Blue Sunshine

     Blue Sunshine came out in 1977 and has all the earmarks of a seventies film. Polyester, disco, and bad hair. Speaking of bad hair... this movie not only has a lot of it, but it's also MISSING a lot of it, henceforth the creepy movie poster and the topic of missing hair is one of the main elements of the story.  

     OK, here goes... A few certain people start noticing unnatural hair loss and displaying very erratic mood swings which are starting to become extremely violent.  Their violent behavior quickly evolves into homicidal actions. I won't go into each one, but there is incredible character buildup which makes the action toward the end of the film much more exciting because by now you feel like you actually know these people. An element that most mainstream horror/sci-fi movies often neglect. 

      Before any of them can be cured of their hair loss or violent tendencies, it's realized that all the balding lunatics went to the same college university ten years ago. It turns out that some asshole sold them all a bad batch of acid called "Blue Sunshine". For those of us old enough to remember, LSD always had colorful names... Blue Sunshine, Black Dragon, Red Mercury, etc. 

      The most suspenseful portion of the movie is figuring out who took the Blue Sunshine and who didn't. You see, a lot of the lunatics are wearing wigs so it's hard to tell that they're about to become homicidal because the hair loss comes before the violent tendencies occur.  A side note that must be acknowledged is the ever-present full moon with a slightly bluish tint, obviously foreshadowing the bald lunatics who took the Blue Sunshine. 

      The climactic ending to this movie is full of humor, which changes the mood of the story tenfold. Three different puppets with the likenesses of Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Tom Jones, introduce the opening of a new disco (which was just making its big splash around the time of filming). I guess the techno-pop that disco had, really pushed the bald acid heads (who are more like crazed zombies now) over the top and they start freaking out and killing everyone. The moral of the story... avoid bad drugs (good drugs are OK) and if you freak out from bad acid, you should probably avoid disco techs. A really great period piece and very effective for an independent film from Jeff Lieberman who also brought us the cheap but effective horror film "Squirm" which most of us have only seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000.