DVD: The Weird World Of LSD directed by Robert Ground (1967)

Well here's a movie on which every expense was spared. Shot in black and white and silently, jazz and narration were dubbed on at the editing stage. It opens with a man allegedly under the influence of LSD hallucinating a cartoon chicken; and this looks like what it is, no-budget FX. Some trippy effects using solarisation follow. Like wow! It would have probably looked great if I'd been on acid too but unfortunately I wasn't; I used to watch films while tripping but to be honest it seems to defeat the purpose of viewing them. My celluloid tripping started when as a teenager I decided I had to see "Birth Of A Nation" since it was a cinematic milestone that established many movie conventions, but at the same time I didn't want to expose myself to racist shit which I knew in advance the film to be full of; so in the end I decided it would be okay to go to a screening if I dropped a couple of tabs before I arrived. And I can assure you the movie was seriously weird.

Anyway, I digress, returning to "The Weird World Of LSD" it next shows a fully dressed girl on a made up bed playing with some kittens, the soundtrack tells us that under the influence of acid the girl believes she is a cat. Yikes! There are shots of a girl in a swimming pool, she gets out and hangs around with some showroom dummies, the narrator informs us that under the influence of LSD this girl believes the dummies are alive; one is alive, it appears to be an actor.The girl then returns to the pool to cool off. A man runs down the street, a dubbed on voice tells us that under the influence of LSD he's become paranoid. A fat man eats a turkey for dinner, the narrator tells us that the man we're watching is a 350 pound art dealer whose cravings are stimulated by LSD but remain unsatisfied. Like has the bozo who made this ever tried eating a meal while tripping?. My experience is that the food texture becomes so intense that it's impossible to chow.

Moving on, two girls have a cat fight, a voice opines that LSD is responsible for the violence. A girl sitting in a cafe booth pulls out a pair of scissors and starts cutting her clothes off, she even stands on the table and cuts one of the straps on her bra once she's got down to her underwear (but we don't get to see her boobies); the narrator insists she is doing this under the influence of LSD and that her fiancee is appalled. Personally I was delighted, since I found this to be the best sequence in the movie, like Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" done as a burlesque is seriously far out. A headline saying something like "Man Commits Suicide Under LSD" is splashed across the screen; this is followed by shots of candles, a few rubber masks, a couple of girls, faces are pulled and an axe hacks at some limbs. A man lies with his face in a pile of photographs, he claws at the pictures with his hands, the narration explains LSD causes him to suffer from unfulfilling sexual fantasies. A dancer does a strip but only down to her bikini. She does the splits. I sat watching and wondered why I was never able to do the splits perfectly after I took acid. The same dancer in a different costume writhes on a bed, gets up and prances about with some flowers. The narrator opines that there is a link between repressed sexuality and violence. We see some stock footage of drag racing, this and the strip scenes look like they've been lifted from other movies.

A man looks at a river, then runs through a forest, he does some paddling then lies down and throws dirt and leaves over his face; the narrator makes some moralistic comment about the perils of LSD use, but to me this looks more like cod performance art than drug induced bad craziness (it actually looks very much like a COUM Transmissions live art image from a few years later). A girl drops acid and the narrator jealously observes that this cutie immediately felt compelled to have sex with the man who gave her the tab; eventually her date catches up with them, kills his love rival and threatens the girl. The moral is then spelled out: - LSD doesn't enable users to escape the realities that menace them. Thankfully that pretty much finishes the film. My copy of "The Weird World Of LSD" appears to be a Something Weird DVD-R release; but since I got it on Ebay it may also be something the seller was duping extra copies of for their own profit (it was certainly cheap). Anyway, once the words "The End" came up over a monstrous body in a coffin, there followed a fabulous psychedelic montage with flashes of full body nudity; and this couldn't possibly have been made by Robert Ground. What it was I don't know, but if anyone can tell me please use the web form on here. And don't forget kids, taking acid is actually a lot better than watching this movie - so don't do it, don't pour money into the coffers of the anti-drug racketeers; be sensible and drop a tab instead!

Psychedelic Art & 1960s London Drug Culture

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