STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Paul (Peter Fornda) is a TV commercial director going through a bitter divorce with his wife. Dejected and disillusioned, he decides to experiment with LSD and has his close friend John (Bruce Dern) take the 'trip' with him. He spends the next few hours seeing beautiful colours and patterns, becoming more enlightened and self-aware, in between getting freaked out and confused in a terrifying nightmare world he has no control over.
Buying this film for £15.99 left me in a bit of a predicament. With the money I spent buying it, I could just as easily have brought some acid tabs and seen what LSD was like firsthand. But I found it uncertain and unpredictable to approach and decided to give this film a go just to see what it might be like. In fact, this is the reason it's been banned for so many years (never even saw the reels of a video cassette, I'd imagine) despite not containing anything overly unsuitable in the material. It just seemed like one big long endorsement of LSD to some and I can see how they might have thought this.
The film plays just like this, one long example of what an acid trip might be like. It does this very well, unfortunately it comes at the expense of the film having much in the way of an established storyline, character development or any of the usual ingredients that generally make a very good film. But it has a nice soundtrack, some quite funny moments and you gotta love those groovy visuals and hallucinogenic effects. Must ring my dealer next weekend. ***
Paul (Peter Fornda) is a TV commercial director going through a bitter divorce with his wife. Dejected and disillusioned, he decides to experiment with LSD and has his close friend John (Bruce Dern) take the 'trip' with him. He spends the next few hours seeing beautiful colours and patterns, becoming more enlightened and self-aware, in between getting freaked out and confused in a terrifying nightmare world he has no control over.
Buying this film for £15.99 left me in a bit of a predicament. With the money I spent buying it, I could just as easily have brought some acid tabs and seen what LSD was like firsthand. But I found it uncertain and unpredictable to approach and decided to give this film a go just to see what it might be like. In fact, this is the reason it's been banned for so many years (never even saw the reels of a video cassette, I'd imagine) despite not containing anything overly unsuitable in the material. It just seemed like one big long endorsement of LSD to some and I can see how they might have thought this.
The film plays just like this, one long example of what an acid trip might be like. It does this very well, unfortunately it comes at the expense of the film having much in the way of an established storyline, character development or any of the usual ingredients that generally make a very good film. But it has a nice soundtrack, some quite funny moments and you gotta love those groovy visuals and hallucinogenic effects. Must ring my dealer next weekend. ***