Ghetto Freaks (USA, 1970) 95 min color DIR: Robert J. Emery. PROD: George B. Roberts, Paul Rubenstein. SCR: John Pappas, Robert J. Emery. MUSIC: Tomas Baker, Al Zbacnic. DOP: Paul Rubenstein. CAST: Paul Elliot, Gabe Lewis, Mickey Shiff.
This hippie exploitation film displaces the usual sunny California “summer of love” locations for wintertime in Cleveland, as these long-haired kids hand out pamphlets on the streets while freezing to death. The production history of this movie is as interesting as the onscreen shenanigans. This was originally titled Sign of Aquarius, then as Love Commune (far more accurately at that), but it was re-released as Ghetto Freaks with two minutes of a silly hippie cult initiation scene, involving the African-American member of the commune, so that it could also be marketed as Blaxploitation. It was directed and co-written by Robert J. Emery, perhaps better-known for his later string of Florida-produced exploitation (Ride in a Pink Car).
By the time of its release, there had been many films made about the counterculture, yet this is one of the best- both an exaggerated caricature and plain presentation of the hippie movement. Witnessing the sex orgy scene (with anamorphic lenses, great bad rock music and well-endowed flower children) might make you also want to tune in, turn on and drop out, but otherwise shows that hippie life isn’t the soft-focus Utopia evoked by Laszlo Kovacs’ lens in Psych-Out. These long-haired kids are constantly harassed by fascist cops (reminding us once and for all about the turmoil of the decade not recalled in K-Tel compilations), getting bugged by gangsters wanting to push their drug cartel into the scene, and ekeing out a living hustling underground newspapers on the street. All fifteen of them live in one apartment, and are led by a guru named Sonny, who looks twenty years older than he ought to be- but didn’t they all in these flicks? In one amusing scene, all the kids get on one bus with the same bus pass that is circulated by handing it out the window to the next person to board the vehicle. Doesn’t the bus driver notice? Among the vague linear threads of this fascinating time capsule is the burgeoning yet tragic relationship between Sonny and the newest commune member Diane, a runaway from her upper-class but ultra-conservative upbringing.
Ghetto Freaks is an interesting contradiction. On the surface it attempts to be a gritty expose, and largely succeeds thanks to Paul Rubinstein’s documentary-like photography (the numerous street scenes feel off-the-cuff) and the likely improvised, overlapping dialogue between the pothead protagonists. But no film with such an overlong drug-trip sex-orgy sequence can be taken as “the real thing”, and it also has a strange Brechtian device where in one protest sequence, a film crew is clearly in view. What at first seems to be a mistake occurs again after the shocking finale- actors and crew stand around movie lights at the previous location while the credits roll, as if to say “up yours”, much like the early scene where a hippie gives the viewer the peace sign and the finger in a single shot.
Are we to presume that the movie was just a big put-on? Ghetto Freaks thusly (and perhaps carelessly) raises more confusions than conclusions, but only makes this flick more thought-provoking than was intended. The cameras are turned upon the viewer, forcing one to consider how the movement has been portrayed in media. I’d be interested to know what -if any- response this perplexing picture received in its theatrical runs. People probably just wanted some sex and drugs, which it delivers, plus a whole lot more bang for their bong. Something Weird has released this to DVD in a counterculture double-bill with Irvin Yeaworth’s Way Out; this edition is an absolute must for collectors of psychedelic cinema.