Blue Sunshine
1978
Jeff Lieberman
Jerry Zipkin (Zalmon King) is attending a swinging 1970s party. A man who's been singing for the party-goers accidentally gets his hairpiece removed. He's completely bald underneath, and a moment later starts tearing through the crowd murdering everyone. Jerry is the only survivor thanks to a well-timed semi. The authorities blame him for the deaths, and he goes on the run to uncover a conspiracy involving a strain of LSD called Blue Sunshine and an up and coming politician. All over the country seemingly normal people are becoming hairless psychopaths, and it a seems to tie in with something that happened ten years prior.
Blue Sunshine has a lot of potential with its body horror, conspiracy, and hyper-violence, but it is never able to rise above feeling like a TV movie. Much of that has to do with the flat inexpensive way it’s shot, but just as much blame lies on the weird overwrought performance of Zalmon King. It feels like he should be strutting around a soap opera set rather than a weirdo drug horror movie. Still, the horror of inevitably succumbing to a youthful indiscretion is potent and it is almost strong enough to carry the entire movie by itself. There’s also a note of satire as these products of the idealistic 1960s are transformed into marauding psychopaths in the disillusioned 1970s. There’s something really interesting and compelling at the core of Blue Sunshine, but it requires the viewer to be very forgiving of its faults, and do a lot of digging beneath the surface.
Today's Really Quite Tasty Trip:
Blue Sunshine Nachos
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