By John Seal

April 2, 2003

If you take a look at the picture to the right of this paragraph, you'll see stacks of white tubs. This is a portion of my decades old video collection (otherwise known as The Bane of Lexy's Existence) which resides cheek by jowl with the water heater in the family basement. Inside those tubs are hundreds of forgotten films: spaghetti westerns, black action flicks, horror movies, martial arts epics, art-house oddities, Eurotrash effluvia, and exploitation films of all varieties. These are the films that TV used to fill the wee hours with before infomercials squeezed them out. The video boom of the 1980s briefly kept them in the public eye, but now they lie neglected, no longer fit even for Blockbuster, Sam Goody, or Hollywood Video. This column will try to rekindle some memories whilst focusing some attention on films that deserve a better fate than to simply disintegrate on rapidly decaying magnetic tape. It's my belief that even the worst films need to be preserved in the best condition possible, and with that in mind I will also discuss the possibilities of DVD rehabilitation for each featured title. And with no further ado, let's dip into the archives…

Hallucination Generation(1966 USA) The story: Billy Williams is an American drifter on the Balaeric island of Ibiza. When his mother cuts off his money, he turns to drugs and crime to make ends meet.

The film: Drugs bad! Exploitation of drugs good! That's about the extent of the message of Hallucination Generation, a film so low on the cinema totem pole that it never received a legitimate video release. The copy I'm reviewing seems to have been culled from a theatrical master. The film is in decent condition but was shot in a muddy brown tint, perhaps to showcase the colour sequences towards the end that represent the psychedelic trip sequences. This was a typical low-budget trick of the late 60s, also used in films like Mantis In Lace and the infamous Alice In Acidland. Those films also relied on copious amounts of female nudity, a trait missing from Hallucination Generation, though there are some bare female backs hinting at orgiastic pleasures to come.

The brown tint also made me wonder at first if this had been shot in the Philippines, as star George Montgomery spent several years there in the early 60s and other Filipino films-such as Vampire Men of the Lost Planet--also used tinting to supply an otherworldly atmosphere. It becomes obvious pretty rapidly that this was shot on location in Ibiza, which is one of the few things to recommend about this film. Montgomery is the star in more respects than one, playing Eric, a sleazy and manipulative pharmaceuticals expert who likes to mix 'n' match drug concoctions for his fawning band of losers. He introduces us to the acronym HOME, which stands for Heroin, Opium, Marijuana, and Ephedrin (!), and has all the good lines in the film ("the universe is a jawbreaker!"). Clocking in at 86:26, this seems to be a complete print.

The cast and crew: George Montgomery had been an A- star in 50s Hollywood, earning a good living making westerns like Seminole Uprising and Black Patch. He relocated to South East Asia during the early 60s for a series of war movies and then moved on to the lucrative Euro-film market. Danny Stone, who plays down-on-his-luck Billy Williams, seems to have been a genuine drifter, only making one other film in Spain before hanging up his acting spurs. He's actually the best thing about the film, looking a little like a young Bob Dylan. The rest of the cast seem to be part-timers or amateurs, too, the only exception being the acting-impaired Renate Kasche, a young woman who went on to appear in German sex comedies such as Don't Get Your Knickers In A Twist, Frauleins In Uniform, and Son of Hitler. Director Santos Alcocer was strictly grade 'C' material, his only other claim to fame being director for Boris Karloff's swan-song Cauldron of Blood. The rest of the crew is equally un-noteworthy. Cinematographer Francisco Sempere delivers some good Stan Brakhage style 'trip' sequences which rely more on camera trickery than the silly fantasy sequences that propped up bigger-budgeted American films like The Trip. Composer Bernardo Segall went on to score episodes of Columbo, but his music here is so bland I assumed at first it was library recordings.

Nostalgia value: It's 1966, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is not dead yet. In fact he was still firmly in charge, which probably explains why everything about this film seems to have been set in a world 5 to 10 years earlier. The junkies and hippies look more like refugees from Greenwich Village circa 1959, the debauchery is decidedly PG-13, and the ladies keep their clothes on. There are a couple of terrific examples of mid-60s beat music-the first performed by an anonymous group wearing 1963 period Beatle suits. I was reminded of my family's holiday in Ibiza in 1967. I don't recall seeing any potheads.

The print: It looks good, but as mentioned earlier is tinted a horrible muddy brown. If you can get over that distraction, you'll get a few cheap thrills from the proceedings. The film looks like it was shot full-frame or 1:1.66 at best-a few shots are poorly framed but may be the result of inadequate talent behind the camera.

DVD prognosis: If the even tamer Hooked Generation can get a release, so can this. Something Weird is the obvious choice to do the job.

Ratings:

Film: C+. With a little more money it could have looked a whole lot better.

Print: C. Extremely ugly thanks to the tinting, but otherwise very nice.

DVD worthiness: C-. The presence of Montgomery elevates this from a failing grade and it would be nice to see the psychedelic sequences restored to whatever glory they may have once possessed.