Purple Haze

This movie is very hard to find, Netflix.com doesn't even have it. The music sound track was one thing, but the thing I liked most was the father/son relationship. Main character gets kicked out of college for smoking (while Johnson announces he won't run again, and they all clap and cheer), comes home (hitch-hikes) with long hair, and has a conversation with his father. Late 60's, the father just couldn't understand why his son would want dress like that and have hair like a G.D. girl. You hate the father, but at the same time, you love him and understand what his frustration must be like. I grew up in the 80's this movie really shows what it must have been like in the 60's to cause so many people to just drop out (and tune in & turn on).

Yeah, this is a "local" production with no-name actors, but as someone who was Matt Caufield's age (20 in 1968 -- I was "there", as they say), this film captures with near perfection the mood and atmosphere that million-dollar productions try to capture but don't. Maybe "Gardens of Stone" comes close, but "Purple Haze" is almost a psychological documentary about the war, 1968 and its effect on and in the US. It deserves way more positive recognition than it ever received.

The DVD is available from David Burton Morris. Don't miss it.

I saw this in the 80s my folks had recorded it on vcr, I put it on after being out for a few drinks and I swear to this day, I felt for Matt as though I knew him in me,to this day I remember watching and listening and thinking it's not just me, other people think like I do, I love my long hair still at 53 and I still feel like an outsider watching the normies on their hamster wheel. David Burton Morris hit the nail on the head here, I suppose we have to mention the greatest movie soundtrack ever made, unbelievable use of classic tracks, sadly the also the reason the film can't be released due to rights, what right do they have to keep this from the masses.

Happy trails jolly Jeff c

Thank you DBM.

I'm not sure why this film so completely slipped through the cracks--I don't remember it coming out at the time, and it seems to have evaded all conventional release to VHS, DVD, etc. (Maybe there were legal issues--the soundtrack is wall-to-wall famous late 60s "oldies," and perhaps the filmmakers didn't pay for the music rights beyond theatrical release.) In any case, it has a good reputation from the few who've seen it. But it doesn't hold up particularly well.

Perhaps its typical coming-of-age story of a young man worrying about the draft, what his parents think of his long hair, etc. has been done too many times by now. But the problem is how routinely "Purple Haze" tells that story, with rote characterizations from fairly colorless lead actors and variably amateurish support ones. You could forgive that and other clumsy aspects from a firsttime filmmaker, but the director/coscenarist had made a few features before (including the truly awful horror movie "The Meateater;" I'd like to see 1976's "Loose Ends," which got some critical acclaim at the time), and what appears to be a pretty pedestrian later career of TV movies (including lame biopics about Sonny & Cher, the Partridge Family and Jackie Onassis).

I imagine this was a more personal project for him (it was shot in his native Minnesota, and some of the actors have a very "local talent" feel), and in some ways it's pretty ambitious for an indie feature of the era. But it just doesn't have the spark of personality in terms of writing, performance or direction to make a memorable impression. A later movie (by another prolific TV-movie director) that likewise fails to make anything distinctive of a clearly autobiographical late-60s-young-manhood tale (and likewise shows practically no interest in women as anything but interchangeable sex partners) is Bobby Roth's 2005 "Berkeley."

I'm sure anyone who came of age circa 1969 thinks their experience of the era was unique and unforgettable. Sure it was--to them. Trouble is, too many of those stories all begin to seem generically alike when they're dramatized. It takes a savvier dramatist than this movie has to recapture what seems exciting in nostalgic recall and actually make it interesting for viewers.

It is quite some time since I saw this film and it may have become one of those of its time memories. What I can remember is the soundtrack. The film is very much a hardcore version of the sickly sweet 1969. Well worth seeing again, if it ever gets an airing, although I get the feeling it won't stand the test of time.