Five Easy Pieces (1970)

One of my all-time personal favourites, "Five Easy Pieces" is an absolutely electrifying drama perfectly summing up bittersweetness of the 60's – a period of irreversible cultural transformation, which changed societies, but individuals even more. This great vision of Bob Rafelson, photographed by Laszlo Kovacs, played out by Jack Nicholson and Karen Black is one of the best, that American auteur cinema has had to offer. Emotionally exuberant picture featuring verbatim acting creations and surprisingly simple story flows high due to masterminded narration, transgressive pacing and spot-on shoots, utilizing non-ordinary angles. It's quasi antic connotations make it a little bit more than just a social critique and it's enigmatic ending embodies all, that truly timeless cinema should be associated with. While this is just one nugget in the epoch's pile of gold, only few 70's artistic flicks matched it with their passion and genuine storytelling qualities.

Bob Rafelson was one of these crucial forces in the late 60's and early 70's American cinema, which later lost their impact and were forgotten, covered up with other names like Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese. Still, he remains one of the most original auteurs and producers, who managed to inject new blood into the Hollywood system. In fact his "Head" (1968) besides casting The Monkees comes as one of the most original, surrealistic romps made in the 60's and although initially flopped, became the ultimate cult movie later on. That's where his collaboration with Jack Nicholson has started, who co-wrote this yummy flick. With "Five Easy Pieces" Rafelson was nominated for Oscar as a director and script writer – he took the first one in glory together with New York Critics Award. This on the other hand leaves me upset about Academy Awards today, won by pictures, which wouldn't probably even take a nomination 30 years before – for which I don't even bother watching them usually – but every time has it's "spirit" and the golden years will rather not come back.

"Five Easy Pieces" is a story of Robert Eroica Dupea, impersonated by Jack Nicholson – a romantic dropout from upper middle class nest of anything but average, classical musicians. Bobby – as we get to know him in the beginning – severed ties with his family and has gone down South to live a life of a physical labourer, moving from job to job, from town to town. Although at some point he's refused to pursue his family's artistic heritage (as his brother and sister did without a blink of an eye), he cannot find peace as a "class refugee", working in the oil fields, bowling, fucking girls and downing beers with his pal. But his girfriend Rayette (Karen Black) seems a perfect symbol of what he desperately struggles to embrace. She's easygoing, warm-hearted and pretty in a way, but brainless and lacking any wider horizons. Confused about his past Bobby plays along, but mixed emotions and guilt of losing the higher ground eventually provoke a fight with his buddy and then with Rayette. In the end he's just a non-committed drifter, who can only keep fear at bay for so long.



One of these days he doesn't want to take it anymore and visits her sister Tita in a recording studio. Narration makes clear, that she's a subpar pianist, but leaving a question about Bobby's talent open. Although she's very happy to see him, she needs to lay a very sad news on her brother. Their father had two strokes recently and doesn't seem to be feeling well. Jerked around by guilt and melancholy, Bobby decides to drive up the country to Washington, to visit his old home and check on his father. Making it a bundle, he decides to leave his girlfriend, but she makes a scene and thus they carry on together. However, he doesn't want to bring Rayette down, ashamed over her working class, non-educated background. Instead he forces her to stay in a cheap motel not far from the island, on which his family's been living.

As Bobby finally arrives, he finds his father terminal and a new tenant at home – a young pianist and his brother's girlfriend. That wakes up a yearning for a new affair as well as natural, musical talent. When he plays beautiful notes of Chopin – while camera rolls over family photos showing him next to his father – his status as the most talented one becomes obvious, explaining uneasy family tension around the life he chose. Although his savage nature and very unpredictable character will be more than a girl can take, Bobby beds her in the course of an action just to find out afterwards, that he's still not a good fit for quiet, classical pianist lifestyle and eventually leave home with Rayette. That leads to an unexpected, beautiful ending, which becomes the most precise depiction of Bobby's hasty, rebelious personality.

