An American Hippie in Israel

Unbelievable. Godawful. Mess. This was (inexplicably) on Turner Classic Movies at 2 am this weekend. Curiosity got the better of me (bad me!) and I tuned in. Hippies obviously wrote(?) this, shot it, directed it, all while stoned. I'm waiting for the MST3000 version, or better yet, for someone to give it the "Rocky Horror audience" treatment. Spoilers will not be part of this review, because it would spoil your lunch/dinner/munchies attack. I haven't been stoned in a good 35 years, so maybe state-dependent learning would come into play, and I'd truly be able to appreciate this ever-loving mess of a movie. I have to write ten lines of review, which is about seven lines more than the script had, or for that matter, the emesis-inducing 1970's rock song that keeps playing through the entire movie.

Very little has been written in English (including on IMDb) about this film that had apparently fallen off the map. Recently, Grindhouse Releasing has acquired prints, with a DVD in the works. HIPPIE has also gone on to become a midnight movie hit in Israel: http://israelity.com/2011/01/09/hippie-sighting-in-israel/

Note: Because the film is so obscure, I have included a much more detailed synopsis of the plot than I normally do. If you want to preserve your innocence about the story, I suggest you skip to the headline - "End of Spoilers" below. But, believe me, the plot synopsis doesn't compare to the experience of watching the film!

************** PLOT SYNOPSIS - SPOILERS **********

AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL (aka THE HITCH-HIKER aka RIGHT ON!). A bearded dude named Mike (Asher Tzarfati) from NYC arrives in Israel without any real plans or friends to stay with. He hitches a ride with a free-spirited Israeli theater actress (Lily Avidan). Mike says that he is traveling the world after having served in the evil Vietnam war with all of it's "Button pushers!" They immediately make love and then set out to find other free spirits. In the course of an afternoon they pick up another hippie couple (Tzila Karney and Shmuel Wolf) who, in turn, hook them up with a larger band of free spirits (the male, Wolf, speaks only Hebrew). They go to an abandoned building to sing some folk songs, smoke weed, drink a lot and start screwing - in other words, an idyllic hippie gathering! Now, it must be noted here that a pair of mysterious white-faced mimes with machine guns are following Mike around. They first appear right as he is picked up hitch-hiking. Now, they show up in the abandoned building and gun down and kill everybody except for Mike, the actress and the first couple they hooked up with.

Bummer. But, this little massacre isn't going to stop Mike. The quartet are now off to a desolate island where they will show the world that you can just be free and happy all day in a commune-like atmosphere. Along the way to the coast-line they pick up a goat at a market and Mike drifts off to nap and daydream (he calls it a "flake out"). His daydream turns into a nightmare as he swings a giant hammer to destroy giant reel-to-reel "computers" in slow motion. Only, the camera director Amos Sefer uses was apparently not able to properly achieve the slow motion effect he wanted so Mike "acts" in slow motion as well! That's amusing, but, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until they get to the island!

After stopping to pick up an inflatable raft and some food and booze, the quartet (and the goat!) paddle out to the island, leaving their car on the shore. That night it's a grand party of food, drink, sex and loud proclamations to the world that they are "FREE! FREE! FREE!" They pass out and wake up the next morning only to find that their raft is missing. Frantically, they search the island, but the boat is gone - and so is the goat! Mike says he can swim well, so he'll just swim to shore and get help. Wouldn't you know it, but, there are sharks in the water! The two big plastic sharks are amusing as they re-appear a few times and always at the same depth in the water and the same distance from each other.

Trapped! The island has no vegetation and apparently the water has no fish save for a few crustaceans (and the sharks), so the quartet immediately switches from idyllic heaven mode to outright panic. Soon, it's "Lord of the Flies" time and the four at each other's throats. And, when I say "soon", I mean in a matter of minutes! Not hours or days! The guys literally turn into cavemen, reduced to grunts and groans and they even grab the women by the hair and jerk them around. Then, the goat shows up. Instead, of joining forces to trap the goat for them all to eat, they bash each other with fists and rocks until they are left in a big heaping pile of humanity. Meanwhile, back at the shore, the two Mimes show up, jump into the quartet's car and drive away.

The End.

