Well this one starts out with a bang as a lady gets sawed in half by a big buzzsaw like in a stupid cartoon. From there we go into Manson territory with the ol' cult leader and his psycho followers get revenge on "the Man" plot. It's supposed to start out back in the 60s but they must have not bothered to tell anyone since just about everyone looks almost exactly the same 16 years later, I will give this a little credit for not skimping on the blood and gore even if the story doesn't always seem to be very coherent. There's also a nonsensical ending featuring the annoying guffawing Igor(spelled Ygor for some reason) character that seems to have been hobbled together with extra footage that was lying around. Good for 80s gorehounds and that's about it.
This snazzy Troma VHS cover makes it look like some kinda Eurotrash action flick!:
Hippie-fu classic as Tom Laughlin takes his character from that great biker flick THE BORN LOSERS and has him defend a school full of hippie youngsters who just keep getting hassled by "the man". If you can deal with all the acoustic folk music it's easy to see why this was a big hit back in 1971 as the flower-power era had not totally ended and been overshadowed by the nihilistic-tinged later 70s. This kind of acts like a last-gasp for the "make love, not war" generation as it depicts rape, racism and plenty of violence to go along with it's message of hope.
Dr. Johnny Fever, from WKRP IN CINCINNATI, himself(Howard Hessman) shows up as one of the students (even though he's clearly in his 30s by this point).
Laughlin would go on to make 2 more sequels with diminishing returns each time.
This starts off as an apocalyptic end-of-the-world deal with a gas that kills off anyone over 25. It's really more of a spoof of youth culture of the 60s and a satirical look at the stark generation gap back in those days though. It's also really a big disjointed mess. Roger Corman is the director here, but apparently AIP re-edited things quite a bit which pissed him off and caused him to leave and start his own company, New World Pictures, shortly after this. There's lots of dumb hippie stuff in this film, you get Shirley(Cindy Williams) from the LAVERNE & SHIRLEY tv show in a very pregnant state, Edgar Allen Poe as a biker is a sort of narrator, Bud Cort from HAROLD & MAUDE shows up, there's a football team that rapes and pillages, Country Joe & The Fish play a gig(while all looking older than 25), lots of hippie gibberish ensues and there's a silly peacenik ending. Unless you're really nostalgic for the 60s this one is pretty skippable. AKA GASSSS
Character actor Alex Rocca really stands out here in this tale of a group of badass mercenaries who don't mind getting a little rapey and a little murdery when the opportunity arises. Some bikers show up briefly but don't fare much better than a couple of hippies that bear the brunt of our unruly gang of murderous hooligan's wrath throughout most of the film. A Mexican town is also the setting of some hi-jinks including trying to buy a bartenders daughter. Pretty obscure title that's worth seeking out for 70's exploitation thrills after you're done with all the more well-known rape/revenge titles.
Not much of a plot to this one. It tells the story of this stupid hippie chick who gets pregnant and then runs away from home and then runs into a group of criminal hitchhikers. The group seems to be vaguely influenced by The Manson family though there's no murder or Helter Skelter going on and it's all pretty lighthearted outside of numerous armed robberies. There is one rape scene but it's over pretty quickly and not particularly gratuitous. It's all very leisurely paced and the editing lingers in a lot of weird places. Probably only worth a look for hardcore 70's aficionados that just wanna watch some hippie frolicking.
Maybe the weirdest thing about this one is the songs which are basically just a folk singer narrating what we are seeing on the screen while playing his guitar.
Hippie cult with a Jesus-like leader vs. a nasty biker gang led by a rather violent Confederate flag toting fellow named Reb(Clint Richie, who besides this did a bunch of television stuff). Obviously my money was on the bikers up until the movie took an unexpected turn and veered off into blaxploitation movie territory by introducing another predominately black biker gang(named The Bastard Banshees!) to even things out. This gang is quite the anomaly since it's led by a tough black chick and features a rainbow of ethnicities including a couple of whities and what I think is either an Asian or Hispanic gal. Things get pretty nuts towards the end with a big brawl where peacenik hippies figure out maybe violence is sometimes the only way. A peace sign gets sharpened and used as a weapon, hippie-Jesus gets hung off a big peace symbol, people get shot right in the face and in one of the nastiest scenes a sharpened pencil gets shoved right into a guy's hand before he gets scorched with a road flare. One of the best biker flicks I've seen in a while. Highly recommended for grindhouse enthusiasts.
"Are we hippies? You think we're hippies? I bet people think we're hippies, right?"
Don Johnson's first movie is a total hippie-dippy, freakout story, based on a book, about a college student in New York looking to get laid and find some deep-philosophical truth about life in the process because this was made way back before deep-philosophical thoughts were banned from all forms of popular entertainment. You get lots of nudity including a quick full-frontal glimpse at Don's Johnson and plenty of nekkid hippie gals. While not a great film overall(and it does have that wacky kiddie "Sweet Gingerbread Man" song oddly pop up a couple of times!?) it is an interesting and surprisingly downbeat example of a flower-power flick complete with nihilistic 70s suicidal ending! I was glad to get to view a rare 35mm screening of this recently on the big screen hosted by film critic Joe Bob Briggs who is a big fan and if it's good enough for Joe Bob it's certainly good enough for me.
