I am always a bit of a sucker for any late 60's American counter-culture offerings, so inevitably I picked up this effort from Roger Corman's AIP studios. Turns out it is a psychedelic political satire that doubles up as a teen movie. In it a young pop idol called Max Frost decides to run for president. He and his cohorts put LSD in the Washington D. C. water supply leading to zonked out members of congress voting in favour of his reforms, which include shipping people over 30 off to concentration camps where they will be given daily doses of hallucinogens and lowering the voting age to 14.
Its all pretty ludicrous of course but it works well nowadays as a time-capsule portrait of the west coast counterculture in exaggerated movie form. Needless to say, like many other films in the same bracket, its main strength is its far out late 60's vibes, which include colourful fashions and décor, of-its-time hip talk and psychedelic musical segments. The satire is pretty light-weight and the film overall is a pretty uneven experience but on the whole, it is another effort from the era which gets by primarily on its love generation vibes. My vote is seven lava lamps out of ten.
Its all pretty ludicrous of course but it works well nowadays as a time-capsule portrait of the west coast counterculture in exaggerated movie form. Needless to say, like many other films in the same bracket, its main strength is its far out late 60's vibes, which include colourful fashions and décor, of-its-time hip talk and psychedelic musical segments. The satire is pretty light-weight and the film overall is a pretty uneven experience but on the whole, it is another effort from the era which gets by primarily on its love generation vibes. My vote is seven lava lamps out of ten.