"Thumb Tripping" (1972) d/ Quentin Masters

Here's a lost counterculture gem from the guy who would later bring you the Joan Collins-fest, The Stud (1978)(a cinematic streeetch for Joanie, it were, playing slappers n' all), about hitchhikin' hippies, such a popular exploitation film subject back in the seventies, i.e. The Hitchhikers (1972), Teenage Hitchhikers (1975), Hitch Hike to Hell (1977), and even Autostop rosso sangue (1977), whose U.S. release title was, of course,  Hitch Hike. Tonight's review borrows less from films of that ilk, though, and more from Joe(1970) or Easy Rider (1968), a non-judgmental time capsule of the era starring the likes of Meg Foster, Michael Burns, Marianna Hill, and, as you may have guessed from the interesting one sheet art above, the one and only Bruce Dern.


"Shoplifting turns me off, maaaaan.", exclaims Gary (Michael Burns) the good hippie.
After getting dumped in a more hippie conducive area for loitering on the Cali beach by the local fuzz, Gary (Michael Burns), a collegiate ride thumber on hippie-hiatus, meets Chay (Meg Foster), a party girl with eyes that could chill a glass of Kentucky bourbon, and they decide to hitch hike together, vowing to accept every possible ride along the way. Gary scolds Chay for shoplifting, and they eat bread in the grass together.  Smitty (Bruce Dern) and his aptly-monnikered driver, Simp (Larry Hankin), make them regret their promise early on, speeding recklessly along, hogging the road in their yellow hot rod, while Smitty rambles wild-eyed, playing with his switchblade. Things get worse when they're picked up by an angry, abusive mother (Joyce Van Patten) whose own teenage daughter flew the coop to Hippie-ville on her. They parts ways after Chay lays the moral skitz on her, and they're soon picked up by a bennie-popping trucker named Diesel (Michael Conrad) who offers Gary fifteen bucks to pop Chay in the slice, while she hippie-grooves by the jukebox, turned on by the older guy's grasp on life, herself.


"You're in no position to laugh at my satin baseball jacket. I've got a switchblade, and I will use it. I will. I WILL."
Gary's objectification of Chay and phony moral high ground amount to naught in the end, as Diesel locks him in the back of the eighteen-wheeler over night, helplessly forced to squash leftover oranges in jealousy over the sounds of his "girlfriend" locating her G spot's twenty with her horny good buddy. After a brief spat, they're given a lift by a young married couple in a convertible, Jack (Burke Byrnes) being the obligatory testosterone-n-booze fueled working stiff, and Lynn (Marianna Hill), a bubbly, busty blonde who knows how to pass a fella a can of beer as he's speeding down the highway in broad daylight. As a result of their reckless only-in-the-seventies asphalt sauce up, the men swap partners while drunkenly cooling off in a lake. Too much vodka leads the girls to stumble into a bar packed with yokels, making an embarrassing spectacle of themselves and leading to their eventual violent "don'tcha come back now, y'hear?" expulsion from the establishment, after a jealous, juiced up Jack gets roughed up in the process. Gary drives them home, and the young hitchers adventure ends, as they part ways as friends.


"You kids ever drink vodka from the bottle while driving down the highway in a convertible in broad daylight before?"
Michael Burns enjoyed a long career of television roles, before and after this effort. Recently, Meg Foster showed up in Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem (2012), a movie I have yet to see. Her eyes are unforgettable. Burke Byrnes later turned up in made-for-tv The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977) and Prophecy (1979), and even later in Witchboard (1986) and Child's Play 3 (1991). Mike Conrad you may or may not remember as Sgt. Esterhaus on long running television series, Hill Street Blues, while Hill would later show up in genre efforts like Blood Beach (1980) and Schizoid (1980). If you can track down a copy, you'll appreciate it, especially for Dern's scene, another quality mental case performance to add to his resume. On the scale, Tripping scores a pair of Wops, worth a look.


Awwwww. What an adorable little freeloader.

"The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant" (1971) d/ Anthony M. Lanza

Back in 2011, I mentioned tonight's review in passing while covering the other 70's double domed horror flick of note, The Thing With Two Heads (1972). Though that particular interracial pair up of Rosey Grier and Ray Milland was certainly a fucking scream, by anybody's standards, tonight's is a polycephalic drive-in style punch up par excellence, with a cast headed up by cult fave Bruce Dern as Roger, the scientist with a Frankenstein complex-come-lately, and Pat Priest of The Munsters fame as his neglected wife. If that's not enough for you, how about the late, great Casey Kasem, dressed like he lost a bet, as Roger's smooth-voiced pal, Ken. Still not convinced?


