"Bummer!" (1973) is one shag-carpeted, Mylar wallpapered, bong-water scented piece of a time long gone. Although this is a really terrible movie in every sense of the word, it's worth viewing for those curious about what the Seventies really looked like. Since it was filmed on a meager budget, the locations and clothing had to be the real deal....and they look it.
Let's dispense with the paper thin plot: An abysmal rock band called "The Group" is driving the honeys wild on the Sunset Strip with their happening sound. The performances from the Group are trippy for all the wrong reasons, most obviously because they're not really performing. The "band" just gyrates and pretends to play their instruments, all the rock-funk is piped in on the soundtrack. This music is enough to make the viewer contemplate suicide, but stops now and then for laughable dialog to be heard between the Group and their various girlfriends. Snappy Carol Speed provides the 'street' cred here (she would soon be the movies' first demon-possessed African American woman in a rip- off of the "Exorcist" called "Abby" 1974) while Connie Strickland gives you LA rich bitch groupie tramp who's up for anything, man. Diane Lee Hart is the doomed "nice" girl from Ohio. The Group doesn't matter, whoever these guys were is lost to history with the exception of actor Dennis Burkley, a bassist named Butts, who's the butt of every fat rocker joke that the others throw at him. He's psychopathic, has mommy issues, and swills Gilbey's Gin throughout the entire flick. Heavy. You can still spot Burkley in commercials these days, usually playing a nice biker sort who has fresh breath. A real career arc.
Anyway, stupendously bad music is played incessantly. Groupies are treated like "pigs!" and "bitches!!!". They don't care because that's where the action is, baby. Dope is smoked in filthy apartments, and love is made out in the woods during a two year long montage of the softer side of rock where the crotch thrusters treat their women right. Bummer! things happen, Butts makes an ass of himself, nice girls from Ohio get murdered, ketchup is spilled, people die, you are happy it's all over, man. The camera watching all this rockin' hassle finally lifts off the ground and spirals out into outer space showing the planet the Bummer! happened on. It's not Earth.
I appreciate this time capsule more every passing year. The ugly face of LA in 1973 has been saved. Check out the Kuddlie Kitty strip club and the sad girls who work a teeny-tiny stage by the cash register. Many unpleasant body parts are shaken to a juke box loaded with tunes by the Group. This movie features the "Pastry Chick" who has breasts the size,shape, and sell-by date of submarine sandwich rolls (featuring aureolas the size of pancakes) while a sad cellulite victim shakes her money maker which is a personal topiary that needs a gardener stat. The rich girl hangs out in her eyeball gouging bedroom with horrendous blood- colored 70s psychedelic patterned wallpaper and velour accessories. She wears a cavalcade of super clunky shoes in various colors. Her mother's hair is the size of Pluto. The Group's apartment is dirty, full of bad Danish modern furniture, and has shag carpet the color of dirt. It also features a surprising see-through shower curtain with supergraphics! It just doesn't get any better. You can just turn off the sound and watch the glamorous interiors as well as the super-long pimp nails on "Le Monde", the man who tries to woo our girls into a life doing the Frug on that 20 x 20 inch stage by the cash register.
Highly recommended, and yes, that's a pun.