A bunch of hippie weirdos beg for money, drop acid, protest the Vietnam War, sing and groove at a disco and have artistically-filmed orgies. They're led by a rather un-charismatic leader who whines about "The Man" a whole lot. From the title, trailer down below and cover of the DVD I have of this I figured this would be more of a blaxploitation kinda deal, and there are a couple of black characters, but that angle never really gets explored much. It's really a dull mash up of boring documentary and bad musical with a large dollop of uninteresting drama thrown in. Also there's not much in the way of a plot. We do get the stereotypical 70's downer ending but even that is done pretty blandly here. I think the only point in this film I even got slightly excited was when the lead singer of this kooky hippie band shouted "Kick Out The Jams!" but sadly it was not followed by an MC5 cover song. Mostly a very forgettable watch. The only positives were that the cinematography and editing looked surprisingly good for such a low-budget film. AKA SIGN OF AQUARIUS, WAGES OF SIN and LOVE COMMUNE
This poster is a lot closer to what the actual film is like:
A young rock singer(Christopher Jones), who has Richard Pryor playing drums for him, rallies the youth to make himself the youngest President in U.S. history. From there everyone over 30 is forced to retire and then sent to internment camps where they are dosed with LSD. Having been made in the 60's this is obviously a metaphor for the turbulence of the civil rights and/or women's rights movements(or I guess any big social movement of the time really) and also a commentary on the generation gap between the baby-boomer hippies and the old folks of the times. Having been made by AIP it also has that familiar exploitation movie vibe which makes for a strange combination. It kinda made me think about what something like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS woulda been like if Roger Corman produced it. Shelley Winters is given top-billing as the mom of our young rebel but doesn't really have a whole lot to do unfortunately. So to sum it up, it's mostly disjointed and probably only interesting as a curiosity piece from the era it was produced. On the positive side there's some cool 60's tunes like "Shape Of Things To Come" which were created for this film.
This film starts out with an attempted rape which gave me some hope for a sexy thriller type situation but then it quickly becomes very soap opera-ish as it's more concerned with who's sleeping with who and that sort of thing. At least it's a soap-opera with some boobs thrown in. There's also a lot of hippie stuff going on including revolutionary Mexicans who have shootouts with the police, naked acid-trips on the beach and a bunch of bad folk music. Strangely for a movie marketed as a sex flick there's long stretches of time where nothing very sexy happens. This was the first film released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures company so I guess it has some historical significance for that, plus it kicked off a whole shitload of similarly titled sexy nurse films but beyond that there's not much that's notable about this one.
This isn't a very good documentary or even a very watchable film. It's a tough to get through rambling look at hippies in the late 60's in San Francisco without any narrative or much of a point of view. It's sort of like a shorter, crappier version of the movie WOODSTOCK except the hippies come off as way more annoying in this. They basically seem like air-headed homeless people begging for handouts like bums. Full of naive platitudes and they all just look like they smell bad. The "squares" interviewed also seem pretty stupid and are typically judgmental pricks, so I'm not sure who I'm supposed to side with here. The music is OK if you're into bands that jam on endlessly. There's way more interesting and informative docs out there about these times that you should watch before this one. I would also recommend dropping acid and staring at a wall for a more exciting trip.
"I saw a fella selling junk to children. He gets nervous every time I pass. Cause he knows that if I catch him. I'm gonna bust his head and kick his fat ass."
There was a time when the younger generation was feared by the older one. A revolution against old out-dated ways of thinking was in full swing, the old values that had been held onto as examples of what was good with America were crumbling away. It was in this atmosphere, where people feared their own children, that a film like JOE was spawned and probably hit a familiar chord with audiences of the early 70's. This film basically encapsulates and puts a face on the struggle, at the time, between conservative and liberal forces and the old vs. the young. Peter Boyle is great, as always, as the title character who sets the template for Archie Bunker in his racist/bigoted views. His rambling diatribe of hate speech("look at this shitting music") when we first meet him in some crap-hole bar is amazing and I love to play just that scene completely out of context for friends and unsuspecting guests. It's always a hit and leaves people with that "what the fuck did I just witness"-look. This was also Susan Sarandon's first film and we get to see her naked in a bathtub which is a nice little treat. Seen today this movie will certainly not have the same resonance it did back in the days of hippie marches and free love orgies due to the dated nature of lots of its scenes but it's a nice view back to a time when the youth had something that hasn't been seen by anyone in a long time, the power to actually change things and the fear that set loose. All in all it's a fine example of a unique smack-taking, Easter-orgy lovin', junkie-abusing, hippie death trip of a film.
