Considered lost for years, we have one surviving print (at least for now) to thank for preserving this exploitation/art film equivalent of a ten-car pile-up. I always say I wish there were no lost films, but junk like this severely tests my limits.
50-minute barely-feature chronicles the adventures of a lone male hippie, who picks up a couple chicks in SF's Golden Gate Park to bring back to his pad (playing a pan flute, he claims to lead them there like the Pied Piper of Hamlin). Back at his place - which seems to be a pretty solid example of a real hippie apartment ca. 1967 - the trio drops acid and spends the next 30 minutes walking and rolling around together, as Johnny Art School in the director's chair maxes out on superimpositions, double-exposures, prismatic lenses, and other kaleidoscopic wonders in an attempt to simulate the experience of being stoned and balling.
I have to wonder what patrons would have made of this back in the day. As a document of the counterculture, (numerous) warts and all, it's glancingly effective, if not only for effectively embodying its ethos but also how dippily stupid it could often become ("Love is NOW! Life is NOW! We all are NOW!" is the kind of nonsense pseudo-philosophic babble spouted by the characters in voiceover). As anything resembling a film, however, PSK is endlessly dull, a repetitive, narrative-free mish-mash only fit to be watched while stoned. I'll give it one thing, the visuals are often pretty, but unless someone from the avant garde crowd wants to make an argument for it, I'm chalking it up as a stinker. Tune out, turn off, throw up.
50-minute barely-feature chronicles the adventures of a lone male hippie, who picks up a couple chicks in SF's Golden Gate Park to bring back to his pad (playing a pan flute, he claims to lead them there like the Pied Piper of Hamlin). Back at his place - which seems to be a pretty solid example of a real hippie apartment ca. 1967 - the trio drops acid and spends the next 30 minutes walking and rolling around together, as Johnny Art School in the director's chair maxes out on superimpositions, double-exposures, prismatic lenses, and other kaleidoscopic wonders in an attempt to simulate the experience of being stoned and balling.
I have to wonder what patrons would have made of this back in the day. As a document of the counterculture, (numerous) warts and all, it's glancingly effective, if not only for effectively embodying its ethos but also how dippily stupid it could often become ("Love is NOW! Life is NOW! We all are NOW!" is the kind of nonsense pseudo-philosophic babble spouted by the characters in voiceover). As anything resembling a film, however, PSK is endlessly dull, a repetitive, narrative-free mish-mash only fit to be watched while stoned. I'll give it one thing, the visuals are often pretty, but unless someone from the avant garde crowd wants to make an argument for it, I'm chalking it up as a stinker. Tune out, turn off, throw up.
