jlgAltman BLUE SUNSHINE Heaven. Simply Heaven. BLUE SUNSHINE is most certainly the first film to slaughter and criticize the boomer, yuppie generation. 1968: A group of Stanford students drop the eponymous acid. Flash forward. 1978: Now professionals living in LA, one by one their hair starts falling out and they become mass murderers! No I am not making this up. Devilishly wonderful with one of the most bizarre performances this side of 1960s Marlon Brando. Zalman King, who later became a noted softcore porn producer, is so bizarre in the central role that in one very serious scene he appears to be sniffing another actors neck. BLUE SUNSHINE is just that kind of movie--an odd delight and a perfect double feature with ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO.

utgard14 Checked it out because it was directed by Jeff Lieberman, director of a great underrated slasher called Just Before Dawn. It stars Zalman King. Yeah, the Red Shoe Diaries guy. King plays Jerry Zipkin, who is accused of murdering his friends. But it really wasn't him, it was another guy who lost his hair and went psycho due to some bad LSD (Blue Sunshine) that they all took years before. Zipkin pretty much makes every wrong decision you can possibly make and gets himself deeper and deeper into trouble. The plot is ridiculous and it's hard not to laugh at the bald killers when they trip out and kill people. The sight is pretty silly. Still, Lieberman manages to overcome this and provide some nice atmosphere and genuinely creepy moments. But yes, there's also plenty of unintentionally funny stuff: "We want Dr. Pepper," "If you jerk it won't work," and my personal favorite scene when the sad sack junkie watches Zipkin run away with his money.Also worth mentioning is that the music that is played whenever someone "freaks out" is very similar to the music that was used in Friday the 13th a few years later. All in all, Blue Sunshine is an interesting cheapie that should appeal to most genre fans. There's a sort of Larry Cohenesque quality about it.

ShadeGrenade In 1967, at the height of the Summer Of Love, a new strain of L.S.D. - Blue Sunshine - became popular among drug-taking students at Stanford University. Edward Flemming ( Mark Goddard, of the 'Lost In Space' television series ) made money selling the stuff but sensibly did not take it himself. Its horrific side-effects only kick in ten years later. The users go bald ( women included ) in the blink of an eye, grow sensitive to loud noises, their eyeballs roll in their sockets, and they get the crazy urge to kill! First victim is Frannie Scott ( Richard Crystal ) who goes berserk at a party in a log cabin, hurling three young women into a blazing fire. Jerry Zipkin ( Zalman King ) is blamed for the killings. To clear his name, he teams up with Alicia Sweeney ( Deborah Winters ). Finding a poster of Flemming in the studio of one of the Blue Sunshine victims, he goes to see the man himself. The ex-drug dealer is now running for Congress! Not wishing to see his seedy past raked up at such a delicate time, he tells Zipkin to keep away from him. But Ed's campaign manager - Wayne Mulligan ( Ray Young ) was also a Blue Sunshine taker, and begins exhibiting the first signs of madness...Written and directed by Jeff Liebermann, also responsible for cult horror movies 'Squirm' ( 1976 ) - not one to see if you've just had a spaghetti lunch - and 'Dead Before Dawn' ( 1981 ). 'Blue Sunshine' has an original idea at its core, and the shocks and scares are well coordinated. Wendy Flemming ( Ann Cooper ) goes nuts while baby sitting two children, and her creeping up on them with a knife is a very Hitchcockian image indeed. How rare to see a horror picture with a strong anti-drugs message. There's an air of melancholia to the story, as it effectively mourns the end of the hippie generation. Hero Zalman King makes a refreshing change from the usual handsome hunks who grace these sorts of pictures, looking as he does like the late comedian Charlie Callas. Goddard is slimy enough to be completely credible as a Senator! Some have commented on the 'rushed' ending. I for one think it better to have an ending like that, rather than one of those protracted 'Friday The 13th' style finales in which the killer won't stay dead. They just are not very believable. I would have liked Flemming to have been creamed by Wayne though.If the idea of bald psychos on the loose strikes you as absurd, well yes it is. But 'Blue Sunshine' is one hell of a scary film. You'll never look at Ross Kemp in quite the same way again.

wickscherrycoke-1 I saw this movie over twenty years ago, back when CBS showed late night movies instead of Letterman et al. I thought it was the worst, most poorly produced and thought-out movie ever. Nothing I have seen since has caused me to change my mind. It does not even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. My roommate and I were ridiculing almost every aspect of this disaster.One example: the drug at issue, "Blue Sunshine," supposedly made the victim's hair fall out. The "falling out" consisted of the victim's entire head of hair coming off, all at once, in one piece -- obviously a wig being pulled off. The movie did not so much come to a logical end as, suddenly, the camera pulls back and announces that the movie is over.I remember that the closing credits announced that the film had been produced by "The Blue Sunshine Corporation," leading me to suspect that it was a tax loss project designed to be bad, a la the plot of The Producers. If so, it succeeded.