Hallucination Generation (1966)

A rare drugsploitation classic from small, independent shop – Trans American Films. The script veers away from usual West/East Coast setting, proposing Ibiza filled with black-dressed beatniks instead, who are heavily into drugs – LSD, weed, heroin, seconal... anything goes. Young Bill is the center of these titillating exploits hanging around with a gang of freeloaders on his family's tab. A luck dries out though when his auntie flies over from USA and tells him he needs to go on his own straight away. As Bill faces further life in Spain on a shoestring budget, he falls into a deep depression and even starts abusing his Spanish girlfriend. Eventually it comes down to the only solution – getting high and robbing the rich bastards!

An opportunity promptly pops up, when a girlfriend tells him about an older chap in Barcelona, who gets robbed at least once a week and doesn't even need to be held at a gunpoint – a real sucker. That sounds promising, but Bill with his artistic soul and moral dilemmas cannot just go for it. Here, where Eric comes into the game. Being a kind of spiritual godfather of all local beatniks, smuggling and slinging drugs from Morocco and turning everybody on to the tune of "new world is coming, brothers and sisters" rap, he's a perfect man to convince Bill, that it could be safe & clean gig. Eric's persona resembles sort of Timothy Leary and Howard Marks cross – creative in a cheesy way, just try to imagine! He has a girlfriend, who nags him all the time about the cool cats kicking back in their pad, but he doesn't give a shit getting around anyway.



While Eric advises heroin and LSD as a way to expand your consciousness (whou would coin such a gibberish in 1966?), he cannot sell the word to Bill, who basically likes to get high on weed and is afraid to get hooked on hard stuff. But when poor boy eventually breaks down from all the misery, Eric will pour a kool-aid down his throat effectively brainwashing his mind and tuning it to the crime note – he'd like his share after old man is shaved off. Still high on LSD, Bill and his friend get down to it, but the trip goes South and becomes a terrifying ride! What a bummer, man! Although I wouldn't consider this dumb flick by any means essential for 60's exploitation fans, the addicts should try to check it out, even if solely for "believe me, revolution is coming" wacky type of dialogue lines.

"Hallucination Generation" has an interesting pre-hippiesploitation feel as well – the last of retarded ones sort of vibe – cause who's been doing beatnik B-movies at this point? It features occasional 60's garage music and offers some lousy, cheapish visuals, particularly when LSD is kicking Bill's neurons, but on the top it's shot in black & white, which retains some vintage appeal. However, do not expect nothing but a drugsploitation drivel, no cinematic fireworks and definitely no nudity. If you manage to sit back and relax, you'll catch some laughable scenes, but that's it! Who would watch any of those ones seriously anyway? Acting is not that bad and these beautiful beaches or night lights of Barcelona somehow do the job. Edward Mann, who directed the movie, was kind of a minor cult individual for American experimental theater and that's a real news. The framing seems also very peculiar for a B-movie with long, dynamic shots, inevitably picturesque or even romantic if you like.

[The movie can be purchased from Cinema de Bizarre]

Django (1966)

A man from nowhere, wearing black, wades through the desert dragging a coffin tied up to his belt. As he approaches three stubborn vigilantes, preparing to execute a beautiful woman, he decides to free her by killing all of them with a lightning speed of his colt… that’s how legendary "Django" starring young Franco Nero begins. A picture shot on a very low budget and joke of a script by Sergio Corbucci has become since a top cult spaghetti western and one of the most famous genre movies ever. Following the success of Sergio Leone’s trilogy, it spawned more than 30 spinoffs in the next two years… and after amost 50 years came back short-circuiting Quentin Tarantino’s wires, who just went into production of his new film – "Django Unchained" (to be released December, 2012).

One of the reasons why popularity of this movie went through the roof at the time of it’s release was an unprecedented spill of sheer, cinematic violence... cause when Django finally opens his coffin, he pulls out a sucker-killing-hell-of-a-heavy-machine-gun, which becomes THE TOOL of delivering justice to a bunch of KKK crooks, who beforehand took over a small western town using excessive force. When you see a first bullet fired you just cannot help but ask (and I did too, really) how Corbucci ever managed to knock out such a crackpot idea? Django’s body count hits 84 in about two minutes – not even Corman’s 70’s jungle movies were able to do that sequentially – becoming the highest movie overkill scene for another decade... and there’s still a famous cutting off an ear scene with a neat zoom on a knife ripping through the flesh and the blood dripping. It’s all anchored in pure exploitation realm!



Although for the last 50 years our tolerance for film violence has raised much and "Django" is a piece of cake now getting 15 rating at most in most of the Western countries – not without the help of 70’s & 80’s exploitation cinema – in 1966 it was a much more shocking experience for the viewers, which nonetheless tapped very accurately into Baby Boomers’ state of mind. A revolution was in the air, the violence has become a fact of everyday life and the counterculture wanted to bring the old world to it’s knees. Django was a perfect personification! He was doin’ it with his monster machine gun getting as close to the militant dreams as it was possible on the screen. We might say he preceded the facts of life, cause when the Weathermen started waging their war against the system in 1968 – they did it with an equal faith in their unstoppable force.