Rafelson's work is one of the most important American films ever made, paving the way for Jack Nicholson to the stardom. In "Five Easy Pieces" actor continues, what he started in "Easy Rider" finally breaking free from a burden of secondary roles. Although, we're gonna see Jack Nicholson doing even better (in "Last Detail", "Carnal Knowledge", "King Of Marvin Gardens" or "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"), this is the role to be acknowledged and remembered as it's here, where his pure hysterical energy and talent for bringing out character's metamorphosis got revealed in a raving streak of confrontations. But this masterpiece would never reach this level if not Laszlo Kovacs with his cameraman virtuosity – his total eye is just amazing. Obviously, top-notch screenplay by Rafelson and his clear, artistic vision come on the top, creating a perfectly structured tale with spontaneous narrative curves, invoking profound conflicts of the human nature as well as basic dilemmas of free thinking individuals in a modern, mobile society. This is an obligatory viewing for any serious film buff!

The Terror (1963)

Among many Corman's cult classics "The Terror" occupies a very particular space as the only picture, which took more than three weeks to wrap up. In fact, it took nine months before any editing might have taken place as the story kept missing and missing from the reels, even if five directors were busy closing in on Corman's wacky idea. Have you ever seen a low-budget picture, which can hardly pull off any storyline? Well, meet "The Terror", which doesn't have any plot at all. Basic concept of this legendary gibberish, heavily outlined by the cast, critics and Corman's fans invaded director's brain when he's been finishing the shoot of „The Raven” (1962). He mentions looking at the beautiful, gothic set and feeling kind of upset from a necessity to tear it all down a day after. Thus he got touched by a genie and came up with another movie, which could have been shot over two days, without any need to cut between the scenes to save time by keeping the camera on!

Although one thing he still missed was the screenplay, Corman solved it quickly by calling his fastest writer, Leo Gordon, who eventually agreed to write some loosely linked pages in few days. Director now had a set, very basic story and a cast brought up in a jiffy. Jack Nicholson agreed to play a French Army officer – Duvalier, who wandered off of his regiment along Baltic Sea shoreline during Napoleon's military campaign. Sandra Knight (Jack Nicholson's wife) played Helene, a mysterious ghost dragging him into... that's the problem as nobody knew what exactly. Then there was Boris Karloff as Baron von Leppe, who got paid $30,000 by AIP to commit two more days to next Corman's movie. Finally, the role of his servant was filled by Dick Miller. Eventually it proved to be a rather poor triangle for a thrilling, gothic romp, hence two other characters were created to buzz it up – mysterious mute named Gustav and The Witch. The roles were grabbed by Jonathan Haze and Dorothy Neumann respectively.



As nobody really knew initially what the story was about and what the motivations of their characters were, Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff were forced to stroll around the props for two days occasionally exchanging nonsense lines. After two days shooting Corman had to leave to Europe in a rush, where he was planning to make another quickie, "The Young Racers" (1963). Thus a task of finishing the movie was laid on Francis Ford Coppola, who was to direct exterior scenes linking the castle sequences with another part of the story or more precisely he just had to work up it's foundations. He manged to improve the story though by bringing Duvalier and Helene outside and making them interact, which unfortunately bent it out a little bit, leaving retarded "castle plot" even more problematic.

Confronted with an obvious gap in a storyline and missing more footage Corman gave a camera and some film to his assistant Dennis Jakob – fresh UCLA graduate. But Dennis shot his own movie about a Civil War in three days instead leaving Corman in a real despair. This time Monte Hellman was picked and asked to shoot additional scenes on the cliffs of Palos Verdes. He was happy to do it and filmed everything he was told to, but felt that the scipt should have been changed even more, so promptly rewrote an already messed up story overlapping it with another absurd twist, which made The Witch look for revenge and Gustav talk... but at least he was able now to explain the mystery of this movie to a beat up viewer. While Corman was pondering his long over time project, he figured he needed another man to round up the story by shooting some more footage.

Jack Hill jumped onboard and carried on for a bit, but Corman still needed one more day of filming and this time Jack Nicholson persuaded him he'd do it if everybody was doing it anyway. As the story didn't sparkle anyway – it definitely missed a beat – Corman decided to go for the ultimate twist. Baron was not a Baron, but Eric, witch's son, who took his place long time before by killing him in a duel. Bad news was, the witch didn't know that and tried to kill him all this time by using Duvalier and Helene to drive him completely crazy! As Jack Nicholson said: They don't make movies like The Terror anymore. The movie has become a cult trash since and was featured as a tribute by Corman's pupils in such movies as: "Mean Streets", "Targets" or "Hollywood Boulevard". A real chunk of low-budget movies history, where the movie itself is the least important thing!

