MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Now some men goes for women, and some men goes for boys. But my love's warm and beautiful, and makes a baah-ing noise."

Click here to reveal the title ...

Our word-model today is Elyse Knox.

Ah, the old scratching under your bra-strap with a gun barrel move.

Hot!

And I've learned to expect nothing less from the actress who gave us a wonderful rendition of Fiona Volpe in "Thunderball."

What more can you ask for than ...

• Suz herself, as angelic-cute as ever, in a "stranger in a strange land" hipsploitation tale about a flower girl searching for her disaffected artist brother in San Fran during the long, hot Summer of Love hangover. It started in '67, but ended when? Around 1970? The opening credit sequence itself is a superbly compressed picto-poem of that space and place, a groovy time capsule all snappily shot in and around Golden Gate Park. Dig the lingering shots of Suz's exquisite bone structure, those wide eyes, and raven tresses as she looks through the window of a passing Greyhound at all the Scott Mackenzie street-life. Such sun-stroked Polaroid Swinger imagery of a post-teenage dream to die for. Where have all the girls that I can share my contempt for the establishment with gone? Seems like only yesterday that Suz was picking watermelons with Bill Holden in "Picnic" ... and don't forget her in "Scream of Fear" as the sexiest wheelchair-bound babe ever.
  
  
• The tagline ... "Taste a Moment of Madness ... Listen to the Sound of Purple." Hmmmm ... not now, I'm busy tasting Susan's mini-skirt and listening to my pockets tighten. Did I mention how cute she is in this thing? There's this one camera shot, looking down, of her looking up at Jack Nicholson, with whom she's falling crazy in love ... the look of pure adoration on her face is marvelous. Every guy should catch a chick lookin' at him like that at least once in their lives. Hopefully, around 9 o'clock tonight.
  
  
• A world in which every letter "O" is tag-turned into a peace sign! Endearingly phantasmagorical! (As the Lucky Charms Leprechaun might say, after a few hits from my boiled-chimp-skull-from-'Nam bong, that is.)
  
  
• There can never be too much footage of wet-noodle hippie-style dancing. Who deboned the youth of America? And who bought out the inventory of every Chess King store and head shop on the West Coast to outfit the extras? Hubcap medallions and secret belt-buckle pot pipes abound.
  
  
• In-film performances by The Seeds and The Strawberry Alarm Clock (of "Incense and Peppermints" fame), who here get to play their underwhelming ode to psilocybin, "Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow." The Storybook provides the main theme song, which is played over the opening credits. It's a addicting little ditty cleverly called "The Pretty Song from Psych-Out." (Check out the soundtrack here, with a cred to Psychedelic Lion.)
  
  
• Nicholson (as "Stoney"), Bruce Dern, and Dean Stockwell in the same movie, with pre-Easy Rider Jack sporting an obvious clip-on ponytail. Dern — as "The Seeker" — wears a surplus Apache wig that looks like it was found in the back of the "F-Troop" costume trailer, mistaken for a rodent, and beaten with a coal-shovel. He's fond of aphorisms like "God is alive and well in a sugar cube."
  
  
• Dern is a sculptor as well as a seeker ... his medium would seem to be Reynolds Wrap.
  
  
• The script ... it was originally entitled "The Love Children," and written by Nicholson, which producer Samuel Z. Arkoff retitled after test audiences thought they were about to see a movie about "bastards" (er ... children born out of wedlock).
  
  
• Jack faking his way through something that sounds like "Purple Haze" played backwards, yet his fingers never move ... he's the leader of the band "Mumblin' Jim," a group on the verge of success whose guitars magically strum themselves. The rest of the band of non-players is played by Adam Roarke, Max "The Mack" Julien, and Henry Jaglom (the future director).
  
  
• Stockwell as a love guru named Dave who lives free of desire in a shanty on the roof of a building ... free of desire, that is, except for Jenny. He too has an Hekawi wig and headband that makes him look like Tonto. When he gets run down by a car in the film's "drugs are bad" ending, just before he frugs off his mortal coil he gurgles to the camera: "Reality is a deadly place. I hope *this* trip is a good one." Seriously, would you follow anyone named Dave anywhere?
  
