REVIEW: Psych-Out!

1968... A pretty good time for rock music, the start of a pretty dire couple of decades for fashion. From the miniskirt to flared plaid slacks in so few years. What were we thinking?

But the late sixties had a lot to like. Free love, Carlos Santana tearing down the house at Woodstock, and lot and lots of drugs. Of course, drugs always take their toll. They demand a heavy price... and in '68, the Price was Drug-Inspired youth movies.

In '67, The Trip had been made by the legendary Roger Corman. I caught half of this one a month or so ago on MGM. My verdict? Best anti-drug film EVER! Talky, pretentious, outdated as hell, and proves that people taking LSD might be expanding their conciousness, but they do talk an awful amount of boring rubbish while doing so. According to Jonathan Ross's "Incredibly Strange Film Book" (An excellent British history of cinemas' oddest moments and trends) the poster for The Trip invited you to "Touch the Scream that Crawls up the wall!". Oooo-kay.

Nevertheless, in '68, the production team of Samuel Z. Arkoff (The name that always spells "Quality") and The Trip's screenwriter, one James Nicholson, teamed up to produce;

PSYCH-OUT (1968)

Part One: If You're Going To San Francisco....

And indeed, after an opening montage of war footage and sirens, our movie does begin in 49-er land. The credits are a cavalcade of unexpected delights. Bruce Dern? Dean Stockwell? And... A Dick Clark Production? Yowza!

Abrubtly, we cut to our heroine Jenny. (Susan Strassberg... although Mr Ross mistakenly credits Susan [I]Sarandon[/I] in his fine tome.) Jenny is on a bus headed for San Francisco. A hippie chick gives her a flower. Like, wow, symbolism, man. Groovy. As some swirly music plays, we see a montage of hippie happenings in San Fran. (Much of the music in the film is from the Strawberry Alarm Clock... including "Incense and Peppermints"... recently revived on the Austin Powers soundtrack.) As the montage of 60's wierdness continues, Jenny watches some street theatre. She standing in the middle of the road, however, and gets rudely honked at by some "squares".

After the driver bawls her out, she calmly informs him that she's deaf. The drivers wife makes him feel like a moron as they drive off, but in all honesty, she WAS standing in the road, deaf or not. More rythmless music plays and another montage takes us through the rest of the credits.

We cut to a cafe, where we meet Stoney. Stoneys' ponytail/peace sign/waistcoat-with-no-shirt look may be a odd sight these days, but there's no mistaking that huge, manic grin. (The type of grin usually assosciated with serial killers or large, aquatic carnivores...) Yes folks... Stoney is none other than Jack Nicholson. Stoney raps with his friends Elwood (A terminally stoned black dude) and The Brit Whos' Name I never Caught. (Dean Stockwell) They indulge in a little wonderweed before The Man arrives in the form of two be-suited narcs. Jenny has also arrived in the coffee shop, and is joined by Stoney and Co. This triggers a sequence where we establish (several times) that Jenny is indeed deaf. Said sequence lasts over five minutes. (This is probably why my notes for the entire film fill less than half an A4-sized piece of paper.) The upshot is that Jennys' looking for her dropped-out brother, Steven.

As it turns out, the narcs are looking for Jenny, who's a runaway. They prove to be somewhat incompetant at their job, not only walking right past Jenny, but kind of ignoring the fact that half the patrons are puffing joints. Stoney and The Brit start a mock fight, prompting the narcs to try to arrest them. The rest of the patrons begin to chant "Peace and Love" at the cops, until they quickly hightail it out of there. I'd run too, for fear of joing this lot and ending up hugging a pine tree somewhere.

We quickly cut to a gallery, where Stoney picks up some posters from Warren, the owner. It traspires that Stoney is the lead singer of "Mumbling John", a four-piece band. With Elwood and BritGuy, they drive around in the obligatory VW Van, toking away to some more Strawberry Alarm Clock music. San Fran proves a LOT smaller than I thought, as they run into Jenny again, talking to her brothers' former landlady. Steven has left, leaving only a note reading "Jess Saes" and "Jesus is alive and Well and Living In A Sugarbowl." Thanks for clearing that up, Steve-O.

Anyway, Mumbling John take Jenny to a shop where she is given some suitably non-conformist clothing. (Read: Eye-wateringly bright and staggeringly ugly.) They head back to Stoneys pad, for a long sequence of "Who's sleeping with whom". Stoney, who's a one-night stand kinda guy, gives up his bed to Jenny, joins her, then leaves to bonk some other guys wife. (With the guys permission... the 60's were nothing if not polite.) Another couple have bedded down on the stairs of the house. (And stay there for the remainder of the film... After the fourth time you see them slumbering away, you're convinced they're either hibernating or dead...)

The next morning, we get the best line in the film, as Stoney is woken by Elwoods cry of "Stoney! Warrens' freaking out at the gallery!" The Mumblin' Johns race over there, and indeed Warren (Who posses a set of sideburns that appear to have been stolen from Planet of the Apes) is freaking. We get Warren-O-Vision to share his bad trip, making Jack and company look like rotting zombies. Warren also sees his hand rotting, and tries an arm-ectomy with a circular saw. Stoney manages to disarm him before he "disarms" himself, though.

