If I had a time machine, one of my first stops would be The Haight in San Francisco in the late 60's. I would love to have been exposed to all the great music firsthand and be a part of a counterculture that really was something special. It would have been a real trip to be in an environment where people were so willing to share, be in the moment, and not worry about all the petty things that we are concerned with nowadays. I know it was fairly idealistic but to be a part of the little piece of time where a whole group of people bought into the concept of communal living and positive thinking would have been a cool era to live.

Susan Strasberg (The Manitou) stars as Jenny, a deaf girl who can speak normally as long as she can read lips. She has come to San Francisco to find her whacked-out brother (Bruce Dern - who else?!) who has become a guru of sorts called The Seeker and dresses like Jesus. Jenny quickly falls in with a psychedelic band called Mumblin' Jim that is comprised of Stoney (Jack Nicholson) on guitar, Ben (Adam Roarke - Dirty Mary Crazy Larry) on keyboards, and the permanently high Elwood (Max Julien - The Mack) on drums. Jenny quickly falls in with Stoney and is by his side as he tries to secure a big gig for his band. Lurking around is self-righteous hippie named Dave (Dean Stockwell a long way from "Quantum Leap") who gives Jenny some drugs which leads to a very bad trip that culminates with her dodging traffic in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Dick Clark produced this film and although I was a little surprised by this, it makes sense when you consider the strong anti-drug message. I don't associate Clark with the hippie scene but anyone with a love of music would not be able to avoid the psychedelic era. While we don't see The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane in the film, The Seeds appear at a be-in funeral and The Strawberry Alarm Clock perform live when they play a gig with Mumblin' Jim. This was a fun sequence although Nicholson looks out of place trying to air guitar to the music. It is not a bad as a prior sequence where Stoney and the group play in a smaller club to a ripoff of "Purple Haze". Between this and some of the uptight comments that Stoney makes throughout the film, I thought he became less cool as the film progressed.

Strasberg, on the other hand, was no stranger to the psychedelic film as she was in The Trip with Peter Fonda in the previous year. Her character is one of those shy, cute hippie chicks that is not all whacked out on drugs (for the most part) and looks like she is just digging the scene. You can also look for future film auteur Henry Jaglom as an artist who freaks out during a drug trip, thinks his friends are zombies, and attempts to cut his hand off with a power saw when he hallucinates that is infected with what looks like a flesh-eating disease. It is random, bizarre scenes like this that make films of the 60's and 70's so much fun.

Psych-Out was shot in The Haight in 1968. The opening shots of the streets are alive with activity and you can feel the excitement of the time. What follows is more of a cautionary tale of the dangers of drugs and how some of the hippies were too self-centered for their own good. Director Richard Rush was no stranger to exploitation films as he directed Nicholson and Roarke in Hells Angels on Wheels and later went on to make The Stunt Man which has become somewhat of an unsung classic. He did a good job of putting in elements to create drama and highlight the more sinister areas of hippie culture but did so without judging the characters. This made for a likable cast that allows the viewer to sympathize with the characters even though they may not be "hip" to the subculture. (Josh Pasnak, 1/11/09)

Directed By: Richard Rush.
Written By: E. Hunter Willett, Betty Ulius.

Starring: Susan Strasberg, Jack Nicholson, Adam Roarke, Dean Stockwell.