Psych-Out (1968)

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I stumbled upon this film on MGM HD. I turned to the channel and here was some flick with a young Jack Nicholson and Dean Stockwell with some young lady with a postcard that reads "Jess Saes: God is in a sugar cube"...or something like that.I figured it was a Roger Corman schlock job I had never heard of. Instead it turns out to be Dick Clark!The film is a hoot when seen through 2017 eyes of someone who grew up in Michigan during the 60's and 70's. I may not have been in San Fran but I certainly knew some of the characters in the movie. Most of them wanted to spend their lives tripping and going to Grateful Dead shows. As may be expected they are also the people who now have a need for serious dental work later in life...but can't afford to pay for it.The dialog is so accurate it is amazing. There is also decades later irony in such statements as Jack Nicholson uttering about San Fran something like "You don't need any bread around here...almost everything is free." My Goodness...Can you imagine what would happen if you transported such a hippie to modern San Fran where it costs a fortune just pay the monthly rent???? This movie documents that San Francisco has now become everything that the hippies in 1969 abhorred!! The house they live in is like straight out of Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat. "We all lived together and balled together and everyone got the crabs." Well...they don't get the crabs in Psych Out...but they should have! :)Then...later in the film...Bruce Dern appears as The Seeker! OMG...he is magnificent as the character! Another psycho played wonderfully by Mr. Dern!Lastly...look up the movie poster art. The art is incredible period piece material. The art is truly Movie Poster material when movie posters were "7-UP Uncola Hippie R Rated Style" productions. Psych Out is a hoot. I am stunned...as a movie buff...that I had never heard of it. It isn't earth shattering material. While hokey in many parts it still presents a pretty accurate view of what acid heads really were like.

Psych-Out, yeah, that's a pretty accurate title for an art movie of this kind.I saw this movie with a couple of friends, and we all had a ball. If I would see this movie again, it would be under the influence of something a bit more "psych", although some scenes in the movie could freak you out..If you like new "stoner movies" like Half Baked and such, I recommend you to watch this movie. Because I feel that this movie has probably been an inspiration to those movies. What I'm talking about is the dialog. The camera-job on the other hand, is a work of art i've never seen before. They have managed to make it look like a documentary, which was good for me that's born in the 80s and never got to experience the crazy 60s in San Fransisco. But for heavenly waters, Do Not Watch This Movie like it have a good storyline, No!! Just watch it completely wasted and enjoy the ride!

This cool, little movie (directed by Richard Rush of Stunt Man fame) stars Susan Strasberg (good actress; daughter of Lee); she hung out with all these cool nobodies (then) as a deaf chick on Haight_Ashbury streets looking for her older brother (Bruce Dern as the Seeker). This is a YEAR befor Easy Rider (a great movie) and the plot just rolls in a exploitive-psychelic Roger Corman way that's totally the perfect drive-in movie that is not a realistic hippie, 60's, whatever statement) for 1968. Dean Stockwell plays the cool, cynical head-band dude, Nicholson is Stoney, the level-headed pot-head guitar player, Max Julien as mr. intense, Henry Jaglom as the "artist" and The Strawberry Alarm Clock" first hit single (with a real plot) on location, and then Bruce Dern later in the film, while Strasberg carries the story (deaf); It's totally cool. I assume everybody hip as scene this Universal film by now, no matter what you're into.Check this flick (It blows away The Wild Angels and other cool exploitation films by the youth movement, even then);along with Hell's Angels on Wheels (Jack Nicholson and Sabrina Scharf - from Easy Rider) as one of the few films made on the Haight - realism would come later; like a year later because of Hopper, Fonda and, well ...you know.

I stumbled on this film purely by chance at an all- nighter in London some time in the early seventies.It was wedged between half a dozen or so cheapo -flicks on what was ostensibly billed as a Horror session,the remainder of which I am unable to recall, as from the very onset of the opening credits all that preceded was forgotten.My initial response to the film was pitched somewhere between amusement at what I believed to be absurd inaccuracies in the presentation of the subject matter,and a curious sense of admiration for the film,s broadly sympathetic attitude to the Hippie movement.The well drawn characterisation of the film,s main protagonists elevates Psych-Out way above the majority of Exploitation movies,and even the brutal editing of the version released on DVD cannot detract from the cinematographic excellence of Lazlo Kovacs. The passage of time has enabled me to view the film more objectively,and to re-evaluate what I once held to be its most obvious flaws.Firstly,to make a genuinely accurate Picture about Hippies would have been nigh on impossible for most commercial film makers at the time,as the majority of Heads(we never called ourselves Hippies)would have refused to be drawn into such a production.It is no small thing that none of premier league SF groups of the day(The Grateful Dead,Jefferson Airplane,Country Joe and the Fish etc)appear in Psych-Out,and that the audience at the Mumblin' Jim gigs seem for the most part to consist of office workers on a lunch-time break,hurriedly attired for the event in day-glo tunics,with just the odd genuine longhair thrown in.The thirty-something actors,resplendent in their dubious hairpieces, seem uncomfortable as aspiring Rock musicians(with hindsight it is probable that their preferences lay more with modern jazz)this notwithstanding,the film did somehow manage to convey more than a germ of truth about the times.In the characters of Dave and Stoney we encounter the conflict between the psychedelic visionary and the more pragmatic dilettante(shades of Syd Barrett v Roger waters),and in Steve(The Seeker)a prototype Charles Manson,albeit a more benevolent one.Dean Stockwell for me steals the film,an even more complex character than Steve,he is blessed with all the best lines and even manages to bow out with an heroic death as the film arrives at it's 'mindblowing'conclusion.I think Psych-Out is a little gem of a film,and while it contains much that will amuse,there is also much to admire.