This film remains on the festival circuit, which will possibly feed it's cult status. I caught up with a new cut at the London Sci-Fi film festival in May 2012. Those interested in the science fiction of Philip K. Dick should try to track it down. It is hardly an 'adaptation' of Dick's last novel, Radio Free Albemuth -- it's more a direct transcription of it. That's a pretty tall order, given that it features interstellar communications from an extraterrestrial god called VALIS, who beams down messages from an orbiting satellite, through visions and portentous dreams. This really happened to him in 1974, so Philip Dick claimed (after years of amphetamine abuse and mental anguish), and he spent the last ten years of his life writing about VALIS. Perhaps the only way to treat this material is to accept Dick's version of events and replay it with a straight face. This is what the film-makers do. Some of it is uneven, some of it is constrained by budget, but it remains an authentic Phildickian experience. Best is the way this druggy 70s Californian counter-cultural novel is slyly updated: the vision of America as a near fascist state, ruled by volunteer morality squads (and by mandatory punishment of those it perceives as 'subversives') has provocative things to say about Bush-era Republicanism and Tea Party moralising. Chase it down!
Review of Radio Free Albemuth
