Kenneth Anger's
'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,'
'Invocation of My Demon Brother,' and
'Lucifer Rising.' I'm a massive fan of, and very influenced by Anger's films and won't even bother to get into why his stuff is so awesome.
Also Ira Cohen's
'Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda.' Kind of a Kenneth Anger rip off, without the magickal symbolism or artistic value. Decadent Gypsy elf-aliens lay around in tents and forests while the camera zooms in and out and distorts everyone's faces liquid style. Pure, pointless late-60s self-indulgence.
Speaking of self-indulgence, there's much worse/better out there to find. I recall one film,
'Rainbow Bridge', which, other than having
a few good Hendrix performances, was for the most part a bunch of fried new agers from some commune in Hawai recording themselves walking through forests to flute music, doing group meditation (on COCAINE), and having group discussions about the impending New Age and communion with our "space brothers." Plus scenes of them smuggling weed in hollowed out surfboards (it was more of a documentary than a movie). If I remember correctly, this bunch were connected to the Sunshine Family, connected to the
Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who were a commune/drug smuggling group out of Laguna responsible for moving a lot of the popular Orange Sunshine acid in So Cal back in the day, who eventually turned into the Hippie Mafia, big time coke smugglers in the 70s (there's a doc
coming out about them that looks interesting btw). These were some of the characters that Leary ended up ratting out later on, so the story goes. My dad actually ran into this crowd back in the early 70s while he was hitchhiking cross-country, and said he camped up with them (Sunshine Family) and the STP Family (an even more degenerate bunch centered around moving STP, a dangerous psychedelic which has since dissapeared) in the mountains of Colorado. He said they were pretty fucked up, snorting paint, getting in fights, and his stay there ended when someone freaked out over a drug deal and started chasing people through the woods with an axe. Bummer. Ironically, a year later, these groups were an integral part in putting together the first Rainbow Gathering, in that same area (I think Table Rock),
Rainbow Gatherings (<omg that clip) since becoming the annual event where all the communes and road culture come together. Been to a few of these and they're simultaniously great/hilariously wacked out (although that clip just makes it look incredibly lame). Acid culture was/is pretty dark.
