Halloween Horrorfest 2018: BLUE SUNSHINE (1977)

So our final stop on the Halloween Horrorfest, based on the Back From The Dead Grand Finale Poll, is this low-budget cautionary tale on the horrors of Bad LSD.  Those of you who raved about Drive Angry when I first started this journey cannot tell me you didn’t have plenty of chances to vote for it--you had four times in the regular poll, the Grand Finale and The Special CAR-Nage Poll.

Watching this again--I’ve owned a copy of it for some time now--I’m struck by how this really isn’t a pure horror film.  Oh, it’s considered a horror movie.  Google the title, and they all refer to it as a horror movie.  But it’s obvious to me that writer/director Jeff Lieberman wanted to make a political thriller in the tradition of such joints as The Parallax View.  The low-budget nature of the artifact (I’ve seen some articles refer to it as ‘TV-movie grade’) is obvious, but you can tell from the shot choices, the pacing and the procedural nature of the script that Lieberman was interested in Making a Statement and Opening Our Minds, Man.  That’s why there’s loads of time devoted to Zalman King (who would go on to create Red Shoes Diaries) doing what is a dunderheadly bad job at investigating these bizarre murders where people lose all their hair and go crazy.

And one of the things that really makes this film so watchable is how weird our hero is.  As Jerry ‘Zippy’ Zipkin, King is a twitchy type who has a habit of getting real intense, sometimes shouting, with people he needs cooperation from.  When he interacts with his...girlfriend?...Alicia (played by Deborah Winters), it’s particularly strange because when they’re not kissing we find out she’s just as strident as he is.  Jerry bulls around California and pretty much accomplishes nothing.  Even at the end, where Leiberman informs us about other potential Blue Sunshine Victims throughout the country, it’s made very clear that his efforts to expose the situation are for naught.

There are three Blue Sunshine attacks, and a fourth done through presenting the after-effects while the audio plays; the implication is that Jerry is envisioning the crime in his head, a rather odd choice given the otherwise straightforward narrative.  The problem with these attacks is that they’re kind of silly--someone pulls at a Blue Sunshiner’s hair, causing the whole damn thing come off as if it’s a wig or, in the case of one woman, she pulls the hair off herself.  Leiberman makes a big deal out of focusing on our victim’s bulging eyes as if they’re terrifying, but they’re really not.  There’s also the fact that Leiberman apparently didn’t believe in reshoots, which results in one scene where a menaced child giggles while reciting ‘You’re hurting me’ in a tone of voice that implies she’s enjoying a game of Let’s Pretend.

I am marginally going to recommend this film.  It’s not very good,

and it’s not bad in the lunatic, energetic way The Howling II is.  But it’s a strange sort of curiosity, partially because of King’s performance and partially because its nihilism and political leanings are so specifically 70‘s that it’s a great artifact of its time.

Since I am now done with the journey I started on October 1st, I am going to take a brief vacation from thinking about films, and about horror films in general.  However, as I enjoyed the randomness of the Daily Movie Poll, what I’m thinking of doing is a Bi-Weekly Poll where you can choose something for me to watch.  In my head, I may take four movies at random from a certain year and have you vote.  Tell me your thoughts on this idea and maybe we’ll meet again soon.