Director/Screenplay - Jeff Lieberman

Producer - George Manasse – Future: production manager for 1985’s John & Yoko: A Love Story

 Cast:

Zalman King (Jerry Zipkin) – Future: 91/2 Weeks, Galaxy of Terror, Wild Orchid, Red Shoe Diaries

 Deborah Winters (as Alicia Sweeney, in a sassy Dorothy Hamill hairdo) – Past: The People Next Door

 Robert Walden (David Blume) – Future: Lou Grant, various episodes of Match Game

 Ray Young (Wayne Mulligan) – Past: Coffy  

Charles Siebert - Past - One Day at a Time

Ann Cooper (Wendy Flemming) – Future: The Competition 

While watching Jeff Lieberman’s previous feature, Squirm, I had one of those epiphanies I think all writers and directors and assorted other artistic types have early on in their creative lives.  It occurs when we see something that has somehow achieved a certain level of success, i.e., got made at all, and are suddenly seized with the absolute conviction that we could do better than that.  Thus is our ego fueled, our confidence increased, our inner muse fed a nice big hunk of baked tofu.  We set about the rest of our lives proving that this is so.  Squirm very well might be the first movie I felt the urge to really tee off on; friends, family, and unsuspecting bits of notebook paper soon felt my witty and insightful wrath. Even before I saw any Ed Wood or MST3K, Squirm set me for life as a bad movie fan, and so is a more influential movie on me personally than, say, Citizen Kane.

Now with credit given and karmic dues acknowledged, I move on to Lieberman’s second film, Blue Sunshine.  It’s undeniably more enjoyable and better made than Squirm, and has a great central idea, one of those which make you say, “Damn! I wished I’d thought of that first.”  OK, maybe that’s just me. But how can I resist a movie about a group of former Stanford University students who, ten years after graduation, start going bald and turning into homicidal maniacs as a result of some REALLY bad acid they took while in college?

Unfortunately, the great idea seems to have tapped Lieberman completely, because after setting things up nicely in the first few scenes, the movie just lets go and does nothing with it whatsoever. Logical errors abound. The police instantly assume Zalman King's Jerry made the barbecue-in-a-cabin that starts the movie, but  for a guy on the lam, Jerry doesn't try to keep a very low profile. Later, he ditches his girlfriend (who unconditionally believes him and serves as lackey, even though she'd previously known him all of about 20 seconds) simply by getting on an escalator and ignoring her by reading a newspaper. She, of course, stands at the bottom and screams "I wanna go with you!" but doesn't bother to just step onto the escalator herself. Jerry is also apparently psychic, because he constantly shows up at the homes of people he doesn't know, directly after or just before they go postal. We do find out who sold the stuff in the first place (hint –it’s the white guy), but never find out why the hell it does what it does, or who else it might affect. It can't be a threat to anyone who didn't take it (other than by spontaneous maniac attack), but some of the baldies have children - wouldn't this affect them, too?

“Zalman King. If he isn’t the hottest thing on the tube by this time next year, I’ll eat this entire edition of the Freep, second section, freak sex ads and all, covered with peach butter.”  - Harlan Ellison, The Other Glass Teat, speaking of Zalaman's stint on "The Young Lawyers", 1970

Mmm good, eh Harlan?

One of the things you have to get over to enjoy this movie is the presence of Zalman King in the lead role. Yes, it’s THAT Zalman King (nee' Zalman Lefkovitz – I can’t help it, I just find that funny), producer of crappy pseudo-artistic soft core porn lo unto this very day. I love Harlan Ellison, even at his most curmudgeonly, but the above quote as wrong-headed as it is possible to get. King’s expression-free performance doesn’t ruin the movie, and provides lots of opportunities for yelling at the screen, but it does invite the inquiring mind to wonder how much better it could have been with a human instead of a deciduous tree playing the main character.  Faced with the sight of his friends burning in the fireplace, King makes a mildy irritated expression like one might make if Jehovah's Witnesses were at the door before deciding (slowly) to beat at the roaring fire with a throw pillow - which must be made of asbestos, because it doesn't even get singed. Robert Walden, who CAN act, is trapped in a small role. You would think, given most horror movies' core conservatism, that he would be dead meat the instant he's revealed as someone who sold the devil drug during college to help pay off his med school tuition (the fiend!). But no. Lieberman uses him as a source of background information, then forgets about him. Would have been better all around if the roles had been reversed.  Hell, the kid who plays the gun store clerk shows more pizzazz than King, and is far more believable as a non-woody substance. So is the Barbara Streisand puppet, for that matter.

The ending is utterly useless. Jerry kills yet another maniac, and the film ends. He's still in trouble with the law. He doesn't have any proof. There's no indication Ed Summers sold the acid as some kind of Plot To Take Over the World. It seems to be an accident that all this happened, bolstered by a line of Walden's were he says he never took any of his own acid because (like Forrest Gump) "You never know what you're gonna get.".   Make up your own ending. It will be far more rewarding.

Nevertheless, the movie moves along nicely, is decently shot, and there are some nice touches, like the scene in which one character tells another that the breakup of the Beatles affected her more than her divorce; the girlfriend's discovery of the fact that blaring bad disco music causes the baldies to get one hell of a headache, and good spooky use of a huge blue moon in the opening scenes. (I could be wrong, but didn't Squirm open with a shot of the full moon? Hmm...)

So what does all this have to do with cults? Despite the fact that there is nothing overtly said about Evil Cults in Blue Sunshine, it contains a number of the Evil Cult movie motifs.  

First, the loss of hair. Movies, especially Evil Cult movies, love to equate losing your hair with being sheared of your individuality. They are so sold on this idea that the practice of tonsuring is frequently ascribed to groups whose real-life equivalent does NOT practice it, such as the pseudo-Moonies Nick Mancuso joins in Ticket to Heaven. I do not think it is a coincidence that after The Transformation, all the characters, male and female, look exactly the same (except, unfortunately, for their respective swingin’ 70s wardrobes).  Thus, one of the underlying ‘horrors’ seems to be that not only will the devil drug make you go insane and kill people, but it will also make us all look alike, propounded by anti-Commie flicks and cult movies alike as The Ultimate Evil.  Leave making us all look, dress, and think alike to the armed forces and private schools!

Secondly, after The Transformation, the bald and wide-eyed psychopaths look a great deal like the Manson Family after they all cut off their hair during their trial. These former hippies who change into killers because of the actions of a man with a lust for power, even if he didn't do it on purpose,  is quite obviously supposed to invoke memories of the Manson Bunch.

Third, another one of the unspoken side-effects is that Blue Sunshine also takes away any thought or impulse other than to kill, making all who take it  – you guessed – Mindless Zombies.  Rather quick zombies, but zombies nevertheless. They seem to have no memories of their lives, their friends, or traffic laws (except, oddly, one guy in the very beginning who, despite having gone through The Transformation, is able to act completely normal - until his bald head is exposed. Well, a lot of guys are touchy about hair loss...). They don’t eat or watch TV or go to the bathroom. They are utterly devoted to the One Cause – KILL. Devotion to the One Cause is always a sign of Evil Cultism.  Replace KILL with KRISHNA and think about what a hilarious 70s-era after-school special that would be.