The Psychedelic Films of William Grefé

Canon Fodder

No one turns on a fish!

 

The Hooked Generation (1968)

Director: William Grefé

Screenplay: William Grefé

Cast: Jeremy Slate as Daisey; Steve Alaimo as Mark; John Davis Chandler as Acid; Willie Pastrano as Dum Dum; Socrates Ballis as Cuban Leader; Cece Stone as Kelly; Walter R. Philbin as Lieutenant Dern; Lee Warren as Charlie

 

Progressing from two monster films (Sting of Death and Death Curse of Tartu from 1966), among other productions, Florida based filmmaker Grefé would progress as the world around him did. As motorbike films like The Wild Angels (1966) came to be, he made The Wild Rebels (1967). And with the bludgeoning era of hippies, drugs and psychedelic coming about, we get this crime film in the process. Three men are involved in drug smuggling with the Cubans, which is more poignant in knowledge that Cuba and Florida has had real life connections in their closeness, including Cuban exiles fleeing to Miami as Castro took over their homeland, an initial set which will escalate as things do not go to plan with the trade between both sides.

The three leads are Daisey (Jeremy Slate), Dum Dum (played by former boxer Willie Pastrano) and Acid, as played by character actor John Davis Chandler, whose character can be perfectly described with him doing heroin over the main opening credits and whose drug addiction is a real reliability for the trio. None of said trio is likable, and it is fascinating to watch a pulp film entirely about figures that are utterly irredemable in their attitudes, anti-heroes who are truly unlikable and where the narrative is not redemption but a downward spiral, blameable on Acid in particular. Killing the Cubans when they demand more money starts the ball rolling, as is killing the coast guards that find them, and generally burning bridges around them. Even in tangents not connected to the plot you have a moment like one of them killing a young Native American woman, at a hut village in the Everglades (shot at a real one with real Native Americans), in an event which does not have any real effect on making things worse as I thought it might have led to. Instead, having two hostages already does not help their stakes.

Like an old film noir narrative brought to the then modern day with more grit, if the review is dry and explaining the plot more, The Hooked Generation is a difficult film for me to really elaborate on without ruining it. This is not a dismissal, as I was engaged with it through, instead belonging to what I have already referred, genre cinema which is less about any hidden meaning but a dynamic storytelling which engaged on the surface. This is a film with a lot more nastiness to it, even if tame by the modern day in actual content, but that seen of streamlined storytelling is still here and to be appreciated.

This argues why Grefé took a while to be appreciated, decades later, as his films are more closer to traditional genre filmmaking, from a man whose professionalism and strive to improve is seen in his work history, whilst the likes of Herschell Gordon Lewis and Doris Wishman made odd films which defied filmmaking conventions and won fans over even if a few might have been "ironic". The moment where this film gets any eccentricity is the stint among the hippies, shot with real ones in a home decorated in multi-colour and ending with a shootout that, to Grefé's credit, does embrace the surreal with a drug haze death flashback for a character, involving psych effects and monkeys looking close up at the camera, a weird touch from a hippie preacher beforehand showing them in a cage part of a karmic scale lecture involving evolution. For the most part, The Hooked Generation is a solidly made, exploitation crime film, not one of the best but interesting. It is meaningful in a filmography of a director who, thankfully, made films which are better and thus increases the virtues of this one tenfold. Particularly as well, if you look at a creator's career, The Hooked Generation as a film planned ahead with a small budget and Grefé's resourcefulness makes a perfect contrast for its complete opposite, where Grefé could not plan ahead in a scenario entirely out of his hands....

 

========

Electric Shades of Grey (1971)

Director: William Grefé (and Terry Merrill)

Cast: John Darrell as Father John

 

Also known as The Psychedelic Priest, which is not a great title even if one to sell the film easier, this was a film made without any script. The producer Terry Merrill wished to make a film with Grefé but had no script, causing complete improvisation to be necessary and having to make do with who came onboard, including more real hippies, forcing William Grefé out of his comfort zone of being efficient and telling a simple story into something more unconventional. The film's back-story gets weirder as, due to unfortunate circumstances, it never got a proper release until 2001 originally from Something Weird Video, before being made available again through Arrow Video in 2020.

An initial set-up does exist - that it follows a young priest (John Darrell) who, in the midst of the hippie era, is offered a cup of drink by students, caught cutting class and smoking pot, spiked with acid. With pinhole camera lenses for distortion and swirling lights, he has a bad trip with a religious crisis the result, with an extended sombre scene of him being told his is doing God's work by a voice (God's or the acid's effect?) with a distorted voice echo as the scene is under the flickers of coloured light in a darkened catholic church.

Anyone expecting an exploitation film will be disappointed, as Electric Shades of Grey is going to be one of the more difficult films from Grefé to appreciate. It is an odd film - languid and relaxed, a drama shot by Grefé himself as cinematographer with a tiny group on 16mm film, a large part of the film a drama where the priest picks up a female hitchhiker, traumatised by being raped by the last person she got in a car with, who start to bond and connect together in a sedate and even serious tone. Grefé accidentally made an independently made road movie, about existential questions in the hippy era, as a result of the scenario he found himself within, an outlier in a career of genre films.

Events do happen. The couple find a woman on the edge of the road about to give birth, the production having to stage a birthing scene with non-actors and with no baby, which actually works. It has anti-hippy cops who are also racists, leading to a scene with a black doctor, trying to find himself and wishing to go research cancer treatment when he returns to civilisation, which sadly are still relevent decades later. The relationship with the priest and the hitchhiker eventually becomes tense too, as she has fallen for him but he has taken vow of chastity, leading to a tragedy that turns the film into Drugsploitation, as he descends into alcoholism and then becoming a penniless drug addict.

It is an awkward, curious film but I confess I admired it. Grefé took the chance to be experimental, including non-chronological scenes and unconventional editing, whilst the score with its psych rock feels like him catching up to the time with some relevance.  Considering how much of a disaster this film could have been, it is a testament to Grefé instead he managed to put together a film from nothing of interest. The result is a very acquired taste, definitely, but a surprise for me.