Ha-Trempist

Unbelievable. Godawful. Mess. This was (inexplicably) on Turner Classic Movies at 2 am this weekend. Curiosity got the better of me (bad me!) and I tuned in. Hippies obviously wrote(?) this, shot it, directed it, all while stoned. I'm waiting for the MST3000 version, or better yet, for someone to give it the "Rocky Horror audience" treatment. Spoilers will not be part of this review, because it would spoil your lunch/dinner/munchies attack. I haven't been stoned in a good 35 years, so maybe state-dependent learning would come into play, and I'd truly be able to appreciate this ever-loving mess of a movie. I have to write ten lines of review, which is about seven lines more than the script had, or for that matter, the emesis-inducing 1970's rock song that keeps playing through the entire movie.

Have you ever wanted to see what it would have been like if a man LESS talented than Ed Wood had made a Billy Jack movie? No...but apparently someone did and the resulting atrocity, "An American Hippie in Israel" is one of the worst films I've seen...and I've probably seen more bad films than the producers of "MSTK3000"!

The story is mostly nonsense. But from what I was able to gather, an American veteran of the Vietnam war is tired of death and he becomes a hippie who runs away to Israel. Periodically, mime-like white-faced guys in top hats appear and try to kill him or his friends. In one scene, the pair manage to kill EVERYONE but the lead and his three friends...even though they are standing among those gunned down by the white-faced guys. But all he wants is to be happy and live in peace with his new Israeli hippie friends.

This movie is considered one of the worst films ever made and in Israel it's obtained cult status...sort of like "The Room" in the USA. Why? Because although the story is total nonsense, it is clearly the BEST aspect of the movie! The sound mixing is nutty...with either heavyhanded music OR long periods of silence. It seems they had no idea how to use incidental background music! The cinematography is best described as amateurish. And, the acting is beyond amateurish...as amateurs had to be significanty better. The worst of it, however, is that folks keep taking off their clothes. Now you'd THINK this could only improve the movie, but they are so unattractive you feel like yelling at the screen "Put it back on!!!". Yes, these are really, really, REALLY unattractive hippies.

My daughter summed it up best when she said that she much preferred the commercials the Plex channel inserted into the movie. Yes, it's that horrible. But, it might be a good film to watch with friends who like seeing terrible movies...or perhaps not because it rarely is even unintentionally funny. Amazingly, however, it manages to actually be WORSE than any of Ed Wood's films...even "Bride of the Monster" or "Plan 9 From Outer Space".

By the way, it's really sad that the basic plot (which soon gets lost) is actually interesting...a man, tired of death and society choosing to drop out. Too bad it didn't stick to this...or have competent writing, singing, directing, cinematography, editing or acting.

An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

** (out of 4)

American hippie Mike (Asher Tzarfati), angered from what he saw in Vietnam, heads off to form a civilization where love and peace is everywhere. He ends up in Israel where he meets three fellow hippies and they head off to an island for fun times.

Here's another film that was pretty much forgotten to time but Grindhouse Releasing managed to save it and turn it into a surprising hit in the midnight circles. AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL isn't as crazy as some of the others film that the company has rescued but it's certainly a weird little film that's hard to explain. I'm going to guess that writer-director-producer Amos Sefer had big ideas about peace and happiness but the film manages to be a laugh riot at times with its silly dialogue before turning into a downright bizarre nightmare.

The biggest flaw with the film is certainly the screenplay, which doesn't seem to know what it wants to do because the majority of the running time just seems to be dialogue- free while the four characters walk around, smile, laugh, get naked and just wonder around without any purpose. Some of the scenes drag on to a point where you'll want to scream at the director to yell cut or for a producer to walk on camera and ask what the hell is going on. Just take a look at the sequence where the American, speaking English, and the Israeli, speaking Hebrew, argue because they can't understand one another. Several scenes just drag on to the point where they become annoying and aggravating.

The performances are pretty much what they are but I must say that Tzarfati was "good" to the point where he keeps you entertained. Shmuel Wolf, Lily Avidan and Tzila Karney play the three other hippies and all of them are at least interesting enough to keep you involved in their story. The dialogue gets some of the biggest laughs because it basically sounds like a non-hippie trying to write hippie dialogue. It's quite laughable at times and perhaps this is why so much of the film is dialogue-free; because what dialogue there is is pretty bad.

I'm not going to ruin the final fifteen-or-so minutes of the film but they're certainly crazy and makes very little sense. A lot of the laughs from midnight crowds probably happens to what the four "turn into" and there's no doubt that you could really rip the film a new one because of it but at the same time it's a pretty bleak vision. AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL isn't a masterpiece or a complete disaster. It's an interesting little film to say the least.

I believe that Markastzm's review gets everything right, except one very thing. Indeed, he is correct that the mimes and the sharks both represent "The Man", and also that the film does not refute hippie ideals, but rather shows the unrelenting glee "The Man" takes in squashing those embracing those ideals. Markastzm is wrong, however, when he states that "Neither the characters, the actors, nor the director take themselves too seriously". There is an interview with two of the actors on the blu-ray disc and they indicate that took all of this very seriously, and that - to some extent - they all naively thought they were making a important statement. And it is precisely this that makes this film such a jaw-droppingly WTF oddity. Tedious to no end, but also fun in the right mindset with the right group of friends.

This bizarre movie was made by a former lifeguard turned short film maker, stars fairly good actors (some of whom were stars on the Tel Aviv theater stages for years to come) hamming it up or just given odd direction, has an alright but VERY repetitive score by one of Israel's greatest composers, and contains such unforgettable scenes as the "STOP PUSHING BUTTONS" speech, a psychedelic dream sequence involving smashing giant tape recorder things with a sledgehammer, a hippie-palooza in an abandoned warehouse, random toplessness, cardboard sharks, loooooooooong wandering across desert islands, and the main cast screaming out "Wonderful Feeling!" over and over. The insane ending has to be seen to be believed. If you can get your hands on this film (or if that DVD ever comes out), get some friends over and get ready to riff the hell out of it: this film is plan 9 quality stuff, and I love every minute of it.