Blue Sunshine: For the "This is your hairline on drugs" campaign?
31 Flavors of Horror #12:
Blue Sunshine
Official Synopsis:
The classic cult horror film, from
acclaimed writer/director Jeff Lieberman, is a masterpiece of
psychological suspense and terror.
At a party, someone goes insane and
murders three women. Falsely accused of the brutal killings, Jerry
(Red Shoe Diaries' Zalman King) is on the run. More bizarre killings
continue with alarming frequency all over town. Trying to clear his
name, Jerry discovers the shocking truth... people are losing their
hair and turning into violent psychopaths and the connection may be a
drug all the murderers took a decade before. Soon, if Jerry can't
stop it, the horror will become uncontrollable... the horror caused
by Blue Sunshine!
Our Take:
Jerry Zipkin has a problem. A nice guy,
he sticks around at a party to try and find an upset friend and winds
up the number one suspect in multiple murders after the real culprit
winds up hit by a truck. It's a pretty stirring set up to Blue
Sunshine, a story seemingly about LSD paranoia in a cocaine age.
Zipkin (played by Zalman King)
investigates a string of random massacres committed by murderers
suddenly driven bald and crazy. The trail leads him to Ed Flemming,
the sort of clearly crooked politician whose denials prove he knows
everything, and to experiments conducted ten years prior at
Stanford. Meanwhile, Flemming's ex Wendy is a housewife slowing going
mad, ready and willing to chase her babysitting charges around with a
butcher knife. (Scenes that can't hide the children are being
directed like it's a game.)
These unstoppable, balding crazies with
bulging eyes don't like stress or loud noises, and they're an
off-putting sight. From this set up, things get weird in an oddly
compelling, low-budget thriller from Jeff Leiberman. Blue Sunshine is
just as individual his other best known films, Just Before Dawn and
Squirm.
Brion James, Alice Ghostley (Designing
Women), Mark Goddard (Lost In Space), and Robert Walden (Lou Grant)
show up in supporting roles, but leading man Zalman King is pretty
over-the-top. Most are only familiar with King as the man who either
established or ruined sexual aesthetics for the last twenty five
years of pay cable subscribers with the Red Shoe Diaries, Two Moon
Junction, and the Wild Orchid films, but he'd had a long career as a
TV actor in the sixties and seventies. Deborah Winters, in the
girlfriend role, isn't given much to do, but compared to King's
blowups and breakdowns, she's a study in restraint. Meanwhile, Ann
Cooper's Wendy is all rolling eyes and shameless mugging for the
camera.
(Also, for a movie featuring so much
baldness, King has a magnificent head of hair... which is as dated as
everything else in Blue Sunshine. Setting a scene in a disco in a
shopping mall practically made this a period piece from the day it
came out. That's reinforced by the mall's enthralling puppet show and
general aura of wood paneling and polyester.)
Blue Sunshine opens with on a few
vignettes to establish a few people who just aren't doing that hot.
They're headachy and tense. Are they freaking out because of a
time-bomb of a drug in their system or simply because they're ten
years out of college with looming mid-life and career crises coupled
with the tenor of the times? Or, as we can all relate to: Is she
going to stab those kids because of a flashback, or because the
little brats won't stop jumping on the couch and shouting for ice
cream?
Special Features:
This is a fairly no-frills presentation
of Blue Sunshine. In Dolby 2.0 Stereo it's widescreen, but doesn't
look remastered or in any way cleaned up. The only extras are a photo
gallery and a 41 minute sprawling interview with Jeff Leiberman
telling stories about his career.
Conclusion:
Blue Sunshine is a confusing and tense
(though very dated) piece of drug culture paranoia. It sets up a
dread that runs through the whole film and makes up for it's
deficiencies (and weak ending).
Best for Jeff Leiberman fans, genre
cinema enthusiasts, casualties of the seventies, ex-babysitters with
axes to grind, and those who thought the “This is your brain on
drugs” campaign was too subtle.
Overall Picture:
Movie: C+
Extras: C-
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