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5
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9 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Before
his breakout role in Easy
Rider and achieving stardom in the '70s,
Jack Nicholson spent the early phase of his long
career appearing in low budget horror, biker and
western films, most notably for Roger Corman and
Monte Hellman. Psych-Out
— an AIP quickie produced by America's Immortal
Teenager, Dick Clark (American Bandstand),
to cash in on San Francisco's drug-fueled "Summer
of Love" — came at the very end of this formative
period. If you ever wanted to see ol' Jack draped
in love beads, sporting a ponytail and air guitaring
very badly to laughably faux Hendrix, this
is your movie.
The biker film model is utilized here, so there's
very little plot to get in the way of showing
the characters doing their thing and living the
lifestyle. We're introduced to the Haight-Ashbury
scene by Jenny (The Trip's
Susan Strasberg), a young deaf runaway who's come
to San Francisco in search of her older brother
Steve. At a coffee shop she falls in with a group
of pot smoking musicians led by Stoney (Nicholson),
who takes a shine to her. When Jenny comes up
empty-handed in the search for her sibling, Stoney
and Co. offer to let her crash at their pad while
they help her look for him. By all accounts brother
Steve, a Jesus freak known as "The Seeker", discovered
God in a sugar cube and has pretty much vanished.
They learn that he's made some enemies among a
crew of rednecks who hang out at the city dump.
(Just what their beef is with him is never explained.)
There's an action scene as Stoney and his bandmates
beat up the rednecks when they try to accost Jenny...
So much for "make love, not war". (One of the
hippies starts tripping during the fight, visualizing
himself as a knight-errant battling a Jabberwocky-like
dragon.) Jenny tries to adjust to life at the
crowded, shabby commune-style house the guys live
at as she falls in love with Stoney. The feeling
is mutual but Stoney's uncomfortable with the
thought of a regular relationship cramping his
groupie action on the side. When the opportunity
for a potentially lucrative gig presents itself,
the band's hippy dippy guru, Dave (The
Dunwich Horror's Dean Stockwell), warns Stoney
about selling out to grasp the brass ring of success.
(Why would anyone consider taking advice from
an acid-head who lives in a box?) Finally,
the sought-after Seeker (Bruce Dern in a really
bad wig) makes an appearance, babbling nonsense,
but his reunion with Jenny is thwarted by tragedy.
Since the film was produced by Dick Clark the
taking of hallucinogenic drugs would have
to be shown as detrimental... The titular "psych-out"
occurs when Jenny, thinking she's been jilted
by Stoney, downs a super-potent acid cocktail
prepared by Dave. A surprising number of on-set
(as opposed to optical) special effects and pyrotechnics
are used to illustrate her real bummer of a trip.
While
too commercial to be counted as one of the emblematic
films of the hippy period, Psych-Out
makes for mildly entertaining cinema if only for
the presence of its soon-to-be-famous main cast,
the nutty dialog ("It's all just a big
plastic hassle, man") and a couple of
groovy tunes supplied by The Strawberry
Alarm Clock. ("Incense and Peppermints"
being the only recognizable hit. The languid,
psychedelic rock song that plays over the opening
credits is pretty catchy, too.) Due to the participation
of director Richard Rush (The
Stunt Man) and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs
(Shampoo, Ghostbusters)
the flick is lensed much better than it has any
right to be. A freak-out scene, in which Stoney's
LSD-trippin' artist buddy sees his friends as
menacing zombies, is pretty funny.
Despite some less than convincing hairdos (most
of the main male actors had to wear hippy wigs),
Psych-Out is a tie-dyed
time capsule that should bring back memories for
any middle aged cult movie enthusiast. Man, that
whole "free love" thing must've been
great.
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Psych-Out
is the A-side flick on an MGM Midnite Movie
double feature DVD pairing it with Roger Corman's
The Trip (1967). It's
an absolutely terrific disc. Not only do you get
two films but a surprising number of bonus features
for an exceptionally low price. The
Trip (which we hope to review sometime down
the road) gets the lion's share of the extras —
no less than three (!) featurettes and a Roger Corman
audio commentary. Pysch-Out
rates only a single documentary in addition
to the theatrical trailer but it's a good one running
over 19 minutes. Director Rush, producer Clark,
cinematographer Kovacs and Bruce Dern all weigh
in with their recollections of the picture; Rush
and Kovacs go into some detail about the "rack
focus" technique used in many of the film's
key sequences.
The 1.85:1
widescreen transfer isn't the greatest in terms
of visual quality (there's grain and occasional
speckling) but it gets the job done well enough
for a low budget film that's 35 years old. The mono
audio track is somewhat flat and certainly doesn't
do the music justice; dialog, however, is clear
and readily understandable. (Note: EC's DVD rating
of "9" factors in both films and all
the extras for each.) 9/01/03 |
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UPDATE
This DVD went OOP in 2005; during 2008 it was
made available again, albeit in very limited quantities.
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