Psych-Out

Psych-Out (1968) is a counterculture-era psychedelic film about hippies, psychedelic music, and recreational drugs, produced and released by American International Pictures. Originally scripted as The Love Children, the title when tested caused people to think it was about bastards, so Samuel Z. Arkoff came up with the ultimate title based on a recent successful reissue of Psycho.

Director Richard Rush's cut came in at 101 minutes and was edited to 82 minutes by the producers. This version is the one released on DVD. For some reason, when HBO Video released the film on VHS, they used a 98 minutes long version. On February 17, 2015 there will be released a 101 minute Director's cut on DVD and Blu-ray DVD. The majority of the songs in the movie and on the original soundtrack album were performed by the Storybook. This credit is never mentioned on movie posters and articles. They were a local band from the San Fernando Valley.

Plot

Jenny (played by Susan Strasberg) is a deaf runaway who arrives in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, searching for her brother Steve. She encounters the aptly named Stoney (Jack Nicholson) and his hippie band "Mumblin' Jim" in a coffee shop. The boys are sympathetic, especially when they discover that she is deaf and can only understand others through lip reading. They hide her from the police and help her look for her brother. He has left his apartment with no forwarding address; she has only a postcard from him which reads "Jess Saes: God is alive and well and living in a sugar cube". Meanwhile, the boys are trying hard to improve their music and get more visibility, and are approached by a promoter who says he can arrange for them to perform at "the Ballroom", clearly the Avalon Ballroom or the Fillmore West.