It seems everybody was on something back in the day. When they went to the movies zonked out of their skulls folks wanted something they could grok with. Enter the Head Film. LSD delivered little metaphysical cartoons in the back of the eyes and both underground and mainstream movies tried to capture that vibe. With phantasmagorical symbolism, cosmic riddles, and questions of reality these films blew minds world wide or at least tried.

In The Beginning.....

In 1967 American International Pictures (AIP) released Roger Corman's THE TRIP to cash-in on the LSD craze. They followed it up with PSYCH-OUT 1968 a Haight/Ashbury soap opera about a girl who goes to San Francisco looking for her acidblasted brother played by Bruce Dern. He wrote her a cryptic letter, "God is alive and well and living in a sugarcube". As the 60's progressed AIP's films became more savagely lysergic. Indeed, next up came WILD IN THE STREETS 1968 a tongue-in-cheek tale of America's first teenage rock star president. One of his first executive orders - mandatory LSD ingestion for all those citizens over 30 years of age! Corman got back into the youthsploitation market with another AIP release, GAS-S-S-S 1970 a bewildering road movie following a group of hippies driving around the desert after a gas developed by the Pentagon accidentally kills everyone over 30. Very psychoactive drug-informed dialogue. DE SADE 1969 was AIP's biggest budgeted movie and its biggest flop. A rare example of an exploitation studio dealing with the nature of reality. Is it real? Or is it a play? Or is it all in his head? AIP's most twisted acid masterpiece was ANGEL, ANGEL DOWN WE GO (CULT OF THE DAMNED) 1969. Filled with incredibly overwrought dialogue and distrubing pop art collages, its a wild ride with creepy similarities to the Manson murders that followed only a few months after its release. And Lou Rawls is in it. So you know you gotta check it out! An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft novel THE DUNWICH HORROR 1969 was a relatively conventional flick for AIP. Still there are some bad-ass freakout scenes with naked demons in body paint running around raising hell. These movies AIP cranked out set the pace for all Head Films to come. The Monkees HEAD 1968 is one of the epic mind-roasters of the lysergic age. The flop pop-art musical was written by Jack Nicholson and "Acapulco Gold". Later as The Monkees celebrity continued to fade, they starred in a TV special 33.3 REVOLUTIONS PER MONKEE 1969. With modern dance, Darwinian references, and a gorilla riding a multicolored forklift the show was too "out there" to compete with the 1969 Academy Awards which it was aired against.

Jodorowsky.....

The great celluloid wizard of the Head Film is Alejandro Jodorowsky, and it all starts and ends with EL TOPO 1971 and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN 1973. Both are essential viewing.

Robert Downey, Sr (a prince).....

The films of Robert Downey, Sr could be called Head Comedies. Drug-induced logic and social satire collided head first in his bizarre comedy PUTNEY SWOPE 1969. A black man is accidentally chosen to head a Madison Ave. ad agency. He changes the company name to "Truth and Soul, Inc." and makes a series of demented commercials that sock it to the man. Downey followed up this surprise hit with the even more insane, obscure and self-indulgent POUND 1970. It's the story of a typical dog pound, except all the canines are played by actors. They fight, sing, argue, and masturbate as they await their extermination. Highly recommended for adventurous film lovers. Next up for Downey was a the lysergic western GREASER'S PALACE 1972. After '72, Downey laid low for most of the decade, but he did play around with the absurd little home movie MOMENT TO MOMENT (TURQUOISE TO TAOS; JIVE) 197?.
On to FUTZ 1969 a quintessential example of the kind of movie that could only have been made in the '60s, and as far as I know the only musical about a pigfucker. It's based on the controversial off-Broadway hit and performed by the La Mama Reparatory Theatre and although it's setting is your average small farming community, the townfolk are anything but normal. We first see them doing some weirdo musical review, standing on their heads, spouting nonsense and such. But Futz, the local outcast who's makin' bacon with his hog, is too much for even them. And when the village idiot rapes a girl, the town blames Futz for corrupting him, so they lock him up and later an angry mob rushes the jail to attack him. The mob burns down his farm, stab his pig and eventually torture and kill Futz in the feverish, bloody apocalyptic finale. It's an intense, effective crescendo especially after all the goofiness that proceeds it. The whole affair is sopping with pretentious, overwrought theatrics and all the avant garde tics and tricks like slo mo freakouts and solarized nude group gropes. Look out for early appearances by Frederick Forrest and Sally Kirkland seen nude riding a pig. You can imagine all involved wanted to make a Big Statement about demonization and tolerance for otherness, but ultimately this oddball effort is just another noggin'-scratching curio from a long gone era.

