Marcell Jankovics kicks ass and comes from Hungary. His Fehérlófia aka Son of the White Mare is quite a jewel among the videos posted here so far, because it is a feature length animation done in non-stop psychedelic style! Playlist link.
A more recent feature by Jankovics, Ének a csodaszarvasról / Song of the Miraculous Hind (2002), has shamanic episodes, which are done in a style that reminds me of Huichol art. The Youtube version has sucky picture quality and no subtitles, but if you’re not put off by this you can find the rest of the movie by clicking “Watch in Youtube” and looking at the related videos or in the uploader’s channel.
I’ll cut to the bottom line first: “Psych Out” is one of the best psychedelic films of the sixties. Many cheap sensational movies were done about and around psychedelics during the end of the sixties, most of them were using the topic in a sensational way looking for an easy buck, and did not leave much of an impression.
“Psych out”, in contrast, is worth seeing for a few reasons. The first of which would be that it features the young Jack Nicholson who also wrote the script (This was actually Nicholson’s second script to deal with Psychedelics, after 1967’s “The Trip”, with Peter Fonda) which was heavily revised because it was deemed too experimental by the producers.
Secondly, for those interested in 1960s culture, it acts as a rare time capsule of the 1967’s San Francisco and allows a precious glimpse into the world of the hippies at the time: from Free Shops to Guerilla Theater scenes; while trying to deal, at least superficially, with some of the issues of the era like the ideas of ego dissolution, mind expansion and bad trips. Even the talks about the STP-Fright seem highly characteristic of the time and place (STP was a major drug problem in the Haight-Ashbury around the end of 1967).
While the film is not a piece of cheap anti-drug propaganda, it does seem to carry the message that psychedelics are probably the path to your destruction, or are a the very least a very risky business, best left to madmen. It features 2 bad trips and lots of weirded out folk that the film portrays as acid casualties.
Jenny’s bad STP trip, in the closing scene, has nightmarish, acid-horror film qualities, and does a pretty good cinematic work at making the viewer feel what it is like to be on a really bad trip. I won’t tell you the outcome, but if you want to watch the whole movie you can skip this particular one (which contains spoilers) and go to this link on YouTube where you can find the whole thing, divided into 9 parts.
Watching Gaspar Noe’s new film is a death and re-birth experience. definitely the most psychedelic film I’ve ever seen, it’s like going into the mind of another person, and experiencing this conciseness change, from normal to a full-on DMT trip, to a near death experience an beyond. The photography and artistic design are absolutely incredible, I have no idea how most of the scenes were shot.
The THX demo trailer needs not a word to promise us “experience of a different kind”. In a way the psychedelic promise was always present in the way new media and new media technology did connect with our daily lives. It expected us to be longing for “new experience”, “new” in a way you could not have had it before. New technology did kind of guarantee you that it wouldn’t be just more of the “same old”. “New ways of seeing”, “new ways of hearing”! once you had to get lost trying to return home to your wife from a defeated troy, had to keep silent while your friends were eaten by a cyclops and stuff like that before you finally saw things with different eyes. But suddenly in the second half of the 20th century all you had to do was “tune in turn on and drop out.” The subject had changed. Experience had changed, indeed.
Everything is alive! all you ever need is different eyes.
I remembered the idea Terrence Mckenna expressed, about mainstream culture becoming psychedelic because it’s creators are directly influenced by the psychedelic experience, when I saw Jackson’s “Lovely Bones”. Jackson’s most popular films -the Lord Of The Rings series, take place in a fantasy world, and have an according design that is 100% fairytale illustration. the “psychedelic” manifestations in his work are therefor found in other films, where a realistic happening is suddenly juxtaposed with a completely surreal and colorful delirium. this transition from a more or less realistic cinematic expression to a visually packed fantastic one, has more in common with the use of psychedelic drugs than a film that is fantastic from beginning to end. I believe Jackson chose to use visuals that are characteristic of psychedelic trips (ie – the melting background, brighr colors, radiant objects, flying and the intensification of Nature) in places where he wants to depict a liminal state – between life and death, between sanity and psychosis, childhood and adulthood.
At once gritty, whimsical and highly theatrical, Revolution Studios’ Across the Universe is an original movie musical springing from the imagination of renowned director Julie Taymor (Frida, Titus, and the Broadway smash hit musical “The Lion King”) and writers Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais (The Commitments).
A love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock ‘n roll, the film moves from the dockyards of Liverpool to the creative psychedelia of Greenwich Village, from the riot-torn streets of Detroit to the killing fields of Vietnam. The star-crossed lovers, Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), along with a small group of friends and musicians, are swept up into the emerging anti-war and counterculture movements, with “Dr. Robert” (Bono) and “Mr. Kite” (Eddie Izzard) as their guides. Tumultuous forces outside their control ultimately tear the young lovers apart, forcing Jude and Lucy – against all odds – to find their own way back to each other.
Frank Zappa’s 1971 feature film (93 minutes, directed with Tony Palmer) is not for the week at heart: it’s super intensive, slapstick psychedelia with a hardly noticeable plot line to follow – something about a band on an endless crazy tour. Zappa fans love it, to judge from imdb message boards, while the rest render it “unwatchable”; still no one claims to understand it.
200 motels features The Mothers Of Invention (Zappa himself plays a side role as a musician in the band), animation by Charles Swenson, Kieth Moon in drag as a Nun, and Ringo Star as Larry The Dwarf, who pretends to be Frank Zappa.
“Blueberry”, A.K.A “Renegade” (2004) is one of the most psychedelic films I’ve ever seen. It is a rare film which has a trip-like feeling from beginning to end.
This sequence, portraying an Ayahuasca experience undergone by the hero Vincent Cassel near the end of the movie, is one of the most breathtaking depictions of the psychedelic experience ever created. Lo and behold.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 