Musical Mutiny

Barry Mahon did everything! From nudies (THE BEAST THAT KILLED WOMEN) to terror (THE DEAD ONE) to kiddie matinées (THUMBELINA) there was no genre this man left untouched. This 1970 movie was shot (mostly)at a theme park in Florida. It looks to me like Barry filmed an Iron Butterfly concert and wrapped enough framing footage around it to make it a real movie. Wait, did I just say "Barry Mahon" and "real movie" in the same sentence?

Well anyway, an 18th century pirate (speaking 20th century hippie lingo) walks out of the sea and speaks directly to the camera, saying "Gather ye 'round me hearties! We're gonna have a mutiny!" Getting a biker to spread the word he then casually strolls to the amusement park. Meanwhile the biker roars through the hangouts of the Flower Children and announces "Come on, it's a mutiny!" and the Love Generation all jump up and run to attend without even bothering to ask where it is. This is where Mr. Mahon pads the film (which turns out to only run 70 minutes anyway) with local bands. There is a Janis Joplin soundalike, a Melanie soundalike and groups with names like The New Society Band and Grit. People show up on bikes, in dune buggies and even in a garbage truck. Mini-subplots have a rich kid and his girlfriend who decide to attend the mutiny (in a chauffeur driven limo!) while the boy thinks about whether he wants to leave the safety of working for his dad and head out on his own. Oh, speaking of the rich dad. He is played by no less than Brad Grinter, the genius behind BLOOD FREAK, the story about a man with the head of a giant turkey who only drinks the blood of drug addicts. Another one has a kid who invents a new kind of soft drink and right away turns into a Capitalist. ("I'll charge $1 a drink. Then I'll raise it to $5. Soon only kings will be able to afford it and I will be the King of Kings.") Wow man, really heavy.

After more padding showing the kids arriving at the park and going on all the rides and even more garage bands we finally get down to seeing Iron Butterfly perform. There is one more plot complication with the Capitalist owner of the park who is, like, on some heavy Materialism trip man, stops the show when he realizes the old pirate (forgotten him hadn't you?) let all the kids in for free. Will peace, love and rock music save the day or will the Establishment triumph yet again? He man, make the scene for yourself and like totally check out this movie. It rocks! For myself, I never realised the uncut version of Iron Butterfly's signature song "In A Gadda Da Vida" was so long! I mean it runs for roughly 9 minutes but the crowd certainly seems to dig it!

This movie sat on a shelf for a long time because . . .well . . . the Hippie Generation ended! Now it has been rediscovered and the New Wave crowd can see what things were like when their parents were kids.

Oh and what about the rich kid and his girlfriend? Well let's just say they ride off to face the future while hanging on the back of a garbage truck. Is that, like, just totally symbolic or what?

I originally saw this about six years ago, and when I stumbled across the video again recently in my garage, I just had to re-watch it to see if the film was as bizarre as I'd remembered. Yes, it is. Shot at a local amusement park in Florida called Pirate's World (used in other Barry Mahon films too), MUSICAL MUTINY features some local Florida musical artists (a Janis Joplin sound-alike, a Judy Collins folkie, and some vaguely interesting trippy 1969-70 rock bands who are almost good enough to have their records reissued on Rockadelic or Gear Fab...almost), and headliners Iron Butterfly, who do three or four songs, including the complete almost-twenty-minute In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, which they lip-sync! The static technique of the film--familiar to any fan of Mahon's who has watched THE SEX KILLER or PAGAN ISLAND-- actually gives the film a kind of documentary quality, which makes it far more interesting to watch than any phony Hollywood attempt at being hip. There's little I can add to Son Of Cathode's excellent analysis of this curio--except to say that if you are at all interested in off-the-wall low budget, locally made films of the 60's/ 70's, then MUSICAL MUTINY is a must-see. Iron Butterfly fans out there should remember that the band NEVER plays live in this movie. They appear on a stage, playing along (not always very closely) to their records, and we see crowd reaction shots, but there is no live performance in this movie (although we do hear the singer make a few comments before one of the songs). Now, I'll have to see MONDO DAYTONA/GET DOWN GRAND FUNK!

Musical Mutiny (1970)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Barry Mahon directed this rather strange documentary/promotional film about a bunch of free concerts at Pirate World. Various hippies are brought together for a free concert by Iron Butterfly but it doesn't take long for a mutiny to break out.

Mahon is a filmmaker that I've spent the last year going through his filmmography. He could make horror movies, nudie pictures, sexploitation and just about any sort of low-budget movie. Towards the end of his career he even got into kid movies and most of them took place at Pirate World where the filmmaker worked. This film was one of two musicals that he made and it's certainly not a "good" movie but it's mildly interesting to fans of bad movies.

Iron Butterfly isn't one of my favorite bands so seeing them and hearing their music really didn't add any entertainment for me. At the same time it was pretty fun seeing Mahon try to sell them. The film's biggest problem is that it really doesn't feature any sort of story but instead it's just a bunch of padding around the music. There are really boring scenes of people just walking around doing nothing. There are boring scenes inside the amusement part, which makes the film more of a promo than anything else.

If you're a Mahon nut like I am then you might want to check this out but others should stay clear.