"Look at these balls...where's those bananas you told me about...who the hell is this guy on my shoulder?"
Roger Girard (Dern) is a scientist that's been honing his head transplant skills in a private home laboratory with the assistance of  the wheelchair-bound Dr. Max (Berry Kroeger). He shows his progress to his pal and fellow doctor, Ken (Kasem), and by "progress", we of course mean two-headed rabbits, snakes, foxes, and monkeys. Roger fully expresses his intent and purpose to expand his addahedtomy("add-a-head-to-me") experiments to human subjects, and none of this flusters Ken one bit. He is alarmed when Roger's caretaker's son, Danny (John Bloom), a giant hillbilly simp with brute strength, nearly cleaves his head off on the porch. "This is an axe, Danny. It's used to chop wood and nothing else.", states Roger, matter-of-factly. Yeah, there are gonna be some problems down the road with this big lug, I can see it.


"....Giant two headed hillbilly strangling two people to death at once...You don't see that every day."
Cass (Albert Cole) is a bug-eyed, lip-licking, rapist/murderer on the loose, and when he finds himself terrorizing the folks at Dr. Girard's spot, killing Danny's father, and nearly adding Roger's wife to his growing list of victims, he's rewarded with fatal gunshots for his psychotic anarchy.With Danny in shock over his father's death, and the unhinged killer dying, Roger does what any man of science would do, in his stead: why, graft the disturbed dome onto the hulking hayseed's shoulder, of course! With Danny's retard strength at his command, Cass shows his gratitude for the new lease on life by rampaging through the countryside, smashing in biker's heads with rocks, strangling hormonal teens at makeout point, by the two's, that sort of thing. Such ludicrous goings on call for a suitably ridiculous and entertaining finale, and this one delivers.


Just five years later, and it looks like Marilyn Munster (Pat Priest) is out of her monster phase.
Director Lanza also helmed 1967's The Glory Stompers, while also having edited two Arch Hall, Jr. vehicles, Wild Guitar (1962) and Nasty Rabbit (1964). Give me some vintage exploitative Bruce Dern like Psych-Out or Hang 'Em High(both 1968), and you'll hear no complaints from me. Big John Bloom would go on to appear as "Gor" in Brain of Blood, Frankenstein's monster in Dracula vs. Frankenstein (both 1971), as well as the murderous alien-in-a-flannel-shirt in The Dark (1979). He also scored  genre credits in Al Adamson's Angel's Wild Women (1972), and The Hills Have Eyes Pt II (1984). A lot of people prefer Thing over Transplant, but I'm not one of them. This drive-in classic merits three exploitative Wops, and is recommended.


"Danny doan' wanna keyull nobodah! Danny wanna lookit Hee-Haw!"

"The Trip"(1967)d/Roger Corman

Inverse to the producers' warning that precedes tonight's review, a Hollywood flirtation with head-freakin' hallucinogenics as penned by no less than Jack Nicholson, is a short disclaimer from this guy over here:Ah, glorious lysergic acid diethylamide.Where does a guy like me begin to write about our many mind-blowing escapades together over the years.Without your entheogenic pleasures, I might not have ever mooned state troopers from a van window, shouting:"Behold! The fancy ass of the DEVIL!", I might not have been bitten by a pissed off African baboon spider that I thought I was communicating with, I might not have stopped my vehicle in courthouse traffic, worried that the front of the car, engine and all, had just dissolved into liquid metal and poured onto the asphalt.I might never have played naked hide n' seek with my girlfriend all over my apartment, culminating in a vista-revealing bathtub fuck that unlocked the secrets of the universe to me.Oh, you get the idea, already.Potent acid is tits, dudeskis.Tonight's feature focuses on some hip cats of the day and just such a journey to the center of the mind, as portrayed by genre faces Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, among others, and as directed by the original Motor City Madman and B-Movie Bishop, Roger Corman, in between his uncredited work in the director's chair on A Time for Killing(1967) and 1968's The Wild Racers.Semi-corny in its posi-delivery of the microgram-laden mirth; it's always a good time to viddy when you're in an altered state yourself.Diiiig...

