Who knows why The Acid Eaters takes its head-scratching detour into low rent psychedelia but maybe moneyman Friedman decided the smart money was in LSD rather than overage JD kicks. Acid head movies started to trickle into American movie theatres mid-decade, with Edward Mann's Spain-set Hallucination Generation (1966), Roger Corman's The Trip, Robert Ground's Florida-shot "documentary" The Weird World of LSD (1967) and Barry Shear's dystopian parable Wild in the Streets (1968), in which the U.S. Congress gets dosed. (Ballyhooist William Castle and scenarist Robb White had sent star Vincent Price on a bad trip in 1959's The Tingler but the experience was strictly academic.) Seemingly improvised on the spot, The Acid Eaters tries to be way out but all violence occurs offscreen, the simulated sex is strictly pants-on and the 62 minute running time is padded with cycling footage backed by the travelogue jazz of William Allen Castleman. The credits are entirely shemped with aliases but stripper Pat Barrington (Mantis in Lace) and stocky Buck Kartalian (Cool Hand Luke) are instantly recognizable.
For all its faults, The Acid Eaters was at least shot in 35mm and looks fantastic on this DVD two-fer even after the distance of almost forty years. Colors (particularly the gang's trademark red tee shirts) are arrestingly vivid and the SoCal landscapes look as fresh as if they had been photographed yesterday. This short feature has been allowed six chapter stops and bootleggers beware the standard frame transfer bears the proprietary Something Weird "bug" throughout.
Alex de Renzy was the head behind Weed (1972), a not-half-bad marijuana documentary that finds the future porn legend on a globetrotting trek to learn the facts about the cultivation of chronic and how it wends its way into the United States. The impetus for the project was the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, chaired by Pennsylvania governor Raymond Shafer (for whom it also bore the name "the Shafer Commission"). Despite the Commission's conclusion that "neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety," then-President Richard Nixon ignored the findings. Drug busts continued unabated, with over 13 million arrested on pot charges between 1972 and 2000. Weed begins inside these dull proceedings, offering a glimpse of the bored participants before heading out of doors to do its own fact-finding on the subject of "killer weed."
De Renzy deserves credit for literally going the distance for his projects, as he stomps through evidence rooms, impound lots and government offices around the world. A former Air Force survival trainer turned porn documentarian (making films about pornography was a way around anti-pornography laws) and later one of the champions of classy, plot-driven adult entertainment, the handsome and charismatic de Renzy turns his camera on himself here as he travels from a Missouri field (where a convivial policeman notes that Mary Jane grows in abundance along the roadsides) to clandestine Mexican pot farms to Vietnam (where pot is cheaper than tobacco), Cambodia (where it is legal) and Nepal. Shot on 16mm, Weeds isn't pretty to look at and the source materials have degraded over the thirty-five years since it was made. While the 97 minute feature lags a bit in its final third, there are many fascinating sidebars (at one point, the convictions of Lt. William Calley, Jr. and Charles Manson are announced over a background radio) and the history of marijuana (originally viewed as a "Mexican problem" of no great concern to White America) is never less than fascinating. Footage of kilos of confiscated weed being burned in industrial incinerators may disturb some viewers.
As stated, Weeds looks every ounce of its thirty-odd years with frame damage throughout. Nonetheless, the transfer is watchable and SWV had encoded it with 11 chapter stops. Included as extras is a pair of mental hygiene shorts that lean heavily on dramatization. Narrated with hip gravitas by a slumming Sal Mineo, LSD: Inspiration or Insanity? (1967) recounts the discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide in 1937 as a possible curative for migraine headaches and its then-contemporary tendency to cause in thrill-seeking young adults "real life permanent, non-psychadelic results." (A simulated LSD freak-out brings to mind the cheezy man-in-a-straightjacket ballyhoo perpetuated by Europix International for their 1973 horror triple bill Orgy of the Living Dead.) More obscure is Charles Davis' A Crutch for All Seasons (1969), which attends the addiction stories of three average Americans (including Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' David Gurian as a gas pump jockey hooked on smack). This "turned-on double feature" is rounded out by trailers for such trippy flicks as The Hard Road (1970), Sign of Aquarius (aka Ghetto Freaks, 1970), Smoke and Flesh (1968) and the retrotitled Have You Ever Been on a Trip?, which depicts its hairy armpit hardcore as a result of LSD insoucience. An image gallery of exploitation promotional artwork is from the collection of the indefatiguable Dave Friedman.
For more information about the double feature of The Acid Eaters & Weed, visit Image Entertainment.
by Richard Harland Smith
