The Hooked Generation

The Hooked Generation turns out to be a surprisingly well-done "B" movie. Steve Alaimo gives a solid performance and it's really amazing that this vastly talented actor never achieved mainstream popularity in motion pictures.

Alaimo is supported by his two real-life friends former world light-heavyweight boxing champion Willie Pastrano and the legendary radio D.J. Milton "Butterball" Smith. Pastrano goes slightly over-the-top in his role here, and it doesn't rate with his solid performance as Banjo in The Wild Rebels, but he is enjoyable to watch. The scene stealer is the always pleasant Milton "Butterball" Smith. Unless you're a native of South Florida and over 40, Alaimo, Pastrano, and Smith has no meaning. However, during the 60s, the trio were among the most-famous personality on the South Florida acting, music, and boxing scenes.

The Hooked Generation is far from a masterpiece or even a good-film. However, it is entertaining enough to hold your interest. If you're from South Florida it's even more so.

With these words, the heroic cop confronts the villainous Daisy, a (male) drug- runner who has killed Cubans, Coast Guards and police officers in his efforts to transport "grass and junk" into Florida. Daisy works with Acid, a useless junkie that kills and rapes an Indian woman, accidentally brings the police down on the group multiple times and spends half the movie shooting up, and Dum Dum, a violent pot-smoking Hispanic whose name derives from the bullets in his gun.

Much of this movie centers around images of people on drugs or doing drugs. with a wonderful "Psychedelic Orgy" in the middle of it all. The rest of the time, our villains are fleeing through the swamps, dragging a pair of uncooperative hostages along with them for no apparent reason. The DP seems to have had some problems shooting in daylight, much of the outdoor scenes are woefully overexposed, but his studio-work is competent. The acting and plot are simply outrageous, and may be more enjoyable to experience on drugs. Not really a classic drugsploitation film, but a good example of the genre.

"The Hooked Generation" derives most of its entertainment value mainly from being a hilarious, off the wall relic of its era. It's not exactly quality filmmaking; Hell, it's far from it, but it's a hoot just the same. It's definitely way overlong, and could have used better pacing and more action. But the antics of our terminally stupid antiheroes are endlessly amusing, and the performances from this bunch take on the tones of a cartoon. Yeah, subtlety is also in short supply here. The absolute highlight has to be the "psychedelic orgy" sequence with the character Acid: this is a sequence that truly deserves the description "trippy".

Produced, directed, and co-written by Florida-based drive-in legend William Grefe, it stars the memorable trio of Jeremy Slate as Daisey, Willie Pastrano as Dumb Dumb, and John Davis Chandler as the aforementioned Acid. These guys are wannabe big time drug dealers who think they're getting screwed by their Cuban supplier and slaughter the man and his crew. Soon, the Coast Guard is on the scene, and *they* all get killed too. A boy and girlfriend do- gooder couple, Mark (Steve Alaimo) and Kelly (Cece Stone) who witness the massacre subsequently get taken hostage. Eventually, our merry band of morons try to unload the drugs but can't since the drugs are hot. The FBI pick up their trail and close in, and Daisey and Dumb Dumb head for the Everglades with their captives.

You gotta love any movie with the heroic lead detective trying to egg the bad guy on by repeatedly calling him "loser". Slate, Pastrano, and especially Chandler are a bunch of glorious goof balls, while Alaimo manages to keep a straight face. The rock score is groovy and even though the movie itself is quite crude, the actors keep things watchable. Stone supplies all-important eye candy, particularly in a nude scene.

Keep an eye out for exploitation movie legend William Kerwin ("Blood Feast", "Two Thousand Maniacs!") as one of the FBI men.

Seven out of 10.

I've been searching a long time for this one. And i must say it was disappointing. I thought this was going to be a psychedelic movie, but it has more in common with Italian terror movies from the 70's. The guy who does smack all the time is believable but for the rest....pew....The problem with these films seems to be that they are made by people who never met any hippies and don't know anything about drugs. Just wearing beads and saying things like far-out and groovy just doesn't cut it. I know this one most certainly had a low budget, but how about some research before you start the camera. I'm not American so i don't know if there it was a law against showing people exhale smoke when they smoked a joint. O.k. that's not a biggie, but showing people turning into stupid maniacs maybe worked in movies like Reefer madness when people didn't know anything. But in 1968. I got the same feeling watching this one as one of those stupid education films. Nice to see them being released though. If you like good Vs evil this one might be a good low budget flick. But if you're looking for psychedelia be careful.

The Hooked Generation (1968)

** (out of 4)

Three crooks decide that being the in-between for drug dealers isn't good enough so they end up killing and stealing some drugs from a Cubian drug-lord. After a shoot out with the Coast Guard the three try to make it to the top but things don't go as planned.

Here's another extremely low-budget movie from William Grefe that I really wanted to like more than I actually did. As I'm going through the work of Grefe it's easy to see that he had a strong talent even though the films themselves really weren't all that good. These movies have no known casts, no budget and very little else yet Grefe managed to make them somewhat entertaining and at least professional looking. Compare these films to various other exploitation titles from this era and you can see the talent.

With that said, THE HOOKED GENERATION starts off pretty good as we get into the double crossing and the ruthlessness of the three goons. None of them are what you'd call likable and I thought this was a good and entertaining approach. The film has some memorable moments but it's bad pacing and extended running time means that we eventually get bored and the final third of the movie is hard to sit through.