AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL (1972)

A scuzzy dude gets off a plane in Israel. He starts hitchhiking and is almost immediately picked up by a woman. They go back to her crib, where he bitches about the Vietnam War before they screw. After their off-screen fuck session, they go for a walk and randomly meet another hippy couple. Boring stuff happens. Finally, around the 49 minutes mark, our four heroes show up at a large lake. Not too far offshore is a small, barren-looking island with like two bushes on it. They paddle over to the uninviting island on an inflatable boat. (Did I mention that the island is surrounded by sharks?) Once on the island, they don’t bother to tie up the boat or even unload any of their meager supplies. No, instead they run around naked and declare out loud that the World is “a bad World. Bad. Bad.” and that they are going to turn this island into a paradise free of “machines and buttons”. When they wake up the next morning, they’re shocked to discover that the unsecured boat (and their supplies) drifted off. This sets off a series of events that culminates in everybody going completely insane and running around like bloodthirsty cavemen. Snarling and attacking each other until they collapse in a pre-THE HILLS HAVE EYES cuddle puddle of death.

I normally don’t like to give away so much of a movie's plot, but if I didn’t with AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL the entire review would just be: “Four losers get stuck on an island (due to their own stupidity) and nothing happens. The End. Skip it.” Mild nudity (that you don’t want to see), below average acting, shit script with a shit story, long patches of wasted time where nothing at all happens, one song that seemed to go on and on for way too long, lots of self-righteous babbling, okay camerawork, unsafe driving habits, a poor little goat who's safety I worried about.

I’ve done zero research, but, based off the film alone, it felt like the filmmakers themselves were anti-counterculture and talking shit about the hippy movement. Who knows, who cares. It doesn’t matter, it’s an ungroovy movie.  Which is sad because I'm a fan of counterculture cinema from this time period.

I’m sure that AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL has fans and more power to them, but this sort of this isn't my bag, baby.  Hell, I’d be more interested in watching a documentary about the fans of AAHII than watching the actual movie ever again.

FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974)

Making eye contact with a naked man in a bubble bath, touching random men as they urinate in a bowling alley restroom, playing grab ass with your buddy in a children’s playground. These are all fun weekend activities, but it’s also a small snippet of what police detectives James Caan and Alan Arkin are up to when they are assigned to protect a high-ranking criminal from unknown assassins. You’d think that squirreling the target away in a secluded location would be a wiser course of action, but no, these two psychopaths go on a no holds barred rampage all across San Francisco like they’re in the fucking Purge!

Cold-blooded murder, sexual assault, driving a car at high speed through a marching band in a parade, assaulting people left and right, driving their car into an occupied apartment, multiple counts of theft, dozens of vehicles damaged or destroyed, looking at pornographic magazines around children, firing guns in public, jumping a moving train with a car, assaulting a man in order to steal his motorcycle, having a car illegally towed, no seat belts ever, assaulting a drunk guy with a metal pipe, murdering a guy in a dentist office, randomly accusing your wife of cheating instead of simply having a conversation with her…I could brush all of this bad behavior aside in the name of (poorly written and dated) comedy, but the racial and gay slurs were just too goddamn much. Life is short, and I don’t have time to waste on that weak-minded bullshit.

Homophobic and racist behavior aside, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN isn’t funny, entertaining or worth watching. Yet somehow it ended up being one of the bigger box office hits of 1974, so what the fuck do I know. I’m glad I watched it, just for the learning experience, but I’ll never watch this stinker again. Skip it.