"Yeah, I was Babalugats in 'Cool Hand Luke', maaann, I'll bogart this spleefie if I want to..."
Paul Groves(Peter Fonda) is a mild-mannered director of television commercials in the midst of a heavy divorce from his unfaithful wife, Sally(Susan Strasberg), a chick who's not opposed to rocking a salmon polyester pantsuit out in public just for kicks.Is it any wonder he's looking for some introspective on his own successes and failures in one o' them there acid trips all them youngins seem to be poppin' off on, in between their flower power and their Lothar and the Hand People records.He enlists his buddy, John(Bruce Dern), as a chaperone for his twelve hour mental vacation, as provided by Max(Dennis Hopper), a babbling, reef-tokin' white Navajo wanna-be in leather dungarees, who owns the local psychedelically painted drug spot frequented by the upper eschelon of turn-onners, tune-inners, and obligatory drop outs.A hot young blonde tells him that she thinks "acid-takers are groovy."Paul retreats upstairs with John and drops with some apple juice, while Max passes around a hog's leg downstairs and mumbles incoherently.John tells his soon-to-be-soaring associate that he probably won't wanna eff with all the recording equipment he's laid out for himself once he's on his trip.Before you can say, "Down on Phillip's Escalator", Paul's starting to see some things over there.John, guarding against a possible freakout, tells him, "I'm gonna be here, man, trust me.", as Paul starts getting into some beautiful stuff, like holding the sun in his hands, and swimming bare-assed and free.He imagines bedding the hot blonde from earlier and his soon-to-be ex-wife at the same time in a groovy ménage à trois until he's being chased on the beach by Templar-esque knights on horseback.Then he's on a merry-go-round with midgets being forced to watch his spouse share adulterous kisses with another man on a big screen, while Max appears and passes hippie judgement upon him for working for a living.John! John, where's that thorazine, maaaaaan!I wanna get off!

Would you let this man chaperone your first acid trip? Me neither.
John pulls the incoherent naked wreck out of the pool and towels him off, then does exactly what he promised he wouldn't do, in leaving Paul alone while he's gone to score some more juice.Paul imagines John is slumped dead in a chair with a paintified headwound, and slips out into the street in the middle of the night, peaking his nuts off.He lets himself into a strange household, rousing the resident little girl from her sleep, watching television with her and getting her a drink until her father wakes up and scares him off.He grooves on the washing machines at a laundromat and suggests to a spinster-in-curlers that they communicate with each other using only their minds, before running off when she calls the police as he tries to free the girl he imagines he sees spinning in a dryer full of the woman's clothes.He snags a table at a psychedelic club on Sunset Strip, but splits prematurely when the cops make the scene, somehow making his way back to Max's place to come down in the process.After he tells the drug dealer he may have led the cops to his doorstep, he's told to head back to the strip where John, who isn't dead afterall, can collect him again.This time, he bumps into the aforementioned hot blonde who speeds off with him in her convertible sports car to her place, where they have all kinds of trippy sex, while he hallucinates about the hooded knights, only they're Sally and the blonde in disguise.The next morning, she asks him whether his trip was a good one or not, and he remarks that though he found love, he may need another day to reflect upon the turn of events, as the screen freeze-frames on his face, then cracks like glass, Fulci-style.Roll credits...

Sex whilst trippin' face? L.S.D.elicious!
As you might have guessed, the flagrant use of boring jazz in the soundtrack was a big red light for me.I'm thinking Corman should have scored some genuine psych rock instead, a la Pink Floyd or the Amboy Dukes, for authenticity's sake, I dunno.You can see Henry Fonda's rebellious son, who's experienced a sort of cinematic renaissance of late, in a treasure trove of genre cult classics;The Wild Angels(1966), Spirits of the Dead(1967), Easy Rider(1969), Spasms(1983), and even the crappy remake of Escape From New York, 1996's Escape From LA.Dern, a premier psycho in television and movies dating back to 1960, was at his genre best in the late sixties/early seventies, scoring credits in everything from Bloody Mama(1970) and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant(1971) to Black Sunday(1976) and Hitchcock's Family Plot(1976).The curler-coiffed Barboura Morris dates back to early Corman, appearing in The Wasp Woman(1959) and The Haunted Palace(1960).Judy Lang, who plays Fonda's blonde sex-interest, can also be spotted in The Psycho Lovers and Count Yorga, Vampire.Curiously, LSD-25 was last completely legal in the United States in 1966, but you don't have to be a hardcore blotterhead to enjoy the cultish charm of Trip, which earns two double-dipped wops on the ratings scale.Add it to your collection.

Woooooooooow, maaaaahnnnn...

"Psych Out"(1968)d/Richard Rush

This bizarre cult classic is the result of a script that Jack Nicholson wrote for director Richard Rush that Rush felt was too experimental for the mainstream.After being re-written as a San Francisco youth film dealing with "flower power" and drugs by other writers,Nicholson ended up in the lead male role,writing his own character's dialogue.The end product, which boasts of many big name actors in outrageous roles, was produced by Dick Clark(!).