******** END OF SPOILERS ********************

Now, if all of that seems like a fairly orderly and scripted film, let me assure you it's not. Save for the last 10 or 15 minutes on the island, everything in the film seems only vaguely written. The actual dialogue seems mainly improvised and the scenes of walking around and driving shamble on and on with a folky muzak backing score. Still, I kind of enjoyed the hippie vibe to a certain extent. It plays out somewhat realistically like it would in life with Mike drifting from place to place (he mentions he had been in Europe, including Rome just before coming to Israel). Of course, nobody really enjoys watching someone else's home movies! The bigger issue is just what message Director Sefer is trying to convey. The movie doesn't make Mike a very sympathetic character, but, it does seem to be in accord with his Anti-Vietnam and free spirit attitudes. It's not really a surprise that even in a movie with a somewhat moralistic 'warning' against the hippie ideal, that the movie itself indulges in nudity, sex and drug use, for many a film going back to Cecil B. DeMille's biblical tales have done so (DeMille always got away with more sinful stuff from the censors because of his biblical themes).

Mike's daydream about raging against the machine ("Button-Pushers!") is also echoed in the two Mimes (Robots, perhaps?), who could be interpreted as representing "The Man". But, the whole 'Lord of the Flies' ending, uh, flies in the face of those themes. Heavy, man.

Have you ever wanted to see what it would have been like if a man LESS talented than Ed Wood had made a Billy Jack movie? No...but apparently someone did and the resulting atrocity, "An American Hippie in Israel" is one of the worst films I've seen...and I've probably seen more bad films than the producers of "MSTK3000"!

The story is mostly nonsense. But from what I was able to gather, an American veteran of the Vietnam war is tired of death and he becomes a hippie who runs away to Israel. Periodically, mime-like white-faced guys in top hats appear and try to kill him or his friends. In one scene, the pair manage to kill EVERYONE but the lead and his three friends...even though they are standing among those gunned down by the white-faced guys. But all he wants is to be happy and live in peace with his new Israeli hippie friends.

This movie is considered one of the worst films ever made and in Israel it's obtained cult status...sort of like "The Room" in the USA. Why? Because although the story is total nonsense, it is clearly the BEST aspect of the movie! The sound mixing is nutty...with either heavyhanded music OR long periods of silence. It seems they had no idea how to use incidental background music! The cinematography is best described as amateurish. And, the acting is beyond amateurish...as amateurs had to be significanty better. The worst of it, however, is that folks keep taking off their clothes. Now you'd THINK this could only improve the movie, but they are so unattractive you feel like yelling at the screen "Put it back on!!!". Yes, these are really, really, REALLY unattractive hippies.

My daughter summed it up best when she said that she much preferred the commercials the Plex channel inserted into the movie. Yes, it's that horrible. But, it might be a good film to watch with friends who like seeing terrible movies...or perhaps not because it rarely is even unintentionally funny. Amazingly, however, it manages to actually be WORSE than any of Ed Wood's films...even "Bride of the Monster" or "Plan 9 From Outer Space".

By the way, it's really sad that the basic plot (which soon gets lost) is actually interesting...a man, tired of death and society choosing to drop out. Too bad it didn't stick to this...or have competent writing, singing, directing, cinematography, editing or acting.

This bizarre movie was made by a former lifeguard turned short film maker, stars fairly good actors (some of whom were stars on the Tel Aviv theater stages for years to come) hamming it up or just given odd direction, has an alright but VERY repetitive score by one of Israel's greatest composers, and contains such unforgettable scenes as the "STOP PUSHING BUTTONS" speech, a psychedelic dream sequence involving smashing giant tape recorder things with a sledgehammer, a hippie-palooza in an abandoned warehouse, random toplessness, cardboard sharks, loooooooooong wandering across desert islands, and the main cast screaming out "Wonderful Feeling!" over and over. The insane ending has to be seen to be believed. If you can get your hands on this film (or if that DVD ever comes out), get some friends over and get ready to riff the hell out of it: this film is plan 9 quality stuff, and I love every minute of it.

I believe that Markastzm's review gets everything right, except one very thing. Indeed, he is correct that the mimes and the sharks both represent "The Man", and also that the film does not refute hippie ideals, but rather shows the unrelenting glee "The Man" takes in squashing those embracing those ideals. Markastzm is wrong, however, when he states that "Neither the characters, the actors, nor the director take themselves too seriously". There is an interview with two of the actors on the blu-ray disc and they indicate that took all of this very seriously, and that - to some extent - they all naively thought they were making a important statement. And it is precisely this that makes this film such a jaw-droppingly WTF oddity. Tedious to no end, but also fun in the right mindset with the right group of friends.