Premonition (1972)

Best movie ever!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This enigma has heart. Humble start, following a folk minstrel, who then breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience. A truly astounding desert expedition sequence, mainly due to the eerie soundtrack. Strange dreams. Touching moments. A ridiculous post-Woodstock music rave. The only complaints I have are (1) it's padded, and (2) the ending simply trails off, notwithstanding a standard double-ending.Re padding, a bit much repetitive squabbling. Re the ending, this is where I took away points. I really believed the end of the world was nigh throughout, so I was taken aback when Andy was so easily dispatched and that was that. But then comes the double-ending, an announcer building up some tension about further deaths, and finally we find the flowers proliferating, as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and so forth. That part seemed tacked on as a nod to propriety, but without that ending there would be a dull thud.

I know that Alan Rudolph disowns his first two low-budget horror movies "Premonition" and "Barn of the Naked Dead",but the premise of "Premonition" is certainly fresh and interesting.Red flowers cause three hippie musicians to have premonitions when they see their own deaths.They then start dying in the manner of their earlier premonitions.Virtually forgotten "Premonition" offers some eerie hallucinations and visions.The storyline is often disjointed and the hippie culture of early 70's is well-captured.Very eerie electro score is another highlight of trippy "Premonition".So if you enjoyed "Barn of the Naked Dead" like I did don't hesitate to check out Alan Rudolph's psychedelic debut.7 red flowers out of 10.

A sidestepped horror film mostly noted as an early effort from Alan Rudolph, PREMONITION is a hazy, mystical horror outing which involves a hippie music group taking residence in the pastoral outlands of the San Francisco Bay Area. Various interpersonal hostilities are vented, and numerous doobies passed around before they begin experiencing collective nightmares/hallucinations of impending doom. It's implied that this is a paranormal brain response triggered by exposure to strange red wildflowers, though there may be some nebulous connection to a malformed skeleton unearthed by one of the band members during an archaeological excavation some years earlier.PREMONITION is a distinctly early-70s product, alight with post-psychedelic artistic pushiness and intermittent brushes of electronic music by pre-famed Harold Budd. It's an ambling, occasionally intriguing work of psychotomimetic vagary, and probably too experimental and ambiguous for mainstream audience appreciation. While the film has definite handicaps, primarily with pacing and concatenation, it does possess a gauzy "will-o'-the-wisp" eeriness which is unique and variably effective.Possibly the most tranquil horror film you'll ever see...it's a peculiar one, to be sure. 4.5/10

I found a VHS copy of this film for the equivalent of 50c when I was a kid at a junk sale with the title "Tales of Terror - The Impure - Wild Rider" and it became a mystery to be unravelled for this particular small town boy from England. It seemed so strange and other-worldy. The film itself is a hippie-fied self indulgent psychedelic mess but is entertaining all the same, especialy the freak out festival scene. This got played in the background at more than a few parties of my youth. I always wondered who would make and appear in such a film and now thanks to imdb I know. It was sad to hear Carl Crow drowned in 1978.But I'm interested to find out more about what the rest of the cast went on to. Be warned the electronic music which starts up when the deadly flower comes into view and that accompanies a lot of the dream sequences is very annoying to 21st century ears. That said your chances of finding a copy of this film and seeing it or of reading this review are pretty slim.