Don’t do drugs, kids because ten years later, you just might experience a delayed reaction to it that turns you into a mindless psychopath on an adrenaline spike.
Yep, it’s the Attack of the Ex-Hippies except that now they’re parents and doctors and politicians. Their wilder days of dropping acid and even doing a little dealing on the side to help pay for college are gone. No more incense and peppermints. No more purple haze. They’re now all about sensible haircuts and suits and quiet parties in which a spilled drink and someone singing an old standard that Frank Sinatra popularized is as wild as it gets.
Things are about to get weird though, due to a batch of bad LSD that they took about ten years ago that’s bringing one hell of a flashback. Hey, tomorrow never knows.
First, your hair starts to fall out, slowly for awhile and then ALL at once until you’re cueball-headed, with the exception of a few unsightly tufts. (Hippies were all about that long hair.)
Somewhere in there, headaches and sweaty uneasiness start to follow. (Hangover symptoms, the fallout after a good time.)
Loud sounds, including loud music, begin to drive you crazy. (“If the music is too loud, you’re too old”, goes the expression, I believe.)
Once those symptoms kick in, it’s not long before you snap into zombie mode and go on a murderous rampage, far gone, unreasonable and unstoppable. (Not exactly the stuff of 60s peace and love.)
In 1984, Don Henley released a slick pop song (“The Boys of Summer”) about the end of 60s idealism as the hippies got older and assimilated into the culture that they thought they changing.
In 1978, writer/director Jeff Lieberman said the same thing, but as an offbeat horror film with a memorably icy music score, a little blood and some distancing performances.
Maybe the weirdest thing about this very weird film is the lead performance by future sexploitation writer/producer/director empresario Zalman King back in the days when he was a character-actor. This film wastes no time and King is thrown into the action before we even get to know him. We’re not so much told that he’s the lead character as we gradually come to accept that he’s the lead character. He’s odd and uncomfortable. When one of his friends turns into an LSD flashback zombie and kills a bunch of people (by stuffing them into a raging fireplace!), ol’ Zalman has to push him in front of a speeding truck in order to save the day. The result of this is that Zalman is now accused of ALL of the murders. Now, he’s got to hide out and clear his name and investigate what the hell is happening here.
Meanwhile, no one wants to tell him anything. Zalman is too creepy. He turns off everyone he questions. He always comes off like he has an ulterior motive. No one, except for pretty blonde Deborah Winters, likes him.
Even WE don’t like him.
I’d hold that against this film if I didn’t suspect that it was intentional. Zalman King is not here to argue for or against its point. He’s not supposed to UNDERSTAND anything here. He doesn’t get it. He’s probably never going to get it.
The 1960s dream died and he didn’t even notice.