However, when Arhur Penn’s auteur flick, "Bonnie and Clyde" with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway was released in the USA next year to a mixed reception – older cinema goers were puzzled by lack of moral judgement in film’s narration – it’s characters couldn’t even come near Django’s DIY implications. One of the directors who tried to match movie’s success, was Lucio Fulci. He shot his "Massacre Time" (Italian title: "Le colt cantarono la morte e fu... tempo di massacro") with Franco Nero the same year "Django" was made, but although he incorporated as much bestiality as he could in this western, he simply accomplished a higher value product. His story breaks down as a twisted show of human cruelty involving much more complex actor’s creations than we find in "Django", which if we take away all the shooting, comes simply as a tale of a drifting gunslinger, who goes after easy cash… while his exploits are supported by a wicked soundtrack theme – a crucial point for many fans.

Although "Django" was definitely a breakthrough for Corbucci and for Nero respectively – not saying that Ruggero Deodato working here as a second unit director made his way in as well – it was their later collaboration to up the hidden, artistic potential of the genre. Movies such as "The Mercenary" (1968) or "Companeros" (1970) were beautifully directed pictures with a complex, continually swinging intrigue and fascinating action twists. These amazing spaghetti westerns are filled with peculiar humour and countercultural musings, most often supported by Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks. If we are to compare "Django" with these ones or with dark pieces like "Big Silence" (1968) starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski, sandbox play rather comes to mind. If anybody seriously claims "Django" to be the best spaghetti western ever made, I’d suggest watching few other movies of Corbucci before irreversibly settling on that.

Full movie

The Wild Angels (1966)

How corny a Corman’s movie may be, you can go and figure yourself by watching couple of his worst pictures. Did you see "Naked Paradise" (1956), "The Terror" (1963) or "Gas-s-s" (1970)? No? Well, don’t try if you’re not a die-hard fan. As Dennis Hopper said, Corman was never a good director, but he was great to discover talent in other people. At least you cannot go wrong by claiming that to be true as his disciples grew tall with time and their pictures beat Corman’s efforts to death. What can we say then about The Wild Angels (1966), a movie made in fifteen days for $360.000, which grossed about $10.000.000 in the box office? A picture invited to a screening at 27th Venice International Film Festival, which eventually won an award in Cannes? Cheap piece of trash that started a completely new class of B-movie – biker flick, which proved to be the most profitable exploitation genre ever?

Frankly, I have a little problem with all these golden letters as The Wild Angels stands for me as one of the worst movies Corman ever made. It’s supposed to be a gruesome story of a biker gang getting their kicks from violence and torture – as the trailer sings – but divorced from the moral stiffness of the middle 60’s, when it was seen as a strong statement, it comes now as a laughing pot. In a whole movie there are only two moments, which even now might seem interesting. First one is the beginning, when Blues takes his chopper out… while next door mom is chasing her small child on a bicycle frightened for it’s life. And there it goes, we hear frenetic riffs of Blues Theme by Davie Allan & The Arrows while Blues is hitting the highway (to be honest, you need to check the soundtrack better than film)! When he finally gets off his bike, the magic moment ends! Second one is the church bash in the end of the movie, nice mash-up of flying legs and religious blasphemy. Other than that, we watch mainly a cheesy biker melodrama with swastikas and subpar acting… yeah, the acting, I almost forgot!



We definitely have to check the acting and the other work behind the movie. Screenplay written by Chuck Griffith, eventually rewritten by Peter Bogdanovich is a piece of garbage pulp – you can hardly come across so poorly drawned characters in any exploitation movie. It practically abandons any idea of personality at all proposing instead a comic strip Blues character (played by Peter Fonda) and his barbie girlfriend (played by Nancy Sinatra). None of these acting creations are worth longer review – they suck as hell! In fact, the worst comes when we have to see them speaking as Fonda is pretty all right just sitting there and getting tanned. But when he gets to make a speech like the one in the church: We wanna be free to ride, we wanna be free to do our own thing… you feel like caught between a talking dog and door-to-door salesman, which makes it pretty hard to handle.

The Wild Angels is one of these bad AIP exploitation flicks and I’m not making a sales pitch here for the diggers – pure form without a meaning (bravo Roger, you’ve made it again). In fact the only worse biker movies I saw in my life are: "The Hellcats" (1967) and "Rebel Rousers" (1970), can you imagine? Anyway, let’s not argue with the box office as the movie was a storm back then and it made Peter Fonda a star giving him basic concept of the "Easy Rider" as well. However, if you really want to dig into some nice biker matter, go for "Hell’s Belles" (1969), "The Born Losers" (1967) or "The Glory Stompers" (1968) instead of losing your time on this one.