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Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

One of these documentaries for which many of us have been sharpening their teeth and ticking days off as DVD release date was coming closer. Although it premiered on Sundance Festival a year ago, not all folks from around the globe could have attended, so instead they were forced to sit on their asses impatiently! As a big fan of Corman I need to say it's value lays mainly in high rollers of Hollywood uttering words of praise for the man, who let them literally be... who's been often their lifeblood. You have to check out Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern or Martin Scorsese who finally confirm, what we've all known but very rarely got admitted loud – Corman's film school has been the main link between 60's exploitation cinema and 70's auteur fireworks being the ground of new artistic forms developed in family environment.

As far as Corman's career is concerned, Alex Stapleton's movie speaks of few facts I wasn't aware. Documentary builds at large upon the story comprehensively told by Corman himself in his great book How I Made Hundred Movies In Hollywood and Never Lost A Dime, which tells you everything you need to know, hence those ones, who've read the book, might find a history of his career (revealed once again) a bit boring. But let's not forget, that there is still a lot of people outside the fandom, who've never heard of Corman or they've just drifted once or twice toward these regions and never really bothered to grab any solid book about the exploitation pope! "Corman's World..." seems to serve this purpose just fine mixing a biographical side with New Horizons office footage and very inspiring interviews with mentioned above and many others like David Carradine, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Allan Arkush, Polly Platt, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda and many more. This list is very impressive itself!

On technical side it's a good job – maybe not ravishing, but all right – and it ticks all the boxes of modern documentary. Posters, trailers and press clipppings are being mixed with cinematic part and laid in simple manner, while narration heads toward tension build-up and eventually brings a climax. The movie seems longer than it really is, but that's due to compact construction. Corman's professional and private life in a pill was definitely a challenge, that's why screen time needed to be sped up multiple times, which reasonably trimmed his legendary 380 productions to 50 essential ones in a flash. Director also opted for leaving off Filipino chapter as that's been nicely exposed in another recent documentary - "Machete Maidens" (2010). Apart of that, we get basic treatment, from Corman's mythical schlock entries like "The Monster From the Ocean Floor" and "The Fast and the Furious", through unforgettable Poe flicks like "House Of Usher" or "Tomb Of Ligeia" (favourite Poe movie of Martin Scorsese) and then "The Terror", "The Wild Angels", "The Trip", and finally to New World Pictures period, when Corman made a fortune on such exploitation classics like "Big Doll House", "Grand Theft Auto", "White Line Fever" or "Death Race 2000" (to name only few).



But it wasn't exactly simplest task to do – covering a story of the guy, who has had three production/distribution companies, discovered 50% of Hollywood's biggest names, totally revolutionized production side of filmmaking, invented a new way of budgeting it, created dozen of exploitation sub-genres from a scratch giving a root to the modern action movie, improved and mastered the art of entertainment marketing (including these famous sticky trailers), took over distribution of European art films on US market in the 70's with profits and on the top directed more than 300 movies himself! Not all of these achievements have been discussed in "Corman's World...", but the most important were licked with clear sense of understanding, many to the credit of former Corman's collaborators and workers.

Saying that we need to stress once again, that Total Documentary on any topic is virtually impossible to score – the more extensive the subject, the more you need to shave it off as pedantic exploration of every single pocket carries a danger of down-playing or even losing the storyline completely. Grabbing all these threads together is hard enough and still it rarely happens on the screen! Making of an excellent documentary is very difficult as it needs a perfect insight! Besides, I'm deeply convinced, that no documentary can match a biography book as the latter one doesn't have time limitations and as a verbal medium cuts the distance to the analytical, left side of your brain. A film is a magic powder and it either turns you on or not – connection is more crucial than fishing it all out!

However, "Corman's World..." does one thing nicely. It creates a sense of slight disappointment in viewer's consciousness by picking the bits of actors talk as far as Corman's critical acclaim is concerned. Above all histories of life with their tutor, they spontaneously come up with one justified question, why he never got Lifetime Achievement Academy Award? And then it goes, smoke disperses while director shows Roger Corman tying his bow tie and heading to the L.A. ceremony, where Quentin Tarantino thanks him in the name of fans from around the world for making such a lot of great movies. He finally gets his official recognition, which he maybe didn't give a shit about, but it instantly cements his life-of-film-art status lifting him up from an underground phenomenon to acknowledged filmmaker of undeniable prestige. The thing is, he never chased for awards as money from his operations was smoothly flowing in, but in the end there are not many guys in this business with similar film score and such a massive worldwide cult. Along the line, this documentary should be treated as a cherry on the top!

