"The Acid Eaters" Wins Top Honors

The quicksand scene, with breasts

Finally, a movie that makes even less sense than "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies."

Byron Mabe shoulders the blame for this 1968 epic, with Carlo Monson handling the screenplay.

I hope Byron didn't pay Carlo much, because this film has no screenplay. It barely has a story, and certainly no plot to get in the way of anything.

After some uniquely bad "I'm gonna tune out/ Ain't gonna work for the Man no more/Twang twang/Plink screech thud" music the guys and gals head out on their motorcycles to go take LSD, make out, paint each other, kill passing motorists and find the giant white temple of acid.

Got that?

Many strange and wonderful things happen during the trip. They hang around this little hut next to a pretty crummy-looking pond, the girls take their tops off, and they paint each other. Then they make out.

Later a couple are making out and one girl gets mad at another one and chases her into quicksand, thus presenting Carlo with an opportunity to write some dialogue. Alas, Carlo's characters can only say things like "I've never seen quicksand before." The girl dies, and everybody makes out.

The girl winds up in Hell, where an Indian chief and an old guy in galluses are playing checkers next to a ladder. Seriously.

Then the gang rides elsewhere. Artie, played with near-autistic exuberance by the immortal Buck Kartalian, has no girl now, so he jumps up and down on these big pipes for a while until he meets the Indian chief, who gets the quicksand girl back for him, while he takes a cold shower under a tree.

Meanwhile, a well-dressed couple are having a strange post-coital conversation under a pile of hay, and everybody makes out.

Then they all kill a passing motorist to get reefer money. This is the most exciting moment in the film.

And finally we arrive at the "acid pyramid," which is really a ziggurat, and a pretty cheap-looking one at that. Naturally, the girls immediately take off their tops and everybody climbs on the ziggurat to make out.

And inside Arnie, dressed like the Devil, urges people to take a bite of the LSD tablet, a big thing that looks like styrofoam. And checks are cancelled, bourbon and 7-Up is poured, and long, arbitrary street scenes with jump cuts are provided. Plus an outraged citizen's face and the couple on the field. And a girl in a rowboat. Wait, that was at the beginning. Anyway, they all make out.

We're talking a near-constant parade of the same four sets of breasts: one large and starting to droop a bit; one large and defying gravity for the moment; one medium firm; one small and droopy, an unfortunate combination. Rear end assessment is more speculative — the production is quite profoundly mammarial.

Breast set number one

And then the girls take their shirts off and everybody makes out.

At 62 minutes, just bearable. Two coils, for the amount of nudity and sheer incomprehensibility.