Today's film for Hippie Hotties has hippie in the title, so you know that it is 100% about hot hippies. It is also considered one of the strangest movies ever made, often cited as one of the absolute worst. Why is that? Well, let's take a look at the once-forgotten 1972 hippie flick An American Hippie in Israel.
Amos Sefer directed this 1972 film that feels like a complete anomaly. It feels as weird as other Israeli-produced films like the legendary cult classic The Apple, but with an even smaller budget and a much more didactic message. Prior to this film, Sefer directed a 1969 short called Be Careful Children the Ball Is Not Just Yours, but he didn't work as a writer/director/producer again after An American Hippie in Israel. I think we're about to see why.
This low-budget movie allegedly shot for $60,000 off of the coast of Egypt follows an American man named Mike who is sick and tired of Western Society. He fought in the Vietnam War and feels totally used by his home country, so he goes to Israel to bum around for a while. Honestly, he looks more like a rockstar than a bum American vet hitchhiking through Israel, but maybe that's just 70s style.
He wants to live off the grid (by 70s standards) and so he and a group of other hippies that he met in Israel search for a blissful paradise where they can be free from the shackles of society.
He meets two hot hippie chicks and they are joined by one of the babe's boyfriends who only speaks Hebrew. Lily Avidan plays Elizabeth and Tzila Karney plays Francoise. The foursome seeks to join a commune of hippies on a deserted island where they can live "without clothes, without government, and without borders". I really like that whole "without clothes" part. They definitely live up to that one...the other two things not so much.
That sounds great, but things obviously go wrong. A pair of mimes with guns (for real) seeks to stop the hippies. I'm talking like actual mimes. These guys have their faces painted white and they wear black suits and bowler hats.
They do not talk, but they do have loaded weapons. Not very mime-like if you ask me, but I guess no one ever said mimes have to be peaceful! The hippies just barely escape gun violence from them before finally getting a boat (and a live lamb for reasons that aren't 100% clear) and going to the island - well, they stop to get naked and make love, of course.
When they get to the island, everything seems perfect. It's just as they all imagined! That changes, however, when they all wake up in the morning and find that their boat and their pet lamb are gone. Mike heads into the water to swim toward the mainland for help, but the water is infested with sharks. The hippies get hungry. Everyone gets angry.
While Mike never finds the boat, the group does find the lamb alive and well. You can see where this is going, I'm sure. Do you think the group decides to live peacefully with each other and their lamb on the island? Hell no. This movie puts hippie ideals to the test and it leads to a tragic ending.
This movie is pretty heavy on messages, as are admittedly a lot of films of this era that wound up being considered flops. That just goes to show you: audiences love a subtle message! No one likes to be hit over the head with mimes-who-represent-The-Man. That's what they were metaphors for, by the way. The mimes and the sharks represent society or "The Man". The film shows the nonstop way that "The Man" gets people down with both of those tropes. The Man doesn't care about dialogue or people's needs. The man just wants to get you down!
This film now is known for being a bit "so bad it's good". According to interviews with the cast, they took this film very seriously and truly believed this movie was going to make a big impact. That's true hippie idealism right there! In a movie filled to the brim with hippie messages, the ending is a bit weird. What exactly are we supposed to take away from it? Hippie ideas are cool and all, but if you're starving on an island you will act like a primitive human no matter what you believe in? Oh, wait. I guess that's it. Movie solved!
This film was thought to be lost for a long time, but it was rediscovered and rereleased in 2013. Thank goodness for that. Now we can enjoy and marvel at this so-bad-it's-actually-kind-of-good film forever and ever.
