in the last few years of the '60s didn't exist, exploitation filmmakers could have easily invented them. 
Free love, unabashed nudity, bright psychedelic colors, and freewheeling drug experimentation proved to be the perfect formula for morphing nudie cuties into something they thought young audiences and curious older moviegoers alike would enjoy on the big screen, and even better, it was incredibly cheap to film. Legendary producer David F. Friedman made the perfect choice to switch from black-and-white roughies to gaudy color sexploitation films in 1967 just as the counterculture was kicking into high gear, with the aesthetic at least sticking around until 1970 or so. One of the craziest entries from this period was an essentially plotless chunk of blazing eye candy called The Acid Eaters, directed by frequent Friedman helmer Byron Mabe and starring multiple actors more familiar for their work with Harry Novak. Billed as "the first Hollywood underground movie" and reportedly cranked out in five days, it remains a bizarre collision of the biker, drugsploitation, and nudie film, all of which would be out of style a few years later. 
city for a couple of days. Out in the sagebrush they indulge in lots of skinny-dipping, clowning around, body painting, pot smoking, and even having a cat fight that ends badly courtesy of some quicksand. Then things really kick into gear when our 
hellions come upon a gigantic acid cube pyramid, and inside, they indulge in a colorful, dance-filled bongo bacchanal overseen by one of their members (Please Don't Eat My Mother's Kartalian) now transformed into a hammy devil. The show here is easily stolen by Pat Barrington (Mantis in Lace, Agony of Love) shaking her butt off, but you can also spot future busy character actor and stunt man Ernie Orsatti and A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine's Sharon Carr (who's on the receiving end of the film's most famous line) among our weekend revelers. Behind the scenes are several other familiar names including writer Carl Monson (another Novak collaborator) and composer William Allen Castleman, who had just done She Freak and would later jump over to Novak films as well. 
movie to perfection with her insane Nude on the Moon in 1962, but standards had changed quickly over a 
few years with sex scenes and full-frontal nudity now perfectly acceptable for general adult entertainment. Friedman and Mabe were more than happy to oblige, spicing up a storyline that's as generic as they come. Our story begins with the distracted James Granilla (Friedman regular Vincent as "Bart Black," one of his many screen names) lounging around reading science fiction in bed much to the annoyance of his chest-aggressive wife (an early uncredited appearance by Linda and Abilene's Bambi Allen). Even after she successfully forces herself on him, Jimbo would still rather go back to reading about aliens and dozing off for an interstellar dream (from which the film weirdly never returns). In his fantasy he's a human-imitating alien in sparkly gold pants who infiltrates a predominantly female-inhabited Terranean ship to spy on them, or sleep with them, or something. The most memorable is the sadistic lesbian Captain Mother (exploitation vet Peters) who wields a mean whip, with other mostly naked crew members including Connie (onetime Playmate centerfold Conway) and Portia (Montello, another centerfold). In between various softcore couplings, he 
has to figure out a way to execute his ultimate order to sabotage the ship, which becomes even trickier when they 
stop to spend more time on an alien planet to have sex in a rocky area that looks a lot like Porter Ranch. 
case) with extras including the trailer, the kitschy sci-fi shorts Roll-Oh the Robot (3m13s) and The Dance of 
Tomorrow (4m20s), a great Friedman commentary with Something Weird's Mike Vraney, and a gallery of Friedman exploitation art. The Acid Eaters made its way to DVD in 2007 as a double feature with Alex De Renzy's documentary Weed, with extras including the trailer, bonus trailers (Sign of Aquarius, Smoke and Flesh, The Hard Road, and Have You Ever Been on a Trip?), the Sal Mineo-narrated Russian roulette shocker short LSD: Insight or Insanity? (17m57s), and the "Narcotics Education, Inc." short, A Crutch for All Seasons (21m57s), plus the usual Friedman gallery. 
bemused Friedman trashing it right out of the gate and remembering every single person involved in its creation, including stepping in to shoot extra material when Mabe wasn't up to finishing it), but you also get a previously unreleased commentary 
recorded with Friedman and Vraney for The Acid Eaters. Since both of them left us quite a while ago, it's really invaluable to hear them teaming up again for another trip through exploitation's golden age with Friedman explaining how the whole thing came together right as She Freak was wrapping up and how the sudden burst of drug movies like The Trip made it seem like a natural topic. Of course, Vraney gets in some great bits as well like "This is the most un-hip group of 1968 people I've ever seen. It's like a bunch of strippers with some business dudes." Trailers for both films are included along with an extensive gallery (13m45s) of material for both features, and this time the bonus shorts are the psychedelic nudie nightmare Drug Freaks (17m50s) and the black-and-white science educational look at our best lunar buddy, This Is the Moon (10m4s). An insert booklet features essays by Something Weird's Lisa Petrucci on both films (cheerfully charting the Friedman catalog's path to Something Weird and how both films fit into the history of sexploitation) and a Britt Rhuart look at The Acid Eaters as Friedman's reflection of America in transition with exploitation filmmakers quickly keeping pace with it. THE ACID EATERS: AGFA/SWV (Blu-ray)
THE ACID EATERS: Image (DVD)
SPACE THING: AGFA/SWV (Blu-ray)
SPACE THING: Image (DVD)
