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LSD

Film poster for The Trip (1967)

see also: 1967 - drugs in film - LSD - Roger Corman

The Acid Eaters (1968) - Byron Mabe
Tagline: The film of anti-social significance.


images from here.

Psych-Out (1968) - Richard Rush [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psych-Out [Aug 2005]

LSD - 1968 - drug films

Albert Hofmann

I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain inrelief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. what had caused this condition? - - Albert Hofmann - - Laboratory Notes (1943)

Acid [...]

LSD Films

Excerpt from Genre Articles: LSD Films

From Incredibly Strange Films

Drugs have long been a favorite topic of exploitation films. They allow the filmmaker to include the seamiest kinds of sex and violence, while maintaining a façade of moral righteousness and social concern. Drug movies date back to the silent film era, when cocaine was still a new thrill and opium was smoked in the hidden dens of Chinatown.

Regardless of the drug involved, the plots of most of these films follow a general pattern: young Dick and Jane are nagged by their "friends" to try a certain drug that is "the rage." Being "good kids," Dick and Jane resist at first but eventually yield to peer pressure, resulting in the total destruction of their lives. The classic example of this plot is Reefer Madness.

In the mid sixties, when the world at large discovered the joys of LSD, people said they saw monsters, flew to the moon and touched the hand of God. Filmmakers attempting to recreate these images came up with a wildly creative new movie style that could be termed "garage surrealism." Fisheye lenses, painted women, op-art patterns and multiple exposures became de rigeuer for any film illustrating the effects of acid.

Once the drug became a household word, there was no stopping filmmakers from exploring its possibilities. In The Acid Eaters, a gang of office workers shed their establishment guises every weekend and hit the road in search of cheap thrills. Their quest is finally fulfilled in the form of a fifty-foot tower of LSD!

The Weird World of LSD also examined—purportedly—the dangers of LSD, but lacked funds for much in the way of special effects. In one scene, a man hallucinating that he's flying on the wings of a great bird is shown lying on a couch, grimacing madly, as a crude drawing of a chicken is superimposed over the scene!

The mind-altering potential of LSD provoked much speculation: what secret depravities hidden in the libido might be released? In Alice in Acidland, a young woman discovers the joys of lesbian sex after taking the drug. In Wanda (The Sadistic Hypnotist) , lesbians again get the treatment, this time as sadomasochist leather freaks who have the tables turned on them after being forced to take the drug.

The best "trip" movie is also the best known: Roger Corman's classic The Trip. Written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper (acidheads all), The Trip chronicled the adventures of a young director of TV commercials who, feeling that his life has no meaning, takes a hefty dose of LSD and spends the rest of the film hallucinating his brain away. Corman, to better understand the subject, actually took acid before making the film. Along with 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Trip became required viewing for anyone into LSD. -- Jim Morton, Incredibly Strange Films (1986)

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond - Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain

  • Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond - Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain [Amazon.com]
    This one caught me by surprise. It's not the stuffy this-is-all-the-bad-stuff-that-happened textbook I expected, but rather a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable study of LSD and the CIA's role in the cultural and political maelstrom of the 1960s. Over the past thirty years, from Watergate to Zippergate, Americans have learned that their government is capable of some pretty amazing shenanigans. That helps what we read in this book seem more plausible. What Lee and Shlain document in Acid Dreams, with an impressive volume of research, is the CIA's enormous effort to develop mind-control methods. These included various psychedelic drugs--with LSD topping the list--hypnosis, and more. The potential uses of such control range from military to civilian--and to downright bizarre. For example, they discuss the unresolved question--in some minds--of whether Sirhan Sirhan was actually a CIA-created murdering automaton, a drug-and-hypnosis-induced killer, programmed to kill Robert Kennedy.
    Some the things they reveal are far-fetched and may be impossible to ever prove one way or another, but there's plenty more that is incontrovertible. And everything in the book is interesting. Acid Dreams adds a fresh and wonderful perspective on this aspect of our recent history. A more recent book called "Hepcats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams," provides a complimentary education on this topic, covering a broader history of illegal drugs throughout America's past. Readers who enjoy Acid Dreams may want to follow up with this one.--Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead for amazon.com

    Psych-Out / The Trip (1968/1967) - Richard Rush/Roger Corman

    1. Psych-Out / The Trip (1968/1967) - Richard Rush/Roger Corman [Amazon US]
      The "best" trip movie is also the best known: Roger Corman's classic The Trip. Written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper (acidheads all), The Trip chronicled the adventures of a young director of TV commercials who, feeling that his life has no meaning, takes a hefty dose of LSD and spends the rest of the film hallucinating his brain away. Corman, to better understand the subject, actually took acid before making the film. Along with 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Trip became required viewing for anyone into LSD. -- Jim Morton

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