An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

Just awful. I don't know what is worse; the film itself or this Wikipedia summary.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qry7XccmQKo

https://en.wikipedia...ippie_in_Israel

 

"Young American hippie and war veteran, Mike (Asher Tzarfati), travels to Israel shortly after his involvement in Vietnam. Hitchhiking and "bumming around" Hippie Mike meets up with three Israelis along his journey — stage actress Elizabeth (Lily Avidan), another female hippie friend (Tzila Karney), and her Hebrew-speaking boyfriend Komo (Shmuel Wolf). They join a larger group of hippies and decide to form an isolated community on a deserted island, where they can live in peace "without clothes, without government, and without borders."

The hippies are not without their foils, and find them in two gun-toting, top-hat-clad, mime-like enforcers (who regularly appear out of nowhere) and who are out to make Mike's life miserable. Reviewer Brian Orndorf notes that, “Sefer doesn't explain who these guys are or what they're ultimately after, hinting that the duo might be the personification of "The Man" out to silence the hippie uproar.”

 

Led by Hippie Mike, the quartet of hippies manages to survive a gun attack by the mad mimes and the group flees to the uninhabited island. On the road trip to the island, the hippies quickly forget their worries, tossing their clothes in the wind and enjoying the ride in Elizabeth’s chic convertible car. As they drive down the Israeli coast, they stop along the way to make love, to drive in circles for no reason, and to pick up the supplies they'll need on their island (including the purchase a bag of groceries and a live goat).

 

They finally arrive at the island and park their car on shore, using a small dingy boat to row their way out there. Once on the Island, the elated hippies do a free form dance, stripping off their clothes and when dusk hits, they settle in for some delicious canned food by the fireside. That night, the hippies pronounce their love for each other and proclaim how, “full of shit” the world is. They wake up the following morning to find that both their boat and the goat have mysteriously vanished overnight.

 

Shark-infested waters then make it impossible for any of them to swim to the mainland where the car sits on shore. As the women get hungry and tempers flare, the men forage for food, winding up with nothing but a handful of barnacles that Mike manages to scrub off of some rocks. Much like the story that clearly was an inspiration, The Lord of the Flies, when push comes to shove, the idyllic situation quickly from Eden to hell and the dark psyche of the Hippies’ true nature is revealed in the end."

 

 

[NathanGordon 1096]

I actually saw this on TCM earlier this year. It's your average vaguely artsy hippiesploitation flick, but without any plot or sex scenes. Kind of interesting as a curiosity from the 70s, but dull and not really noteworthy.