Fear and Loathing has one of the best trip scenes of any drug involved movie. The entire movie is pretty much one long drug-fueled crazy adventure.
The film has become a true cult smash and is sampled over and over again in popular culture from music, to art to just about anywhere psychedelic drugs are involved.
A film that screams “product of its time,” The Holy Mountain was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s dizzying elegy to the sex, drugs and spiritual awakening of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A Christ-like vagrant and thief wanders through a perverse and unfriendly land until he encounters an enlightened one, who gathers the thief and six of the world’s most powerful individuals for a spiritual pilgrimage. If you want to see the conquest of Mexico re-enacted by reptiles, soldiers shoot innocent people as birds fly from their wounds, and a wizard turn feces into gold, this is the movie for you.
The central members of the cast were said to have spent three months doing various spiritual exercises guided by Oscar Ichazo of the Arica Institute. The Arica training features Zen, Sufi and yoga exercises along with eclectic concepts drawn from the Kabbalah, the I Ching and the teachings of Gurdjieff.
After the training, the group lived for one month communally in Jodorowsky’s home before shooting began.
As far as trippy bizarre movies go – this takes the cake.
1940 – Over 7 decades ago, and still one of the top psychedelic animated films ever made. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Fantasia and mind enhancing drugs go together like peanut butter and jelly. These days it is quite popular to discover what music synchs with Fantasia. Much like people do with Pink Floyds’ music synched to the Wizard Of Oz. Disney jumped on the 60’s hippy style and re-imaged the movie in the late 60s with a very different promotional poster, which included magic mushrooms.
Another music based film, Yellow Submarine is a 1968 British animated feature film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title for the soundtrack album to the feature film, released as part of The Beatles’ music catalog.
The film received a widely positive reception from critics and audiences alike. It is also credited with bringing more interest in animation as a serious art form.
The animation of Yellow Submarine has sometimes falsely been attributed to the famous psychedelic pop art artist of the era, Peter Max, but the film’s art director was Heinz Edelmann.
As far as classic animation goes its one of the best movies ever.
2001 contains one of the most memorable trippy scenes to ever hit cinema screens. Doubly impressive when considering it was made with 1968 technology.
As the film climaxes, the main character takes a trip through deep space that involves the innovative use of slit-scan photography to create the stunning visual effects. Known to staff as “Manhattan Project”, the shots of various nebula-like phenomena, including the expanding star field, were colored paints and chemicals swirling in a pool-like device known as a cloud tank, shot in slow-motion in a dark room.
Kubrick’s epic masterpiece remains a stoner favorite.
We’ll be back with another part of this series soon, I just have to watch some more psychedelic films!
Add your favorites to the comments below.
> Top Psychedelic Movies | Psy Amb
might I add anything Terry Gilliam movie, Specifically Brazil, which always makes me think very deeply about consciousness, but Time Bandits and The Great Adventures of Baron Munchausen are great trippy movies with a bit of comedy to lighten the mood