This week’s DVD release of “Blue Sunshine” won’t sell as much product as “Bridesmaids.”
But it could boost the 1978 film’s existing cult status up a few notches.
Sure, some folks already know all about “Blue Sunshine,” the tale of a mysterious condition which causes people to lose their hair and become homicidal maniacs. But the film’s fresh home video release should expose it to a new generation eager for more ’70s-style horror.
Let’s be straight. “Blue Sunshine” is no classic in the traditional sense.
The acting ranges from indifferent to insulting, and the scares are more likely to inspire chuckles, not goosebumps. But it’s got that eerie ’70s vibe, from the creepy soundtrack to the sense that you don’t know precisely what will happen next.
And it’s hard not to cheer when a bad guy is driven to distraction by disco music, or a cheap scare moment involves a parrot flying out of a closet.
Perhaps the best element in “Blue Sunshine” is star Zalman King, best known for directing erotic fare like “Two Moon Junction” and “Red Shoe Diaries,” the latter spawning a Showtime series.
King is not your average hero. He’s odd and distracted, a man accused of a crime he didn’t commit who often acts like he has all the time in the world to prove his innocence. His line readings are precious, and so is his way with the ladies.
The oddest element in a very odd movie is how the narrative swats the Woodstock generation. It’s hard to say more without revealing too much, but suffice to say there’s a price to be paid for dropping acid.
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Here are some comments I left at a horror message board a while back:
Although a very effective thriller (between this and SQUIRM, it’s easy to see where the cult for Jeff Leiberman comes from), this is also an intelligent piece of social commentary, comparable to the remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS made around the same time, in which the horrific elements are really a metaphor for how the now-aging Baby Boomers (notice how hair loss is the main symptom of insanity in the movie!) was trying to grapple with its personal anxieties at the time. The oldest members of the generation that had once declared “don’t trust anyone over thirty!” had now just turned that magic number a few years earlier, and some of the others who also considered themselves members were now on the edge of forty, and they were now re-evaluating their youthful idealism and the consequences of their actions. We see that many of those who once declared themselves enemies of the Establishment have either become the establishment (the drug-peddler has become a leading physician; Mark Goddard’s charismatic hippie leader has become a rising politician who seems to be based on both Pat Brown and Tom Hayden), or settled comfortably into middle-class life, but they are still unable to escape their past . And while the bald, staring lunatics are scary enough, the real-life addicts Zalman King’s protagonist encounters in the park are far more terrifying. Yet even in that scene, the movie makes it clear that the addicts are the products of certain social conditions, a combination of neglect and libertine-ism, and deserve our sympathy. It’s far more sophisticated than it seems, and dismissing it as an overlong LSD scare film doesn’t do it justice.