Michael_Elliott
The Hooked Generation (1968) ** (out of 4)Three crooks decide that being the in-between for drug dealers isn't good enough so they end up killing and stealing some drugs from a Cubian drug-lord. After a shoot out with the Coast Guard the three try to make it to the top but things don't go as planned.Here's another extremely low-budget movie from William Grefe that I really wanted to like more than I actually did. As I'm going through the work of Grefe it's easy to see that he had a strong talent even though the films themselves really weren't all that good. These movies have no known casts, no budget and very little else yet Grefe managed to make them somewhat entertaining and at least professional looking. Compare these films to various other exploitation titles from this era and you can see the talent.With that said, THE HOOKED GENERATION starts off pretty good as we get into the double crossing and the ruthlessness of the three goons. None of them are what you'd call likable and I thought this was a good and entertaining approach. The film has some memorable moments but it's bad pacing and extended running time means that we eventually get bored and the final third of the movie is hard to sit through.
dadaurka
I've been searching a long time for this one. And i must say it was disappointing. I thought this was going to be a psychedelic movie, but it has more in common with Italian terror movies from the 70's. The guy who does smack all the time is believable but for the rest....pew....The problem with these films seems to be that they are made by people who never met any hippies and don't know anything about drugs. Just wearing beads and saying things like far-out and groovy just doesn't cut it. I know this one most certainly had a low budget, but how about some research before you start the camera. I'm not American so i don't know if there it was a law against showing people exhale smoke when they smoked a joint. O.k. that's not a biggie, but showing people turning into stupid maniacs maybe worked in movies like Reefer madness when people didn't know anything. But in 1968. I got the same feeling watching this one as one of those stupid education films. Nice to see them being released though. If you like good Vs evil this one might be a good low budget flick. But if you're looking for psychedelia be careful.
Poison-River
This is actually a pretty solid little drive-in filler, that is better than it really ought to be.The only real problem that I have with the film is that I find the three main protagonists(Acid, Daisey and Dum-dum) to be three of the most loathsome individuals in the annals of exploitation movies. The cold-blooded manner in which they strangle, harpoon, humiliate, rape and especially shoot people(mostly innocents) is pretty difficult to take over the 90 minutes and can make the movie a pretty nihilistic experience. However, all of this does mean that when they are eventually killed themselves, it's almost a blessed release.The film's plus-points are that it is pretty well acted, although the actor playing the perpetually stoned Acid does obviously have to ham it up a bit in order to appear out of it. The film also has a pretty good psychedelic acid-drenched guitar score. Also, when Acid is gunned down and killed, the psychedelic trip he experiences in his death throes is one of the best, and most convincing, ever filmed.Not a classic of the genre, but well worth catching.
Vornoff-3
With these words, the heroic cop confronts the villainous Daisy, a (male) drug- runner who has killed Cubans, Coast Guards and police officers in his efforts to transport "grass and junk" into Florida. Daisy works with Acid, a useless junkie that kills and rapes an Indian woman, accidentally brings the police down on the group multiple times and spends half the movie shooting up, and Dum Dum, a violent pot-smoking Hispanic whose name derives from the bullets in his gun.Much of this movie centers around images of people on drugs or doing drugs. with a wonderful "Psychedelic Orgy" in the middle of it all. The rest of the time, our villains are fleeing through the swamps, dragging a pair of uncooperative hostages along with them for no apparent reason. The DP seems to have had some problems shooting in daylight, much of the outdoor scenes are woefully overexposed, but his studio-work is competent. The acting and plot are simply outrageous, and may be more enjoyable to experience on drugs. Not really a classic drugsploitation film, but a good example of the genre.
AD
