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B&W, 1968, 63 mins 56 secs.
Directed by Raf Mauro
Starring Alexis Wassel, Don Nevins, Barbara Speigelberg, Carole Trent, John Wonderling, Tom McEntee, Martha Rubell, Joyce Diamond, Basil Hoffman, Robert Silver, Thee Neons
Distribpix (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD)

"A thousand lights were dancing in my stomach." Blonde on a Bum TripThat's just one of the many sensations experienced by the Blonde on a Bum Triptitle character in Blonde on a Bum Trip, an unforgettable, music-packed drugsploitation roughie that floored many an unprepared viewer back in the VHS days of Something Weird. Clocking in just a hair over an hour by the time the end credits roll, it's a crazed NYC slice of black-and-white drug scare fun buoyed by an unusually strong soundtrack featuring catchy songs by The Vagrants, Thee Neons, and The E-Types. Largely slapped together via narration in the editing room in the best sexploitation tradition, this was the handiwork of several associates of Michael and Roberta Findlay including producers Ed Adlum (Shriek of the Mutilated) and Jack Bravman (Snuff). Weirdly, this was also the only official cinematography credit for Leon Gast, who ended up making the Oscar-winning doc When We Were Kings!

We begin with a flashy drug-fueled dance party where a fleeting flash of a knife leads to the opening credits, after which we see our protagonist, nice girl chemistry college student Susan, being admitted to the hospital. From there we see how her reluctant decision to go along with her very underdressed roomies to a "get-together before classes start" goes south very quickly. Blonde on a Bum TripThe most conniving of the bunch, Vanessa, talks her boyfriend TJ into "loving up" Susan whose chemistry skills could come in handy coming up with a batch of LSD. Blonde on a Bum TripOne persuasive speech from a young professor later, and there's no turning back and poor Susan is dragged into a world of blaring acid rock, bare butts galore, and bad trips with everyone looking like they're in a distorted mirror.

Picked up by Distribpix who ended up including this as part of a memorable deal with Something Weird in the mid-'90s, Blonde on a Bum Trip is a great party movie with frequent surprises (including baffling use of a Bela Lugosi mask in a sex scene) and that wonderful monochrome grunge atmosphere you simply can't replicate today. None of the actors seem to be professionals, which somehow adds to the appeal as the camera careens through vintage Manhattan locations in between drug party tangents. Thanks to its brief but vivid life on '90s home video, the film became a favorite of cult movie devotees and lived on via word of mouth after that without a legit release of any kind in sight for decades.

Thankfully the Distribpix exploitation catalog floodgates eventually opened once again, with an outrageously deluxe 2024 Blu-ray release featuring a more loving presentation and lavish packaging than many Oscar-winning studio films. The new 4K scan from the original 35mm camera negative is immaculate and really gorgeous, up there with the best vintage exploitation Blonde on a Bum Trippresentations out there in HD. You won't believe how clear and pristine this is compared to the what we've had before. The DTS-HD MA English 2.0 mono audio is also in Blonde on a Bum Tripgreat shape (with optional English SDH subtitles), all the better to appreciate that soundtrack. Here you get a pair of very packed new audio commentaries; the first has Adlum and director (and actor) Raf Mauro moderated by Howie Pyro, and the second with Bravman and Distribpix's Steven Morowitz. Between the two you get plenty about the challenges of trying to make a movie for 10 grand, the reason this film is better than Gone with the Wind, the IDs for the various local bands seen and heard in the film, the background behind many of the locations, and plenty of anecdotes about the film and the colorful characters involved (especially on the financing end). Also included are the wild original trailer, an image gallery (3m20s), and three vintage classroom LSD scare films from the Something Weird archive, all free of watermarks and looking to be fresh scans: Beyond LSD (23m12s), the Encyclopedia Britannica Education Corp.'s Philadelphia-shot Ups/Downs (23m46s), and the San Mateo School District's LSD-25 (26m35s). After watching all of these, you'll be afraid to touch anything stronger than Benadryl. The package also comes with a booklet featuring a 2015 essay by Howie Pyro and edited by SWV's Lisa Petrucci dissecting 'the ultimate garage rock and roll movie," followed by an extensive Petrucci-penned analysis of the intersection of anti-drug propaganda and music bursting from the youth scene.