Like It Is

Sci-fi great Bill Rotsler is also famous for his porn films, and this documentary wisely emphasizes nudity in its survey of the Haight-Ashbury scene.

It's an MOS exercise, with heavy narration track, mainly hippie-dippy types explaining themselves in terms only the late Dennis Hopper could really appreciate, man. One know-it-all young voice-over guy was particularly annoying to me with his snake-oil patter. I wouldn't be surprised if his everything-is-everything approach has been replaced in his middle age by a Tony Robbins-style inspirational spiel -that goes with our bedraggled times.

Rotsler delights in showing us communal living here, with more full-frontal nudity by both sexes than I can remember in many films of this ilk. The DVD box claims this is R-rated but it is most definitely soft-X.

There is some actual docu footage of real hippies at play in parks, but generally Rotsler fakes it for the fans, showing us many of the popular ultra-busty strippers and nude models of the day. Notable is Michelle Angelo, easily recognizable from the neck down in early scenes by virtue of her out-sized dark nipples, and later shown full-body-and-face dancing around with other very lovely girls. One blonde dancer (with a brown bush visible) gets the most attention.

Acid trips are depicted with rather uninteresting visual effects, and some bondage, girls in chains, and skull imagery -all cornball. The required (by genre) body painting segment is unimaginative.

End credits are all drawn on actual objects on the street, with a surprising closeup of humorist Stan Freberg's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, rather than that of a famous actor or actress. I liked that off-the-wall touch.

Interesting film from exploitation director Rotsler. Not as well known but (in my opinion) far superior to his film Mantis in Lace which was also released in 1968. This film is a hybrid documentary of the late 60s hippie culture in Haight-Ashbury and expressionist experimental film that tries to recreate the visuals of a drug trip.

The hippie documentary portion is very, very loose. We just get endless footage of hippies hanging out in S. F., sitting about naked smoking grass, making love, sleeping, eating, doing this, doing that. Meanwhile one person after another goes on about the "hippie lifestyle" in voice-over. Surprisingly, this proves quite interesting. I never got bored.

Then the movie goes into one of its drug trip sequences where we see girls, multiple girls, nude, dancing wildly to frenetic music at various speeds, images overlaid one another placed closer or further away from the viewer, while film, flashing and strobing lights, fireworks, images, and shapes are projected on the walls and on them.

We follow one girl who takes LSD then lays down naked on a couch. Her trip starts out fairly pleasant and fluid before edging into a fear state with candles and skulls floating toward her.

The whole thing is very much like an experimental film but it tends not to be boring. Anyway, I liked it.