Movie: Blue Sunshine

Blue Sunshine (1976)

Written and Directed by: Jeff Lieberman

Starring: Zalman King and Deborah Winters

Blue Sunshine is a fair step away from being a cinematic classic, but it is not entirely without it's demerits. The movie raises a few too many questions than it provides answers for and tends to think that it is a bit more important than it really is, but what it lacks in plot it makes up for with a fresh(for the time) concept and a reasonably paced story of a man on a mission.

The movie revolves around a wincing man-child named Jerry Zipkin(Zalman King). Zipkin, or as he is occasionally referred to "Zippo", is your typical "everyman" type character except for the fact he has no job, no means of supporting himself, and only seems to be friends with successful people. I suppose we can overlook this due to the fact that it allows him to spend the duration of the movie looking for clues related to the titular substance Blue Sunshine without us having to wonder why no one seems to realize that they haven't seen him in days and his friends have no problem breaking laws to help him despite having no damn reason to. Also, if the actor's name, Zalman King, strikes a bell for you, but your sure you've never seen him before, then I would be willing to bet that you had Showtime during the mid-90's. Zalman King would go on to do almost nothing for the next 15 years until a little show he wrote, directed, produced, and occasionally starred in called Red Shoe Diaries. That's right, our movie's hero is the guy that brought us one of televisions longest running softcore porn series. Huzzah!

In a way, it kind of surprises me that King never quite caught on as a leading man. Much like Bruce Campbell, he is a fair actor, delivering his lines with the right amount of intensity(usually) and only occasionally looking like he can't remember what his next line is. Plus, he is the spiting image of Michael Douglas. Seriously, put a beard on him and he looks like Douglas in The China Syndrome. Speaking of look-a-likes, our other main character is Alicia Sweeney, Zipline's girlfriend/wife/neighbour(it's never really explained that clearly), as portrayed by Deborah Winters. I spent a good portion of the movie sure that I'd seen her somewhere else. Then I placed it: Dee Wallace. These two could be sisters, which leads me to believe that our Director Jeff Lieberman really wanted Keller from Streets of San Francisco and Nettie from The Stepford Wives, but these two were all he could afford.

Anyway, on with the story. Blue Sunshine is a movie about drugs and their dangerous side-effects, which basically makes this a 90-minute PSA of the Reefer Madness variety. Zipper and his lady friend begin the movie attending a little house party. It seems pretty normal with the exception of some guy that thinks he is Rodan(of Godzilla fame) and everyone's best friend Frannie(a guy) preforming the laziest Frank Sinatra bit ever. During a particularly showy move, Frannie takes one of the audience into his arms and lays one on her. Not feeling that to be appropriate, the unnamed girl's unnamed man goes to pull Frannie off her by the hair, for some reason. To everyone's horror, Frannie's hair pulls right off like a really bad piece. Suddenly non-responsive and wild eyed, Frannie makes a line for the door and disappears into the night. Everyone decides to split up and look for him, with the exception of a few women who decide to stay at the house and wait for Frannie to show back up and murder them. Because that's what he does. Apparently losing your hair makes you kill people. The first one to find him is Zipwad. After a lackluster fight, they end up squaring off in the middle of the road. Zap ends the fight by throwing Frannie out in front of a passing semi. The drivers chase off our guy only leading the cops to believe that Zipling was the crazy S.O.B. that just killed 3 girls and someone that everyone already saw go crazy.

Events like this keep the movie going towards the end. Zip Pliskin shows up at a new leads house just in time for them to flip out or just too late and they are already dead. Through the course of everything though, we learn that all the victims have two things in common: they all went to the same college and they all had the same dealer. Turns out that Blue Sunshine was a specialized form of LSD that their dealer cooked up that has a time release side-effect of making you lose your hair and proceed to go bat-shit murder crazy after a 10 year grace period. The movie makes no attempt to explain how the BS(*snicker*) LSD was different, how or who made it, what happens to the dealer(who is now running for Congress by the way), or how to tell whose taken it, apart from assuming that anyone who was at Stanford in 1967 is about to go berserk. It does, however, mention that 255 tabs of the stuff are still unaccounted for. Why such a specific number? You mean to tell me no one bothered to keep track of who made it or who it was sold to, but they apparently kept records on how much of the stuff was left after the big summer selling push? Oh well, I guess this is what you have to deal with when you watch a movie made by the man who created the focus of one of my favorite MST3K episodes:Squirm!

All in all: 7 out of 10

Worth watching if you like your movies halfway between Scanners and The Fugitive.