Psych-Out (1968)

Right after he wrapped up his biker classic "Hells Angels On Wheels", Richard Rush rushed to the streets of San Francisco to shoot another picture for AIP. This time he was to roll over Height Ashbury district withering counterculture and come up with "Psych-Out" – a cult hippiesploitation flick featuring restless bunch of actors, who at some point jumped onboard and have become AIP regulars due to Roger Corman's talent-spotting eye. It's here, where Rush finally broke through with his underground sensitivity and good nose for subtleties of the counterculture and youth revolution. He is fortunately in debt to the amazing creations he called up to the screen when cast all the best that AIP could have offered. Jack Nicholson, Adam Roarke, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, Dean Stockwell and Max Julien were soon about to become respectable actors with few of these young guns making their way up to the top. We're not gonna exaggerate at all dubbing some of them New Hollywood trademarks. But here all these future stars were still spacing out for nickel'n'dime while being caught by the camera of great Laszlo Kovacs.

A movie was shot in San Francisco with a lot of scenes being filmed at the location, in Height Ashbury or in Golden Gate Park. Although by 1968 Summer Of Love vibe was already gone, the feeling of cosmic change coming has dried and revolutionary heat has given up to the rising depression, it was a perfect time for AIP to cash on hippie-related products, while media was still digesting countercultural agenda, stripping and washing it down for the palate of middle class America. This was a moment when the revolution has slowly, but irreversibly moved toward selling out and all psychedelic groups were suddenly signing to big recording companies like RCA, MGM, Columbia, Capitol or their small, alternative subsidiaries and only few hard liners stayed unaffected. In fact a lot of old hipsters and activists started moving out of Height Ashbury going up the country – mostly to Northern California, where they soon laid a foundation for the biggest, illegal industry in United States – the cannabis growing business! This wave made easier for AIP to pull two classy acts into the movie, a young psychedelic rock group, The Strawberry Alarm Clock and successful garage rock band, The Seeds, thus we watch them both performing on the screen.



Jack Nicholson plays Stoney, a leader and a guitarist of aspiring Height Ashbury garage/psych band – Mumblin' Jim. Kicking back with his buddies (played by Adam Roarke and Max Julien) in a local cafe he accidentally bumps on a deaf girl, Jenny (Susan Strasberg) – a runaway searched by police. While lads provoke a brawl to help her slide off the eyes of the cops, Stoney won't let his one night stand opportunity slip away again when they meet her on the street going around with gig posters. Jenny is a girl with rules though and the most important thing for her is to find the older brother – Steve (Bruce Dern), who's just sent her a postcard with LSD inspired message ("God is well and alive in a sugar cube"). Mumblin' Jim guys will help her out by bringing to the free shop, so she can shake off the remnants of a square life, introducing her to the communal living and the psychedelic scene. Luckily, they'll trace her brother's pad eventually through the acid guru named Dave (Dean Stockwell), who lives in a compact box on the top of the roof, but is apparently into girl's charms. As they find out pretty soon, her brother's nickname is The Seeker and he occurs to be a local mystic, experimental sculptor and a drug burnout... to accomplish the mission they'll need to rumble around with God-loving Americans, meditate on their hang-outs and get through the psychedelic jungle of multiple inner truths.

"Psych-Out" has a general quirky stream dragging on scene after scene and it does follow a simple script saving it from too many loop-holes. Runaway girl, a band rising to local fame, crazy brother hiding around the corner – it all makes sens solely if actors know their lines verbatim, creations are believable and director knows what he's doing. The movie is sort of exploitation with an insight as it borrows from both worlds of cinema – a cheap, slanderous, pass the buck land of cashing on any emerging underground phenomenon there is and emotionally rich, smart driven slope of auteur cinema. Besides top directing by Rush, the movie is soaked in brilliant, electrifying examples of B-movie acting. It's hard to point at a winner here. Dean Stockwell as Dave – an enlightened recluse and acid guru, who doesn't lose any opportunity to clue Stoney in on his square hang-outs and materialistic doings, but still will keep his affinity for the girls... or Jack Nicholson as Stoney himself – a low-down musician with a big heart, driven by his street smarts and psychedelic hip, but boling with rage... or maybe Bruce Dern as The Seeker (Steve) – a down and out acid burnout, usually running around tripping his brain out or ranting insanely in the Golden Gate Park about the need of making love not war. Who knows, man?