Psychedelica Italiano.....

Italy produced a few psych films, and what mindblowers they were. ACID, DELERIO DEI SENSI 1968 is a trashy expose of the world of LSD and it's users. You know where this one's coming from when one of the first scenes has a guy cutting up his face while shaving on acid. With somebody dosing every few minutes, you get lots of trip scenes with wide angle kaleidoscopic shots of folks freakin' out. It all winds up at a club as the band on stage smashes their equipment and a car drives right into the place. All this happens at a delirious pace as color lights flash, the music pounds and teens strip and make out. But of course living like this can't be all fun and the usual suicides and car accidents are shown to be the ultimate result of dropping a cube. Another example of blasted eyetalian cinema is QUEENS OF EVIL 1971 an adult fairy tale, an allegorical fable of the counterculture and the establishment's backlash. Ray Lovelock, who also warbles the Dylanesque theme song, stars as David the archetypal dropout motorcycling aimlessly around the Italian countryside. His bike is sabotaged by a middle-age man who may be the devil. They argue philosophically about modern times with the Devil lamenting the loss of sexual guilt. In the middle of some spooky woods, David comes across the groovy, luxurious pad of three witchy Euro-babes. Each take turns seducing him. He has a dream in which the girls turn menacing, one shooting him with a gun coming from between her legs. Are they three "Eves" working for the Devil to tempt this hippie "Adam" into monogamy and snuff the free love ideals he represents? Does flower power win out in the end? Find out in this atmospheric, stylish and sexy fantasy. Not really a horror flick, but there is one surprising, slashing scene of bloodletting. With a title like MICROSCOPIC LIQUID SUBWAY TO OBLIVION 1970 you know something's up. For awhile the film's story is easy enough to follow, a mad scientist invites one of his druggy students to his vacation home for the weekend so he can give him a dose of his experimental anti-drug vaccine. In the middle of the action, two motorcyclists ride around carrying big flares one red, one blue. As a follow-up to his bizarre chicken giallo DEATH LAID AN EGG 1970 director Questi helmed the spooky, strange ARCANA 1972. In it, we look into the lives of a psychic and her odd son living in the slums of Rome. I expected VERUSHCKA 1970 to be your average fashion spread travelogue of a European super model and her glamorous life. I was surprised to find out it's actually more of a moody, druggy deathtrip. German model Veruschka plays herself traveling and bickering with her lover/manager through the Italian countryside. The action picks up though when we witness her continual fantasies, flashbacks and premonitions. The pic benefits from a strong visual style with earthy psychedelic textures and some striking photography. In her own self-absorbed world she wanders through increasingly fatalistic set pieces; finding broken dolls and mirrors in the sand; twisting, squashing and burning mold replicas of her face; wearing camouflage make-up and blending into exotic environments; getting trapped in a room slowly filling up with dirt; guzzling mushroom tea and freaking out with the nekkid kraut-rockers Anima (also in SEX FREEDOM IN GERMANY) imagining she's some jungle animal making love to herself. Drenching everything in glossy '70s symbolism fashion photographer/director Franco Rubartelli attempts to show life in the spotlight as a suffocating existential bummer. An icy, beautiful, but kinda shallow, mix of angst and eye candy aided by a silky Morricone score.

Ten years after the acid explosion, came BLUE SUNSHINE 1978. The title refers to a fictional brand of LSD that causes users to lose their hair and go crazy. Seeing these bald, blank-faced killers, it seems that Blue Sunshine has sort of delayed Manson Family effect. Those infected are all in positions of authority; the cop, the babysitter, the bodyguard, the politician, etc. The folks you wouldn't want to be freaking-out, just like the establishment warned you back in the 60's. A cold, bleak movie - just what the doctor ordered!

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