(3 of 4)
LSD (Capitol) is a documentary of degeneration, with historical data, current statistics, comments from "acidheads" on why they dig the drug, from "travel agents" on why they sell it, and from medical experts on its appalling effects. Against a background of psychedelic music and the hallucinatory laughter of "stoned" kids, the shattering screams of a young man on his 34th trip put into frightening perspective the never-never world of society's dropouts.
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE (Broadside). Three of the pot religion's high priests (Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner) read from "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead" in droning, sullen voices that might be coming from the far side of the grave. "You are about to begin a great adventure, a trip out of your mind," Leary promises. What the listener is really about to begin is a dull record, with little to recommend it beyond a beautifully executed jacket drawing.
CARL SANDBURG READS FROM HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY "ALWAYS THE YOUNG STRANGERS" (Caedmon). In heartfelt tones, the ancient recorder of Americana shares his remembrances of a Midwestern childhood, school days, the neighborhood circus coming to the empty lot down the street, the daily pumping for water in the backyard, the parade marking the death of Ulysses S. Grant.
ALLEN GINSBERG READS "KADDISH," A 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN ECSTATIC NARRATIVE POEM (Atlantic). An unbeaten survivor of the beat generation croaks his way through one of his better-known works, a litany to his mother and to his own maturation process ("Once man disagreed with my opinion of the cosmos I was lost"). While various vignettes from a misery-filled family album are moving, overlong reels of domestic dreariness are merely that—dreary.
CINEMA
CRAZY QUILT. Written, directed, photographed and produced by John Korty, a 30-year-old TV producer, this minor masterpiece explores the nature of marriage as revealed to a man and woman with nothing in common except their inescapable destiny.
FANTASTIC VOYAGE. What better way to become acquainted with the human circulatory system than to travel through it? In a teeny-weeny submarine, a miniaturized crew of science-fictionees, assisted by Raquel Welch, go on a spine-tingling mission through inner space.
THE WRONG BOX. Survival of the fittest—Victorian style—leads members of a genteel British family to mayhem, murder and related shenanigans in an all-out effort to inherit a vast fortune.
HOW TO STEAL A MILLION and live happily ever after furnishes the amoral moral of William Wyler's Parisian comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole as the serendipitous partners in crime.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Bloodletting in the groves of academe. Two faculty couples (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis and George Segal) cut each other up with words, words, and more words in a deft screen version of Edward Albee's play.
THE ENDLESS SUMMER. Even those who don't know a pipeline from a wipeout will have no trouble following the action of this beautifully photographed odyssey of surfing.
BOOKS
Best Reading