Hallucination Generation (1966) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by sakana1 ★★ 8

  Before I watched this, I had a lot of fun mentally coming up with half-gag reviews about the suffering one embraces when voluntarily choosing to watch garbage just to see, oh, I dunno, say, George Montgomery playing a smarmy, drug-pushing wannabe guru. The leader in the early running was something referencing It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, a title which probably refers to a cute attempt to avoid responsibility for something catastrophic but which, in my head, has always basically meant "Well, I knew what I was getting into. There are no excuses."

  Where my whole plan fell apart, though, is that Hallucination Generation isn't on fire at all. At worst it's kind of feebly smoking,…

• Review by Stefano Monteforte ★★

  Danny Steinmann, who'd go on to direct genre flicks like The Unseen (1980) and Friday the 13th Pt. 5: A New Beginning (1985), stars here as Bill, who cuts out on San Francisco's growing drug scene only to get caught up in Spain's, crashed out at beatnik guru Eric's (George Montgomery) pad and blowing grass all day long. Eric's wife (Renate Kasché) threatens to split if he doesn't exorcise the layabouts, so he doses Bill and sends him off to rob a wealthy antiques dealer (Victor Israel) instead. That goes as swimmingly as one might expect it to. Groovy visual LSD trip effects are a high point. Worth a look.

• Review by Adriana Scarpin ★★½

  Em honra do centenário de Edward Mann.
  Miraram no Timothy Leary, acertaram no Charles Mason. Filme bem entediante, especialmente porque tem uma pegada Reefer Madness de moralismo, teria ganhado mais se tivesse passado minha noite de sexta tomando LSD.
  BlurayRip RARBG.

• Review by Gloria Passendale

  2024 List Love Challenge
  14/52 - from my own watchlist

  Svengoolie was a rerun, which means I get to pick a movie from my overflowing list to amuse my husband. He settled on this one, expecting bongos. There were no bongos. Fun to see 1960s Barcelona and Ibiza though and using Gaudi's architecture as a metaphor for a freakout? Bring it!

• Review by Andrew Syder

  One of the first exploitation films to cash in on the burgeoning psychedelic movement. Like a low-rent precursor to Barbet Schroeder’s More, it focuses on a rich American kid falling into the drug scene in Ibiza. The tone is that of a social problem film, with a memorable turn by George Montgomery as a shady drug guru who resembles Timothy Leary. There is an attempt to convey the effects of LSD, which are represented principally by superimposing color imagery of fractal patterns over the black-and-white footage. It’s crude, but effective. At the end of the film, the protagonist ends up in Barcelona and there’s a moment where the weird shapes of Gaudí’s architecture imply a psychedelic tone. I would have liked to have seen more of that.

• Review by LarsN

  Watched the screensaver cut. Great looking tinted b&w all the way through except for a few sequences of very ill-advised primitive Windows XP screensaver effects.

• Review by 𝒜‧₊˚ ★★½

  "it takes an hour to kick in, and then it'll grab you by the neck like a dog with a squirrel."

  you know when a movie inspires you to listen to a certain song right afterwards? or when it makes you think, "i should be rewatching this other movie instead." well, this just did it to me with flying junk by 10cc and stop! (1970).

  filmed in black and white almost in its entirety, the bad trip and lsd flashes stand out not only because of their duration or their popping colors and patterns, but because of their sordidness and lack of romanticization.

  it may not be the best (certainly it isn't), but if you're interested in the hippie scene…

• Review by carbonanotglue

  the American beatnik expatriates in Ibiza angle is more interesting than the drug thing, the movie sort of falls apart once LSD is introduced

• Review by Nik Caesar ★★

  I was hoping for more hallucinations and pill parties. Run of the mill crime story spiced up with the drugs. 2 donuts out of 5.

• Review by Johann Rucker ★★★½

  Don't you guys hate when you're just trying to pop downers in Ibiza and you accidentally join a sex cult?

• Review by 13crashes ★★½

  1966 drugsploitation flick shot in Spain with full color acid trips and flashbacks. At 90 minutes about 20 minutes too long. Hallucination exploitation.

• Review by Dan

  Its really a shame about the added effects