy McDowall, or even "Village of the Giants." If I want something more serious, I'll go with "The Wild Angels," "Easy Rider" or "Billy Jack." Yet “Psych-Out” works as a serious counterpart to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," minus the fruity twaddle. The junkyard sequence is a highlight.
The original version runs 1 hour, 22 minutes, but there’s a Director’s Cut that runs 19 minutes longer and generally just makes the movie drag. The flick was shot in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
GRADE: B-
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★ 6 / 10
Bad Trip Dude.
sol1218
(Minor Spoilers) Trveling to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco to find her hippie brother Steve, Bruce Dern, pretty but hard of hearing Jenny Davis…
(Minor Spoilers) Trveling to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco to find her hippie brother Steve, Bruce Dern, pretty but hard of hearing Jenny Davis, Susan Strasberg, get's hooked up with a number of local hippie musicians and an high hippie Guru. The Hippies soon get her addicted to their free love and drug lifestyle that in the end almost cost Jenny her life.
Not that hip with what's happening Jenny falls for smooth talking Stoney (Jack Nicholson) ,by reading his lips, and ends up being bedded down by him at his pad together with a number of his other girlfriends.
Turned on to dangerous hallucinogenic drugs not only by Stoney but hippie Guru Dave(Dean Stockwell) who thinks he's the real deal, when it come to the free-love hippie lifestyle, that his fellow hippie Stoney's isn't. Jenny's brother Steve it turns out is on the run from a gang of thugs who dislike his free-love philosophy. When Jenny and her hippie friends Ben & Elwood, Adam Roarke & Max Julien, together with Stoney go to the junkyard, where Steve had made his home away from home,their attacked by these goons who try to rape Jenny. In the end they gets their butts kicked in by the suddenly non-peaceful but hard hitting hippies.
The fact that Steve, and artist, has his masterpiece on display at the Warren Gellery ,where Stony & Co. are staying at, has him sneaks in at night in order to retrieve it. Confronted by Stoney Steve is told that his sister Jenny's looking for him.
Complety blowing his cover Steve's trapped in a burning building by the thugs who've been looking for him and ends up possibly killed. Were never really shown what happened to Steve much less told just why these thugs were so hateful to him. Since he was just one of thousands of hippies in the city who shared the same ideas that he did; so why did they single him out for special treatment? Jenny is later turned on by Dave, who should have know better, on acid that blows her mind and causes Jenny to drift out on the dangerous Golden Gate Bridge.
With Jenny staggering onto the bridge's roadway and about to be run down and killed by the oncoming traffic Dave, in a moment of redemption for what he did to her, heroically saved Jenny's life but at the cost of his own.
Pretty good film about the 1960's counter culture with guest appearances by the popular late 1960's musical groups "The Seeds" & "The Strawberry Alarm clock". With Jack Nicholson looking more like an extra from the Mel Gibson American Revolutionery epic "The Patriot" then a 1960's type hippie.
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