Jenny, meanwhile, recognises a sculpture as one of her brothers. It turns out that Steven is now "The Seeker" and his whereabouts are known to Dave, the fourth member of Mumbling John. And so Jenny and Stoney head to Daves' pad for an extremely long chit-chat about bugger and all. Amusingly, Steves' last name is "Davis", making me envision a British snooker player turned hippy.

Eventually, Dave sends Stoney to a church, where he's told that Steve is living at the city dump. We get a not-too-subtle analogy as several "squares" pass judgement on the assorted freaks. After which the camera pans to a stained glass window showing Jesus wearing the exact same clothes as the hippies. Oooh, heavy!

The MJ's trundle around the dump for a while, finally finding a "Jesus Saves" sign. Missing letters have made it "Jess Saes", though. Have they found Steve? Nope... he's bugged out because he's been hassled by a gang of Garbage Geeks. (Large, burly men that hang around the dump and beat up hippies, or so it seems.) Peace and Love goes out the window as Stoney and BritBoy fight them off. Elwood is so cataclysmiclly stoned, he just watches the fight and giggles. Until we suddenly switch to Elwood-O-Vision! Yes, Elwood becomes Brave Sir Elwood, imagining himself as a Knight while he beats up the Garbage Geeks with a 2x4. (Can't we all just get along, Elwood?)

From the fight scene, we cut straight to a performance by Mumbling John. (Where they mime... badly... to a song performed by The Seeds.) Stoney looks excruciatingly bored by the whole experience, but I guess that's meant to be tortured angst. (Or severe constipation... Only Jack Nicholson knows for sure...) Jenny is so enamoured by the Purple Haze knock-off, (She kind of lip-reads the music, I think...) that she sleeps with Stoney in the usual Trippy Kalidescope Sex Scene.

From there we cut to a funeral in a park.(??) The funeral is complete with a band (Possibly either The Seeds or The Strawberry Alarm Clock, but who knows for sure?) and the street theatre troop from the opening credits. The band plays a very long song as everyone dances about the place, the "corpse" opens his eyes, a hippy chick jumps in his coffin for some post-funeral nookie and we're done with this scene. I think you had to be there... Because it didn't make any more sense on-screen than my decription did, honest!

Part 2: Eight Miles High

Meanwhile, back at the pad, Stoney and the band rehearse, in preparation for their big break... A gig at "The Ballroom". Jenny tries to talk to Stoney, but he's acting all stand-offish and stuff. That "one-night stand" thing, I guess. Jenny gets miffed and bails. That night at the gallery, Stoney discovers someone breaking and entering. It's Steven, The Seeker.(Bruce Dern) His flowing white robe and long hair is supposed to be a religious metaphor, I think. But in truth... He kinda looks like Charlie Manson! This leads to an awesomely long flashback as Steven tells Stoney about Jennys childhood. It's quite literally the longest sequence of the film... and the dullest. I never even bothered to make notes, save the words "Childhood. Boring."

Anyhoo, we move to The Ballroom, where an insanly ugly 60's band are playing. They finish their song and Mumbling John begins theirs. This one has vocals, which bear no relation to anyone in the band. (Sounding kind of like the Monkees if they'd done an enormous amount of reefer first.) Jennys' there watching, having seemingly got over her little snit. Steven tries to contact her, but the Junkyard Gang arrive to chase him off. How did they know he was there? Pass. Why do they want to hurt him so much? Never worked that one out. I don't have the answers, people, I'm just giving you the facts as I see them...

Dave and Stoney have a conversation about money afterwards... seems Daves' worried Stoney might turn into a breadhead. (Incidently, I wonder hom much the esteemed Mr Nicholson is worth these days? Hmmm...) Stoney is also making his descion on whether he'll hook up with Jenny or bonk the hell out of a groupie. He seemingly chooses the latter, upsetting Jenny again. We cut between Steven's long, loooong chase scene and Jenny being consoled by Dave. Jenny and Dave get to smooching, before Stoney returns, having changed his mind, I guess. He gets a tad steamed at seeing Dave sucking face with Jenny. ("Free Love" means never having to say you're a hypocrite, huh?) He chews out Jenny, who gets so upset she chugs half of Daves "STP" drug cocktail and runs off.

Stoney returns once more and goes ape-doodoo when he realises Dave let Jenny take STP. He marshalls the troops to find her. I'm guessing the odds of finding her are good, as Jenny has found Steven in about five minutes. (In the 60's, San Francisco must have been a city eight blocks square. Or so it seems with all the people that coincidentally run into each other in this film...) Steve is trapped in a house he apparently set on fire. Why? Beats the ever-living snot outta me, folks! Jeny tries to rescue him, but fails miserably. The STP kicks in about now, and Jenny is suddenly being chased through the streets by random explosions. This is actually quite a cool sequence, with mucho pyro erupting from unexpected places. (The road, stairs, walls etc.)

Jenny obviously runs quite some way, because the guys find her on the Golden Gate Bridge. (Told you it's a small city...) Jennys freaking out in the center lane, allowing Dave to redeem himself by saving her. He also dies a Redemptive Death, getting hit by a car and bouncing off the hoods of what seems like six cars. (Unless it was one car shot from six angles... I couldn't tell for sure.) He mumbles something about a trip and expires. Stoney embraces Jenny and we fade to purple.

Skeeters Summary: Like, wow man. Trippy, meandering and talky... but it's just not my bag, baby. A hell of a cinematic time-capsule, though...