Review of Psych-Out (1968) by Trevor A — 17 Feb 2008

A young girl Jenny ( Susan Strasberg) runs away to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury hippie district looking for her missing brother. Jenny is an outsider and is the innocent, she is also deaf and seems lost but then she is befriended by Stoney (Jack Nicholson ) and his band 'Mumblin Jim'. So it really is the opportunity for lots of scenes of hippie commune living and night clubs with psychedelic light shows and music. Dean Stockwell plays Dave and I can't get over how young he looks in this film, he is kind of like unrecognizable with his long hair and hair band! Bruce Dern is there also as the girl's brother, who seems to have spent too much time on acid and spent some of his time annoying the local thugs, who for some reasons (which isn't made clear) want to get him.Yes, it is dated, that is why I like it. It's all very colourful and the hippies seem all lovely and happy. There is a moral code about relationships and love, running through the film, as Dean Stockwell plays off Jack Nicholson by goading his relationship with Jenny with his 'hippie' morality. Stoney doesn't do relationships but he soon cares for Jenny within the progress of the film. This is a hollywood film capturing San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and its Hippie, free loving community in the late 1960s but The film does have some wonderful scenes of that area during that time of flower power. The film loosely has a message and shows people on hallucinating drugs such as STP and the bad effects which can happen. Such as,when Warren (Henry Jaglom) is 'freaking out' and seeing his friends as zombies and then looking at his mummified hand and wanting to slice it off. Jenny, finally takes drugs and runs out into the city and not really understanding what she has taken, she starts to have a bad trip and is very close to being killed or injured until Stoney can find her. The band members, while searching for Jenny's brother known as the Seeker, bump into the gang of louts who attack them and attempt to rape Jenny. The hippies fight back and win to protect their new friend. An entertaining film, dated because of the characters and situation, but also with a clear educational tale every now again within its plot about hallucinogenic drugs.

But Jack Nicholson can' t mime all that well with a guitar, but he did look kind of groovy!