Since it's release "Psych-Out" has joined a cult circuit gaining worldwide recognition. There are certain reasons for that as the movie is a hectic romp from beginning till the last cut. It offers some unique, psychedelic camera work by Laszlo Kovacs with his famous lens flare, vision blurring and brilliant close-ups, which kind of invoke the Height Ashbury experience. One of many movies, he definitely lifted up with his original style of photography. This is also fantastic opportunity to check the mentioned cream of a talented breed, who's been wading through AIP many low-budget productions to eventually hit the spot in the late 60's and 70's with classic auteur movies like "Easy Rider", "King Of Marvin Gardens", "The Last Movie", "Coming Home" and many others. Moreover, you get to see Jack Nicholson with a pony tail, playing cover of "Purple Haze", sharing the stage with loud rockin' bands such as The Seeds and The Strawberry Alarm Clock, bashing out their psych/garage hits – both outstanding examples of West Coast late 60's sound, they left some far out albums like "Incense and Peppermints" (1968) and "Web Of Sound" (1966). Undoubtedly a valuable proposition for rabid AIP, Richard Rush or Jack Nicholson followers!

Hells Angels On Wheels (1967)

One of the most famous 60’s biker flicks, still being around due to Jack Nicholson’s leading act and the original Hell’s Angels doing cameo ride while the film credits are rolling. In fact, it was the first feature movie in which Hell’s Angels MC appeared – for about one minute we can clearly see Sonny Barger and the Oakland’s chapter. Directed by Richard Rush, who later scored such cinematic treasures as "Psych-Out" (1968) or "Getting Straight" (1970) and photographed by Laszlo Kovacs (credited in movie as Leslie), who obviously made a great film career later on by delivering a string of top notch movies including contercultural classic "Easy Rider" (1969), "Five Easy Pieces" (1970), "Harold and Maude" (1971) and "Shampoo" (1975), it tapped effortlessly into the youth market. In fact this duo just couldn’t go wrong, hence the effect of their work has retained a minor cult status till today.

When the movie hit US drive-ins in 1967, distributed by AIP, it became a wildly successful endeavour. It got very favourable press reviews praising Nicholson’s role and director’s talent for picturing a society in transition. These opinions even now hold up, but only to a certain point. Rush definitely filled well his drawing, stylishly boiling the biker mixture of violent soul, rebellious attitude and dedication to booze, drugs and sex, but on the other hand became at large limited by the exploitative frame – this was after all nothing more, but a B-movie flash. Jack Nicholson’s acting is fairly correct, but it’s nothing you couldn’t live without as it seems that his smaller role in Monte Hellman’s acid western – "The Shooting" (released the same year) was performed with much more passion and dedication.



However, as a drive-in biker flick "Hells Angels On Wheels" passes full-on, only slightly falling behind such pictures as "The Born Losers" (1967) or "Hell’s Belles" (1969), which are kept in my mind as the best biker movies of the epoch. This is the shit to be recommended to any genre fan as it can hardly do any damage. The script draws a type of middle class dropout & biker – Poet (Jack Nicholson), who works as a gas station attendant, but cannot hold his horses enought o keep the job and casually joins the Hells Angels party when fired over verbal abuse of a customer. Although young and restless, Poet is still kind of uptight, hanging between the world of traditional morality and the revolutionary fire of chopper’s engine. This is spelled out by a biker mama, whom he tries to bed and then convince to drop the club, but who’s too deeply grounded in the violent world of MC to be up for a fresh start with a half-straight chap. Not an unique idea, but good enough for Jack Nicholson’s fans, who will find this role quite similar to his later performance in "Five Easy Pieces".

As the story drags on, we witness random brutality of the MC causing a fatal accident, which becomes a key for the plot. We face police prosecution against the club, we ride through California’s roads and deserts, see a genuine biker wedding and Poet’s biker baptism when he’s accepted as a prospect for the club. Although Poet becomes an officially accepted Hells Angels member eventually, tension he holds on to never goes away though causing open rivalry with club’s prez – Buddy (Adam Roarke) and opening a door to the dramatic finale marked with a nasty cock fight, which leads to a tragedy. The last scene – I need to stress clearly – is a real blunder in my opinion as it's clumsily brushing off this whole edgy vibe built beforehand leaving the viewer crying "why like this?" There are some other equally lame story solutions here, but nothing bugs me like this one.

