Blue Sunshine

This was a bit of a surprising film. I had gone in expecting a cheapo 70s horror movie, and instead was treated to a cheapo yet rather engaging thriller. I would say it involves a mystery, too, but since the paragraph long description on the back of the DVD case helpfully reveals the mystery for you, that kind of went out the window.

The big mystery, that I will now helpfully reveal to you so that nobody will have it unruined for them, begins when a man suddenly loses all his hair at a party, and then goes on a murderous rampage before being killed by his friend pushing him in front of a truck in their struggle. The friend now goes on the run to try to figure out what caused this odd reaction in his friend, and eventually discovers that it was caused by “Blue Sunshine”, a bad batch of LSD that was being sold to people at Stanford University, and now, after a ten year incubation period, is causing baldness, headaches, and murderous rampages. The dealer, now running for Congress, now wants the hero of our story dead, especially once the politico’s wife goes crazy from it too while our hero is visiting her, and all the various witnesses see is him booting her out a high rise window while holding a bloody knife and then running away. Don’t you just hate it when people randomly jump to conclusions like that, without having all the facts in?

Despite some hiccups caused in large part by a fairly nonexistent budget (whenever the people lose their hair, it all comes off at once, looking suspiciously as though they were all just wearing wigs overtop of bald caps), there is a good deal of tension throughout the film. Zalman King does a surprisingly good job as the lead here, looking more than a little like Sean Penn as he runs around avoiding the police and trying to solve all this chaos. This was, of course, back when he was still acting, and before he became famous for directing and producing a number of softcore erotic films and TV shows with David Duchovny. Simply put, this is a much better movie than one would have randomly guessed from the talent and money involved. It also came with the option, should you choose to take the DVD up on it, of allowing Elvira to cut in and toss out some jokes, as this was taken from her TV show. I chose to watch it without her, myself, as I didn’t want my first time watching to be constantly interrupted like that. You go with your own gut, however.

Rating: ***