A group of former college buddies find the drug experimentation of their youth in the 60's coming back at them in a scary manner. Those who dabbled in a psychedelic drug called Blue Sunshine now find themselves experiencing severe hair loss and homicidal urges, resulting in a series of murders. One of the old gang becomes a chief suspect in the killings and so sets out investigating the case.
This is one of those movies which sounds like it is going to be brilliant ahead of seeing it, with its bald-headed maniacs quite a striking idea. In truth it doesn't quite measure up to its potential if I am honest. Yet it remains an interesting effort which has garnered a cult following or sorts. It combines several topical ideas of the 70's in a fairly original way with drug paranoia, political cynicism and the fall-out of the counter-culture all meeting head-on here. In some respects, this one feels not entirely dissimilar to the types of movies David Cronenberg was making at the same time as this. Although it definitely lacks Cronenberg's focus and intelligent approach. Nevertheless, it does generate some memorable scenes such as the sequence where a baby-sitter pursues a couple of young children while brandishing a large kitchen knife (a scene where the real parents of the children thought was so disturbing that they removed the kids from the production forthwith, resulting in their voices having to be dubbed rather unconvincingly), while there is also the opening attack sequence too, where a man goes berserk, killing three women at a party, going as far as to throw one of them into a lit fireplace. Generally speaking, the idea of the bald lunatics is a good one though, and one which I am sure was even more potent in the 70's which clearly was a 'hair decade' - full-on baldness was no doubt 'a bit weird' in those days. Essentially, the concept of bad LSD leading to homicidal ex-hippies was very good though, even if the film ends on something of an anti-climax, which suggested that the production may have run out of money and had to wrap things up with text-on-screen. But despite issues such as this, I would certainly label Blue Sunshine as a movie well worth catching if you are interested in cult 70's horror or films which have a counter-cultural element.
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