Released by: Distribpix
Released on: September 20th, 2024.
Director: Raf Mauro
Cast: Alexis Wassel, Don Nevins, Barbara Speigelberg, Carole Trent, John Wonderling, Tom McEntee
Year: 1968
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Blonde On A Bum Trip – Movie Review:
Directed by Raf Mauro and released to theaters in 1968, Blonde On A Bum Trip, shot in and around New York City and Long Island, opens with a crazed drug party before it introduces us to a pretty young woman named Suzanne just as she’s being checked in at a hospital. From here, we flash back to see exactly what happened to her and how as we learn that she has just moved to the big city from her small town to study chemistry at university.
Of course, it isn’t long before this previously morally solid young woman has fallen in with a bad crowd and soon enough, her roommate is using Suzanne’s abilities as a chemist to help make LSD that gets handed out to all their friends. This happens when sleazy Vanessa talks her man, TJ, into making some moves on the naïve small town girl to con her into going along with the plan.
Soon enough, Suzanne is tuning in, turning on and tripping out along with her pals, experiencing strange funhouse style hallucinations and being indoctrinated into the world of free love and fuzz rock. Things, predictably, don’t end well for her.
At a brisk sixty-five minutes in length, Blonde On A Bum Trip is a pretty fascinating artifact from the era in which it was made, an exploitation film dressed up as a drug scare film with roughie elements thrown in for good measure and maximum marketing potential. It’s a reasonably sleazy picture made on a modest budget that doesn’t really throw any surprises at you in turns of where its narrative takes its audience, but it’s got a killer soundtrack featuring contributions from some pretty cool garage rock bands like The E-Types and The Vagrants that work both within the context of the movie and on their own.
Nicely shot in stark black and white, the film boasts solid cinematography to compliment the aforementioned soundtrack. Performances are decent enough, with the cast chewing a little bit of scenery here and there but always playing things completely straight. The film’s exploitation factor is pretty decent, delivering some nudity, a little rough stuff and a weird sex scene towards the end of the film involving a rubber monster mask that is great. By modern standards, it’s tough to take this one especially seriously but Blonde On A Bum Trip is an intriguing, at times even fascinating, product of a bygone era that delivers loads of screwy retro charm.
Blonde On A Bum Trip – Blu-ray Review:
Blonde On A Bum Trip arrives on Blu-ray from Distribpix “newly restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative” and framed at 1.37.1. Picture quality on this release is top notch, with the black and white image showing excellent detail and impressive depth. Contrast always looks spot on, and we get nice, inky blacks, clean whites and a nuanced grayscale covering everything in between. There’s very little print damage here outside of the occasional small white speck that most won’t notice, while the film’s natural grain is retrained. Compression artifacts are never an issue and the picture shows no evidence of noise reduction or edge enhancement.
The 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, which comes with optional subtitles in English only, is also of good quality. The dialogue, essentially narration added in post-production, is clean and clear and the track is properly balanced. The score, which is a big draw here, is appropriately raucous and sounds great. No problems to note here.
Extras start off with and commentary with producer Ed Adlum and director Raf Mauro moderated by Howie Pyro (may he rest in peace). They talk about who did what on the production, their tendency to wear multiple hats and doing what needed to be done, a LOT of details on some of the bands that pop up in the film, what’s happened to some of the people that were involved in the movie since it was made, using art students for extras in the party scenes, connecting with Jack Bravman, financing the film, getting their respective starts in the business, where some of the ideas for the movie came from, shooting the film without permits and dealing with the cops, how they got access to the hospital featured in the movie, memories of working on specific scenes, dealing with some of Andy Warhol’s people and lots more.
A second audio commentary features producer Jack Bravman moderated by Steven Morowitz that lets Bravman talk about what it was like working on this, his first film, how it was backed by a lot of music people, the importance of the soundtrack to the movie’s success, who did what behind the scenes, what some of the people who worked on the movie have done since, how Distribpix came to acquire the movie even though it wasn’t made for them initially, who bankrolled the movie, some of the other films that he’s been involved with, heading out to California to further his work in the industry, some of the legal issues that he ran into, working with Roberta Findlay on a few productions, dealing with the Amero Brothers during the span of his career, how some of the bands that worked on the picture came to be involved, some of the locations used in the movie and other details about his career in filmmaking.
The disc also includes a trio of vintage classroom LSD Scare Films from the Something Weird archive, all offered up in high definition with Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono English language audio (no subtitles for the short films). First up is the twenty-three minute Beyond LSD, which opens with a young man having a freak out in the back of an ambulance while a wonky semi-psychedelic pop song plays over the soundtrack. From here, see a young woman get into a car accident. Then we head back to a party where a live band is playing and then get into the educational stuff as a narrator tells us all about some parents wanting answers for what might make their kids behave the way they do – it’s LSD! A few different vignettes moralizing this all play out as we learn about the horrors of drugs.
Ups/Downs, made by the Encyclopedia Britannica Education Corporation, a run twenty-four minutes that starts off by discussing how society these days wants easy answers as we then witness clips from various commercials for different medicines. We then see how people become addicted to drugs by usually starting off with legally prescribed drugs before moving on to illicit narcotics, how drugs change moods, some of the effects that different drugs have on people that use them, the dangers of pep pills, some of the habits of addicts and some of the crimes that they'll commit to get the drugs they need and other quirks related to drug use.
The final short is the twenty-seven minute LSD-25, made by The San Mateo School District, opens with a drug deal! One guy scores some acid, pays for it and splits, then proceeds to take it. A narrator tells us that very shortly, he'll have no control over his mind. After taking the LSD, he stars at himself in the mirror and then starts to experience some strange hallucinations involving anti-drug psych-rock, trippy colors and bad behavior from various people. It's interesting to watch this one as it is actually narrated from the point of view of the actual LSD.
Finishing up the extras on the disc is an extensive archival image gallery, an original theatrical trailer, menus and chapter selection options.
This release also comes packaged with some reversible cover sleeve art and, if purchased from the Melusine website, spot gloss hard slipcase and slipcover combo, designed by Richard Hilliard, that is limited to 2,000 units. Also included in the hard slipcase is a full color, forty-page book containing a few pieces – first up is ‘Blonde On A Bum Trip: The Ultimate Garage Rock And Roll Movie’ by Howie Pyro, which goes over the songs on the film’s soundtrack, and a piece simply titled ‘Blonde On A Bum Trip’ penned by Something Weird Video’s Lisa Petrucci that goes over the LSD scare film phenomena. A reproduction of the film’s original one sheet is also included, folded up inside the clear keepcase.
Blonde On A Bum Trip - The Final Word:
The Distribpix Blu-ray release of Blonde On A Bum Trip gives this cult classic a long overdue high definition presentation with an excellent transfer, rock solid audio and some great extra features that cover the film’s history and that of those who worked on it. Highly recommended!
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