Psych-Out *** (1968, Susan Strasberg, Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Adam Roarke, Max Julien, Henry Jaglom) – Classic Movie Review 3868

‘These are the PLEASURE LOVERS! They’ll ask for a dime with hungry eyes… but they’ll give you love– for NOTHING!’ Or maybe this sells it better: ‘Hear Incense & Peppermints by the Strawberry Alarm Clock’.

Director Richard Rush’s flashy 1968 counterculture-era psychedelic movie Psych-Out stars Susan Strasberg as Jenny Davis, a deaf runaway in search of her missing brother Steve Davis (Bruce Dern). She arrives in the Haight-Ashbury hippie district of San Francisco, and becomes part of Stoney (Jack Nicholson)’s trashy psychedelic pop band, Mumblin’ Jim, in Sixties California.

Rush’s film is an intriguing, cultish parade of some of the psychedelic counter-culture and some of the icons of the Swinging Sixties era. And it looks pretty far out too, thanks to cinematographer László Kovács’s camerawork in Pathécolor. It was made by Dick Clark Productions for just $200,000 and, when released by American International Pictures, was a nice little earner.

Susan Strasberg is top star and Nicholson is the movie’s leading man despite being billed under the film’s supporting role player Dean Stockwell, with Den fourth.

An uncredited Jack Nicholson, E Hunter Willett (screenplay and story), Betty Tusher (screenplay and story) and Betty Ulius (screenplay) write this exploitation movie, contrasting the gentle hippies with the violent wrinklies. Dean Stockwell plays a flower-power person called Dave and Adam Roarke, star of Rush’s Hells Angels on Wheels and The Savage Seven, plays Ben, another of the band members, along with Elwood (Max Julien). Directors Henry Jaglom and Garry Marshall play Warren and plain-clothes man.

Also in the cast are Linda Gaye Scott, I J Jefferson, Tommy Flanders, Ken Scott, Geoffrey Stevens, Susan Bushman, John Cardos, Madgal Dean, William Gerrity, Robert Kelljan, Gary Kent, Beatriz Montell, David Morick, Walter Wanderley and Barbara London, and Strawberry Alarm Clock as Themselves.

Rush thought Nicholson’s script was too experimental for mainstream cinema, so Willett, Tusher and Ulius developed the concept of a youth film based in San Francisco and dealing with flower power and drugs. Nicholson ended up with no screen credit as writer but still with the role he had written for himself as Stoney.

Psych-Out is directed by Richard Rush, runs 101 minutes, is made by Dick Clark Productions, is released by American International Pictures, is written by E Hunter Willett, Betty Ulius, Betty Tusher and Jack Nicholson, is shot in Pathécolor by Laszlo Kovacs, is produced by Dick Clark, is scored by Ronald Stein and is designed by Leon Erickson.

Rush and Nicholson also made Too Soon to Love (1960) and Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) together.

Dick Clark said he insisted the film has an anti-drug message ‘because I’d seen the kids in the hippie commune living in awful squalor.’ He noted in 1976: ‘If you saw it today you’d say it was a reasonably accurate account of what was going on then.’

Originally called The Love Children, the film has its title changed when test audiences thought it was ‘a film about bastards’. AIP’s Samuel Z Arkoff came up with the Psych-Out title after a re-release of Psycho.

Rush’s cut was 101 minutes but it was edited to 82 minutes by the producers for cinema and eventual DVD releases. The 101-minute Director’s Cut was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 17 February 2015.

Most of the songs were performed by the Storybook, a local band from the San Fernando Valley, but not mentioned on movie posters and articles.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3868
Check out more reviews on: derekwinnert.com