  
• Numerous dialogue gems like "It's all just one big plastic hassle," and "the acid has curdled and made you sour."
  
  
• The poster, which clues us into the fact that "These are the PLEASURE LOVERS! They’ll ask for a dime with hungry eyes ... but they’ll give you love — for NOTHING!" Sounds like a good deal to me.
  
  
• A psychedelic outdoor mock funeral in which a chick ends up climbing into the coffin to make out with "the dearly departed" — bed-in, dead-in, what's the difference?
  
  
• Mind-bending set dressing right out of Spencer Gifts — black lights, lava lamps, strobes, and color organs rule the day.
  
  
• The amazing George Barris-built Voxmobile makes it onto one of the film's promotional lobby cards, but disappointingly is nowhere to be found in the final cut. Only the Sixties could produce a combination car and mobile amplifier, with enough inputs for 32 electric guitars ... for when that 8-track just won't do and you need a live band inside your vehicle. Instead, we get some Scooby Doo vans that look like they were painted by Earl Scheib on shrooms. (The car, BTW, was built to promote Vox guitars, and looks like a cross between the Monkeemobile and the Munsters' Drag-u-La.)
  
  
• "The Thousand Shimmering Beads of Innocence" scene — a dreamy, lysergic hand-held wonder courtesy of cinematographer and racking-focus master László Kovacs, which is, unfortunately, slashed on the Midnite Movies DVD. Damn! I just can't get enough of an entire house covered in a giant spider web of love beads, with all that free love going on filmed through a quarter-inch of gauze caked with vaseline! Fook!
  
  
• The Maldenless Streets of San Francisco before Zodiac Time ... where "Haight" was love, man. "It's okay. No one has to answer to anyone else — that's what it's all about." Right on!
  
  
• The very idea of painting "LOVE" over "STOP" on stop signs everywhere. And painting other people with ultraviolet paint in a room lit by black light. Me? I was looking for the glowing spots on the carpet where the cat pissed.
  
  
• Guys with Abe Lincoln mutton chops and dirty feet, and the inner knowledge that every inch of their colorful paisley comes with a dose of intense BO.
  
  
• The anti-hippie "junkyard thugs" who seem locked in a cosmic struggle with the flower children. And note that automobile boneyard frequented by those crew-cutted rednecks (the scrapheap of disposable consumerism?) is juxtaposed with the plush crash-pads of the free-love club (a different kind of boneyard to be sure). And there's someone else called "The Man" that figures into these proceedings. And another group allied with "The Man" called "The Fuzz."
  
  
• Great "STP" hallucinations (STP is super-strong LSD; no one was chugging that gasoline additive that Andy Granatelli used to hawk); Jaglom's character has a text-book acid freak-out and imagines all of the people trying to "talk him down" are zombies; then he tries to cut off his own hand with a circular saw because it's melting. Did I mention Jenny vomits motor oil and worms after guzzling some STP-laced punch? Where'd the writers buy these crummy hallucinations? From the writers over at "The Mod Squad"?
  
  
• Enough counterculture fashion clichés to shake a Thai stick at, ranging from macramé headbands to bear-claw necklaces.

Sniff the patchouli!

You mighta guessed that PO is from American International Pictures ... say no more! But, would you be surprised if I told you the production was bank-rolled by Dick Clark Enterprises? Yes, that Dick ... Clark. You know. The World's Oldest Teenager. The host of "American Bandstand" and "New Year's Rockin' Eve." After AIP took all kindsa flak for what was perceived as the glorification of LSD use in 1967's "The Trip," Clark got on board to counter that impression; ergo, "Psych-Out" enters with a trendy bang, but nods out with a "drugs will kill you" whimper.

Sadly, though, I'm now reminded that sweet, sweet Susan died back in '99. What a heart-breaking story hers was. And that, ma' friends, is a post for another day.

Below are a few clips, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, starting with Part I.