Stoney(Jack Nicholson) plus spleefie plus clip-on ponytail equals cinematic gold!
Jenny(Susan Strasberg of "The Trip" fame),is a teenaged deaf runaway mute arriving in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco looking for her brother Steve(Bruce Dern in a hippie wig),or as he's known by his followers..."The Seeker".She soon realizes this task is harder than it sounds,having only a postcard that reads "Jess saes" and "God is alive and well in a sugar cube." and being in the middle of a community of kooks.At a coffeehouse she meets Stoney(Nicholson),Ben(Adam Roarke), and Elwood(Max Julien),members of a local psychedelic band called Mumblin' Jim,who help hide her from the fuzz(one of which being Gary Marshall) who are asking around about her.They take her back to their happening crash pad,where hippies keep baby alligators in the refrigerator,talk to their pet louse(he's named...Manny),stare at crystals and web the place up in strings of plastic beads when they aren't making out or smoking grass,maaaaan.Stoney digs playing music...or rather holding his guitar while Hendrix rip off studio bands like The Storybook and The Boenzee Cryque pipe in music.His fretboard doesn't see much work as his hands never move,but like,who's paying attention,maaaan?Dave(Dean Stockwell in a hippie wig and groovy headband) is also in Mumblin' Jim,but considers fame a big plastic hassle,so he sits in a cardboard box on a rooftop,staring at the lone beam of light that shines through the top...because that's all there is,maaaan.

Mumblin' Jim play Kalaideoscope...or maybe it's Red River Dream.
Now Stoney digs Jenny enough to help her look for her brother,even scrapping with a junkyard gang(when's the last time you saw a good junkyard gang?) when the hippies find The Seeker's burned out psychedelic Volkswagon in the local junkyard(Elwood,banged out on LSD sugarcubes,saves the day when he imagines himself a prince vanquishing a dragon after being a frog kissed by a princess...wow.),but Stoney's a real ladies man who likes his freedom,with no strings attached.Hell,chicks even pop up from under his bed looking to make it with him(remember,Nicholson wrote this).It's a real bad scene when Warren(director Henry Jaglom with paste on crepe wool mutton chop sideburns) the artist freaks out down at the gallery on an STP trip.When his usual hallucinogenic home remedy of snapping his fingers doesn't stop him from seeing a few things,he naturally tries to circular saw his own hand off.Jenny doesn't understand why people take powerful drugs,but obviously...like Nietzche says...just don't judge people,maaaan.

"Yeah, I'm...I'm fine. Now I've been seeing a couple things but.. I can come out of it anytime I want to. You know all...all...all I have to do is... is snap my fingers and I come out of it." Warren(Henry Jaglom),snap your fingers,man.
The hippies tackle Warren to the ground,saving him from his own twisted mind,when Jenny notices a statue of some tin foil flames that her brother made,taking her one step closer to finding The Seeker.Now in the meantime,Ben stages a mock hippie funeral in the park with garage rock legends,The Seeds, playing and a mock priest(?) with a crepe wool Amish beard giving last rites,culminating in some dame making it with him in his coffin.Stoney's pals know how to party,maaaaan.The inevitable happens,and Mumblin' Jim is booked to play the ballroom,on the bill with Strawberry Alarm Clock(who could forget their smash hit,"Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow"),so Stoney tries to coax Dave out of his rooftop box to play the gig with them,but Dave would rather groove with Jenny.At this point,Stoney catches The Seeker breaking into the gallery to steal back his tin foil flames statue which he needs....for meditation(huh?).Steve tells Stoney the sordid tale surrounding Jenny's dysfunctional childhood,causing her to spew black motor oil and worms out of her mouth(!),forever robbing her of her ability to hear(common medical condition,in those days).The Seeker promises to see her,but only after he's had a day to get his head straight.

Bruce Dern IS...The Seeker.
The band play the ballroom gig,in true "Archies" fashion,but when Steve shows up,so does the lovable junkyard gang to stomp some sense into his hippie wig.There's a chase,but Steve sets a building on fire and prefers to die in it,grooving off the flames.Outta sight,maaaaan.In the meanwhile,Dave,in true chivalrous fashion,gets Jenny to drink a whole glass of STP with him,causing her to wander off into traffic,trapping herself between two lanes of speeding cars in the night.Stoney and the boys rescue her,but not before Dave gets knocked around like a human pinball,being hit by multiple cars,exclaiming,"Reality is a deadly place...I hope this trip is a good one.",before calling it a permanent day.Heavy,man,heavy.

Julien,Nicholson,and Roarke,grooving.
I love throwing this one on every once in awhile for some good unintentional laughs.I doubt Jack Nicholson and Dick Clark were ever the finger on the pulse of the psychedelic hippie community,but their take on it,certainly makes for repeated bizarre viewings.MGM released this on dvd as a double-bill with equally far out Peter Fonda vehicle,"The Trip"(first acid trip,hmmm...I think I need Bruce Dern as a chaperone...yeah,bad idea.).Get out your favorite bubbler("medicinal" purposes only),some plastic beads,and a clip on ponytail,and return to those flowery days of sixties yesteryear with Dean Stockwell and his STP punch,You'll be glad you did.
Four out of four B.W.'s