Double Feature!

FREE GRASS (a.k.a. SCREAM FREE) 1969
U.S. film. The film opens with swirly colored peace signs and psychedelic effects while the group California Spectrum plays title song. Then we see bad guys Phil and Barney (Casey Kasem and Warren Finnerty) driving a small camper and chasing an on-foot longhaired hippie into a dead-end alley…where they crush him to death!

Next we see Link (Russ Tamblyn) shooting up. Tamblyn must have been filming Satan’s Sadists at the same time as this film because it looks like he walked right of that film set and onto the Free Grass set without changing his clothes of taking off his hat!

Next psychedelic swirling lights, a dancing girl with a snake and a room full of stoners smoking grass and playing guitar. Link tells a stoner Dean (Richard Beymer) how to make some fast bread by smuggling grass out of Mexico. Hot chick Karen (Lana Wood; Natalie's sister) asks Dean if he wants to take an acid trip. Next, lots of kaleidoscope trip effects.

Strangely, the film's music and mood changes to what now feels like a rated-G love story as the happy couple frolics at Griffith Observatory. They fall in love while talking about acid and peyote. Ah, romance!

Next, back to our low-budget exploitation film with scenes of hippies in drum circles, body paintings, and handing flowers to cops. OMG!! Its turned into a full-scale riot and the cops are busting heads! Somehow our lovebirds get involved in the mayhem! They make a getaway but now they're wanted by the law!

There's a ton of stuff going on in this film; to make a long story short... The couple needs bread to get out of town; a marijuana smuggling operation is planned, LA detectives are on the hunt, the mean guys in the camper score cocaine and weed in Mexico; back in USA the detectives see them unloading the dope, there's a brawl, the cops are taken into the woods where Casey Kasem executes them…and that's just the first half of the movie!

Things to look for: Richard Avedon's psychedelic John Lennon posters covering an entre wall, lots of smoking joints, crash pads, psychedelic rock band, "The Boston Tea Party," strobe lights, an unbelievable amount of flashing trippy effects (there's even an end credit for "Psychedelic Lights and Visual Effects") and an absolutely goofy ending!

This is the original release, not the re-edited and ruined 1989 release or the washed-out-color version. This version has been improved to enhance color and remove ghosting. Music by California Spectrum, The Boston Tea Party. Sidewalk productions. Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Lana Wood, Casey Kasem, Jody McCrea, Elizabeth Thompson, Warren Finnerty, Joe Turkel. Free Grass!

Plus this bonus selection...

LSD: CASE STUDY 1969
U.S. short film. An educational short film on the dangers of psychedelic drugs.

FREE GRASS (a.k.a. SCREAM FREE) 1969 movie on DVD!