Head is a no-budget, atmospheric, hippie horror flick directed by Robert Altman protégé Alan Rudolph (Choose Me, Trouble In Mind). It tells the blood-curdling tale of a longhaired, dope-smoking rock band that gets involved with occult forces in the desert of Southern California. This is the dark-side of the other Head, the silly one starring The Monkees. This is what might have happened had the Monkees gone to Joshua Tree instead of a Hollywood backlot and eaten 14 pounds of peyote followed by Jimson weed smoothies.
While there’s nothing really scary in Head, it does build up an eerie sense of dread and manages to capture the vibe of the Aquarian Age in demise - when the flower children started turning to seed. While watching the movie, it’s hard not to think of Spahn Ranch and Manson’s family of hippie psychos.
It has a suitably creepy electronic score by Harold Budd who would later make a name for himself in the avant-garde music world.
Originally titled Head, the distributors changed the title to Premonition and later to Impure so as not to be confused with the Monkees’ film. I like the confusion.
Turn up the quality to 360dp and the visuals are pretty good. Audio is very good.
