The most psychedelic three minutes of film known to man. And yes, that is an American Broadcasting Company (good ol’ ABC TV) copyright notice on this quick-cutting epilepsy-inducer full of kaleidoscope patterns, naked go-go dancers, abused film stock, creepy skulls, swinging background music, wall-to-wall day-glo color effects and a nightmarish ending. Some sources say that filmmaker J.X. Williams was a pseudonym used by multiple writers and filmmakers over many different projects. Other sources say that Williams is a real person with a past so checkered that it sounds positively made-up, with a budding Hollywood career wrecked by the HUAC after the 1950s Red Scare, a stint making porno loops for the Mafia, a European avant-garde period, a return to the US in the late 1960s to toil in exploitation films and eventual reclusion in Switzerland on a fortune made from a lawsuit.
It COULD all be a joke. This movie might have been made in 2003 by some hoax artist who got all of the 1968 details just right like a current rock band who manage to perfectly imitate The Electric Prunes.
I don’t know what the hell this is. So, I’ll play along with the story. I’m no stick in the mud.
Legend has it that Williams was hired by ABC to make short filler pieces for a new variety show called “Love-In Tonite”. Sensing that the show was going to stink, eternal rebel Williams threw his assignment in the ditch and handed the network the most evil thing he could cook up with the budget they gave him. It was intended to be a middle-finger to the suits, something meant to be hated and thrown away and never revived. Cinematic piss in the wind. And he called it Psych-Burn. (Actually he called it The Love Generation on the film itself… though somehow it’s come to be known as Psych-Burn).