Nevertheless, the thing worthy a genuine acclaim in "Hells Angels On Wheels" is Kovacs’ cinematography. A fluid, natural and very spot-on frames keep you in all the time. A real artist’s eye gives you the right perspective no matter if it’s a bar brawl, if they’re choppers riding in lines or intimate moments of the main characters. Although this was a time when Kovacs started getting weary of shooting exploitation movies, he gave them all he got anyway, for which these few pictures are so rewarding and easily separable from the concurrent, but sloppily made low budget lot. As the legend says, this movie became Sonny Barger’s favourite biker flick at that time. We might only wonder if he changed his mind after scoring "The Hells Angels '69" two years later?

The Trip (1967)

If you never heard about "The Trip", but psychedelic drugs are something you understand and you’ve been into, it’s definitely a movie for you – checking it out it will be like getting a proper flashback (lucky you). If you occupy the other side of the barricade thinking that drugs are bad, that you have to be a degenerate to mess with them, that people taking LSD get loco and hear voices, which make them jump from the nearest roof, don’t watch it, it’s not gonna be funny for you. After all to fully appreciate this cult movie, you need to get heavily loaded. How else are you gonna watch a movie about LSD trip, which is supposed to be real fun? Stone cold sober? Forget it!

Basically, this movie carries a real legend, which breaks down like that. One day Jack Nicholson approached Roger Corman suggesting him shooting a picture dealing exclusively with LSD experience, for which he even managed to cut a screenplay. Corman accepted it objecting only against it’s length, thus quickly rewrote it to make the film easier to produce. As he didn’t know anything about acid at this point, he promptly dropped a sugar cube in Big Sur to check it out – it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t do it before, isn’t it. It gave him a brilliant insight as "The Trip" is one of his best movies ever and could be definitely classified as drugsploitation or hippiesploitation classic.

Not everyone thought it was that awesome in the beginning though! Original cut (85 min.) has never seen the world due to AIP mongers, who messed with Corman's version cutting out the beautiful, transgressive ending! However, even this safe cut was never classified by the MPAA, which means that distribution has become impossible and the print itself was shelved. Then UK film office has followed banning a movie till 2002, which as we might expect totally cut it’s wings in Europe. But what was irreparably wrong in this picture? No violence, no even rough sex… just the fact that a character drops some acid and starts rediscovering the world around him. However, it was seen as drug culture manifesto back then – a hedonistic statement, which potentially might have corrupted the youth. As a matter of fact, due to AIP helping hand it contains one of the funniest disclaimers in film history, but even that didn’t convince the censorship unfortunately. Almost 40 years later it’s been finally released on DVD and got to live a second life.



I personally love this flick, it’s a beautiful work with a whole bunch of surreal scenes, in which main character - Paul Grove sees everything around being totally zonked out of his mind – it almost induces the acid experience itself. Worth mentioning is that the character does not do it recreationally, but as a way of feeling out where to go next (it was a part of the sales pitch back then). He faces a divorce with his wife (Susan Strasberg) and he’s not satisfied with his professional life either while all around his friends freak out and discover their inner child. A movie itself is a showcase of hallucinogenic effects! We get lens flare (the same used later in "Easy Rider" by Dennis Hopper), fantasy sequences, whirling lights and whatnot. Jerky shots of Sunset Strip were directed by Hopper (he plays Max character in the movie) and Fonda definitely knows what he’s doing as an actor. It’s a real sweetness that came our way from Corman!

As a bonus for watching "The Trip" comes fantastic, obscure soundtrack by The Electric Flag (originally released on Sidewalk Records), who recorded it as their first album in ten days session. It can be considered a masterpiece of San Francisco sound! 18 tracks cut were swinging around psychedelic rock, blues, various moods of free jazz and soul. It’s here, where Mike Bloomfield unveiled himself as a genius composer, arranger and one of the up-and-coming guitar talents in USA. The music leads a viewer through all Peter’s acid trip, from the first kick-in through blows of euphoria, paranoia, searching to be saved from bad trip and "circus court" to final wear-off. To imitate peculiar vibe of the acid trip, band used whole set of weird effects including lines played by Paul Beaver on one of the first Moog synthesizers, which were quickly to possess an American psychedelic sound.

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