Bob Schwartz

Dick Clark is known as an entertainment impresario, from American Bandstand to Rockin’ New Year’s Eve. Less known is his brief career as an actor and movie producer. One of the three movies he produced in 1968 is Psych-Out.

Psych-Out is a great dramatized on-location non-documentary about the last days of love in San Francisco. The plot is ridiculous, and ridiculously complex and fevered. It begins with Jenny (Susan Strasberg), a deaf runaway, who comes to Haight-Ashbury looking for her brother The Seeker (Bruce Dern), falls in love with musician Stoney (Jack Nicholson), and ends up standing in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, her hearing miraculously restored.

Following is the trailer and the entire movie online.

Note: As outrageously over-the-top as this is, know that in countercultural moments aiming for better, which many times fall down and flat, this kind of mockery and ridicule is a standard weapon. Like accusing well-meaning people you hate of eating pets. So many things went wrong so fast with the Summer of Love phenomenon. But like the song goes, What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?