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Psychedelia has made a mark on cinema, with films often called head films whose prime spanned from the late 60s to the mid 70s. Visual abstract films predated the term psychedelic, and scholars credit Disney films, such as Fantasia, Dumbo, and Alice in Wonderland, as animated precursors to the movement. The first real psychedelic film is considered to be the 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, followed by the more explicit and ridiculous The Tingler in 1959. Fun fact: There was a place near my elementary school called the Pleasure Dome that got busted for hosting weird sex parties in the 90s. If you don’t know what that is, I’ll tell you the full story if you join me on the next Wisecrack Live stream. Thursdays at 11AM Pacific Time, log in, get in the chat and say “Michael, what about the Pleasure Dome?”
Things really exploded in the 60s, when Psychedelic movement pioneers like Timothy Leary actively sought to enlist the artistic and intellectual establishment. According to scholar Andrew Derek Cider, the influence of psychedelia can be felt across the full spectrum of film production in the United States, typically being used to evoke the youth counterculture.
Cider argues that the whole of Cinema might be considered psychedelic, as Anthropologist Michael Harner reported that both Ivaro Indians who had seen motion pictures told him that the ayahuasca experiences were comparable to the viewing of films.
The Psychedelic Cinema was born out of the death of the traditional Hollywood studio system, leading to two important trends: the rise of alternative filmmaking that catered to art house and underground cinemas, and the rise of exploitation filmmaking which catered to drive-in movie theaters. These underground cinema movements challenged traditional Hollywood modes of storytelling.
Psychedelic film represented a fusion between the Psychedelic movements and the American New Wave, a space in which Cinema was being used as a tool for exploring psychedelic experience and psychedelic experience was being used as a tool for exploring Cinema. Both movements shared a rejection of hegemonic institutionalized ways of seeing while psychedelia was immensely popular among avant-garde filmmakers like Stan Vander Beek, commercial Hollywood also dabbled, notably via Roger Corman’s 1967 film The Trip co-written by Jack Nicholson.
The Trip pioneered some of the guiding principles of psychedelic filmmaking, such as liquid and carousel projectors, strobe lights, focal changes, superimpositions of bright patterns, unique lenses that distorted space, rapid montage sequences, temporal disorientation, momentary flashbacks, and creative camera movements to simulate the experience of an acid trip. So who would you rather have guide you through an acid trip: Bruce Dern or Dennis Hopper? Let me know in the comments! psychedelic stuff to you
It turned out that the counterculture wasn’t a threat to advertisers or even consumer capitalism; it was an asset. Journalist Lawrence Lipton lamented that, by co-opting the language, slogans, dress, mannerisms, and music of dissent, the Revolutionary cell was designed to disarm descent while at the same time selling the product simultaneously. By 1969, the ad industry was flooded with counterculture and bracing execs wearing flowered jackets and sideburns who said things like (and this is a real quote): “The important thing when you talk to the young is you have to act groovy in your ads, not just say you’re groovy, and never want to get old guys. I never want to get old.” The following year, the New York Times Magazine noted that the pot smoke and art student of 1965 was the pot smoking art director of 1970, and “My God did it show.”
While head movies were past their prime by the mid-70s, psychedelia remained potent in advertising. Midway through the 80s, authors Martin A. Lee and Bruce Schlane commented that many of today’s TV commercials were “more psychedelic than most far-out acid posters of the 1960s.” They noted that psychedelia had even met the military-industrial complex in the strobe-happy Army ads promising, “You can do it in the Army if you want to get psychedelic. Join the Army.” Even into 1997, Thomas Frank noted that Nike’s shoes were sold through the poetry of William S. Burroughs and Iggy Pop, R.J. Reynolds cigarettes were decorated with peace signs, and Ken Kesey’s initial Merry Prankster bus was used to promote Coca-Cola’s Fanta line.
The coolness of the Psychedelic movement that seduced audiences into movie theaters also successfully seduced them into buying, suggesting that, according to Myers, its essence was never truly at odds with commercial culture. Though psychedelia quickly began to taper from its very peak in artistic culture at least by the mid-70s, its lingering effects continued to be felt today. While the prime years of the War on Drugs in the 80s and early 90s meant psychedelics were mostly represented as deadly or crazy-making, the flowering of 90s rave culture and cyber culture, as well as new digital technology, brought the aesthetic back as seen in films like Strange Days and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This movement continued to blossom into the new millennium with The Matrix, as well as electronic music-inspired films like 24 Hour Party People and Party Monster, and later the iconic Enter the Void in 2009, and even later movies like Annihilation and Climax.
When I saw Enter the Void, I got so scared I had to close my eyes, take out my headphones and listen to Bruce Springsteen. True story. Psychedelic visual language continues to permeate even cinema without drug references, ranging from Miyazaki films to Avatar. Church argues that shifts and attitudes towards psychedelics in recent years has coincided with the increased deployment of psychedelic imagery and mainstream narrative film. He adds that most of these films employ the avant-garde possibilities enabled by computer-generated digital imagery, stuff like complex practical forms and deformations of photorealistic images, suggesting that technological shifts are another impetus for this revival of dazzingly abstract, kaleidoscopic imagery and music videos.
Digital imagery reflects, in a new way, psychedelia’s ability to expand sensory perception and create a sense of physical immersion. But what if you’re nostalgic for the original onslaught of psychedelic cinema? According to author and scholar James Reilly, it still remains relevant for filmmakers either trying to evoke the 60s or convey an intense sensory experience. He denotes psychedelic horror as its own genre that absorbs counter-cultural techniques to re-energize the horror genre. Examples range from Mandy to Midsummer.
Editorial note from your bud Michael: Don’t take psychedelics and watch those movies. Any horror movie. Do not take psychedelics. Mandy. Midsummer. Don’t do it. Let them. The movies will do some psychedelic stuff to you.