Like the previous year’s Wild In The Streets, Psych Out! (1968) was an attempt by Hollywood to understand the hordes of flower children cluttering up Sunset Strip, with their dirty hair, ludicrous pants and crazy ideas about the Vietnam War. And like its predecessor, it would do little to reassure parents and politicians that psychedelia was just an innocent youth craze, for behind the bright colours and mellow sounds there was a darker, more sinister side.
Jenny Davis (Susan Strasberg) quite literally stops traffic as she hops off the bus onto the streets of San Francisco: she’s deaf and can’t hear the honking horns of frustrated drivers. Having run away from home to look for her brother Steve (Bruce Dern), she falls under the guardianship of ‘Stoney’ (Jack Nicholson) a pony-tailed musician who initiates her into a world of sex, drugs and rock’n'roll where even the clothes on your back are “free” for the taking. We learn that Steve has undergone something of a religious transformation since coming to SF and that his new age ramblings have not gone unnoticed. A gang of local toughs are hell-bent on knocking some sense into the young visionary …
Director Richard Rush had already worked with Nicholson on Hell’s Angels on Wheels, a so-so biker flick notable for using real gang members in the cast, including the notorious Sonny Barger. Like that film’s panic around the perceived social threat of motorcycle gangs, Psych Out! concerns itself with other hot issues of the day, not least drug use and the problem of teenage runaways.
Nicholson may make for an odd hippy - then so did Charles Manson - but his character is more hard-nosed than the others, prepared to put his band and music before the feelings of others. In the role of ‘Dave’ (far out, man!), Dean Stockwell acts as Stoney’s moral barometer, always questioning his motivations and exposing the hypocrisy in the reality rather than the rhetoric of the scene. Strasberg is suitably wide-eyed and curious before the puerility and squalor of her situation begins to sink in.
The film has a bad rep according to some other web pundits, but I find it a serious-minded and fairly accurate snapshot of the period - at least through 21st century eyes. The portrayal of drug use is surprisingly casual, even by today’s standards and there is an attempt (albeit a particularly odd one in this instance) at explaining why so many kids from all over America ran away to the big city. And whether by accident or design, Psych Out! fails to dispel the notion that the hippy dream failed to tackle the gender imbalance, its women having little to do except in the bedroom or kitchen.
Laszlo Kovaks successfully captures the colours and spirit of Haight Ashbury, as well as some eerily effective bad trip sequences. A fine soundtrack (including on-screen appearances from The Strawberry Alarm Clock and the mighty Seeds) make for a worthwhile 90 minutes spent among the counter-culture.
Leave a Reply