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No shoes. No shirt. All love. That was the flower child aesthetic driving the heart of the hippie movement in the 60s and 70s. Many young adults at the time rejected mainstream culture and protested the Vietnam War, resulting in a social counter-cultural revolution based on free love, drugs, and political expression. Its unrelenting impact spread to Hollywood, where stars like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Dennis Hopper popularized the images of long hair and hemp fibers.
Movies about hippies tend to exaggerate their looks and play up just how abundant they were, but the core messages of peace and love are true to form. Often, the editing and visuals of these movies can also reflect what it’s like to be on the same psychedelic substances many at the time were imbibing. As a result, films portraying Bohemian flower children are just as nonconforming to conventional film rules as they are.
‘Easy Rider’ (1969)
Easy Rider, directed by and starring Hopper along with Fonda, is arguably the most well-known and influential of all hippie subculture movies. The film follows two Harley-Davidson-riding hippies on a trek across the country to deliver cocaine in Southern California.
The pair at the heart of Easy Rider actively embrace the values of the hippie movement, even when it’s difficult to do so. The story was a cultural landmark in the free expression movement and made nonconformity an appealing identity. Even more importantly, the movie made household names out of its cast.
‘Taking Woodstock’ (2009)
Taking Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee, explores the outsiders who helped make the iconic musical gathering happen. It’s a charming shaggy-dog comedy that quietly explores what type of ambition and crazy it takes to organize the largest hippie gathering in history. The film doesn’t really focus on the concerts themselves, but on the impact that an event of this magnitude and significance has on the surrounding community.
Taking Woodstock adds a lot of important context to the effort and determination it takes to hold such a laid-back affair. It’s held together by the sweet Elliot (Demetri Martin) as he tries to convince a local farmer (Eugene Levy) to allow him to use his land for the venue. It’s an interesting, mostly-successful move to turn the large-scale Woodstock into a small-scale comedy.
‘The Wicker Man’ (1973)
There was a lot of backlash against the hippie movement, especially the destructive parts of free love and excessive drug use that many more conservative people perceived. The Wicker Man follows Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) as an uptight, rule-abiding Christian man investigating a cult of pagan hippies who’ve created their own island commune. The officer is both enticed and disgusted by the blatantly sexual displays he observes before his untimely demise.
The Wicker Man firmly comes out against the failures of the British hippie movement while simultaneously rebuking authority. This cognitive dissonance propels the gripping plot ahead, as the village people’s illusory utopia appears perfect until its blood price is revealed. The masterpiece that is The Wicker Man changed horror for the better with its profound influence being felt in many indie horrors today, like Midsommar.
‘The Doors’ (1991)
Oliver Stone’s The Doors is a biographical musical film about Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) and his bandmates as they skyrocket to fame before quickly becoming undone by drugs and alcohol. It portrayed Morrison as a wild man, frequently encouraging his own band to follow in his eccentric footsteps. His need to experience life’s excesses eventually leads to his tragic death.
The film takes the audience on a kaleidoscopic voyage, mirroring their protagonists’ frequently inebriated states. It can be a dismal, heartbreaking depiction of the musician and the hard-partying torment he put himself through. Despite a lukewarm initial reception, The Doors stands as one of the best musical biopics ever made.
‘Hair’ (1979)
Hair directly results from Hollywood’s massive anti-Vietnam War response, and how the hippie movement was born out of anti-war sentiment. The musical depicts Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) on his way to a draft-board appointment in New York before getting sidetracked by a group of free spirits. Claude goes on a drug-fueled bender with his newfound friends and begins a path of self-discovery before finally going in front of the draft board.
Hair was an adaptation of a 60s musical but came out at the tail end of the hippie movement when people had become more skeptical of the counterculture movement. This skepticism adds a melancholy undercurrent to an otherwise lively, artfully staged film.
‘Eggshells’ (1969)
Tobe Hooper, known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, made his directorial debut with the trippy art film Eggshells. A group of disillusioned college students aspires to live off the land and find an antiquated house in the woods to live in. However, as time passes, they have the uneasy feeling that they are being watched.
The film contains many hallmarks of the horror master, such as a ramshackle Texas town and a strong sense of doom. There’s a hazy notion of a plot, but the film mostly wanders from one moment to the next with little narrative coherence. Overall, it’s a surreal experience that plays with all the different facets of its setting to create a time capsule of life in the late 60s.
‘Wanderlust’ (2012)
Wanderlust features a very gentle parody of life on a commune as lead characters George (Paul Rudd) and Linda Gergenblatt (Jennifer Anniston) live amid a hippie utopia. A series of comic mishaps, as well as a promiscuous and naïve yogi named Seth (Justin Theroux), upend the couple’s lives and make them reconsider returning to city life. It’s exactly what one would expect from director David Wain, known for the zany Wet Hot American Summer.
Wanderlust portrays a comedic view of what modern-day hippies look like. The end consequence is a sexually liberated, albeit ignorant, group of individuals who have found their own narrow idea of utopia.
‘The Trip’ (1967)
Roger Corman, known for pumping out a slew of B-movies and being an inspiration for auteurs like Martin Scorsese, takes the audience on a hallucinogenic voyage in The Trip. Paul Groves (Fonda) is a TV commercial director who takes LSD while going through a painful divorce. The rest of the movie chronicles the highs and lows of his trip as he meets different people and gains a new perspective on his life.
Jack Nicholson wrote The Trip, emphasizing a more experimental and less narrative-driven script. This approach shines through as the audience is made to feel as if they are hallucinating as much as Paul is. It’s as if most of the cast and crew had plenty of experience experimenting with psychedelic drugs. All these efforts combine to create one of the best psychedelic films of all time.
‘Psych-Out’ (1968)
Jack Nicholson, proving he’s the ultimate hippie actor, shows up once again in Psych-Out, a film about hippies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the 60s. Jenny (Susan Strasberg) is on a mission to find her long-lost brother, but her plans get derailed when she becomes infatuated with the experimental band ‘Mumblin Jim.’ Throughout the film, the easygoing lifestyle of the hippies she meets clashes with the depressing reality of existence.
Producer Dick Clark meant for Psych Out to depict the negative consequences of the heavy partying and drug use that hippies were known for. Despite its less-than-positive picture of the lifestyle, there are some whimsical moments among the freak-outs and scurrying from cops and goons.
‘Daisies’ (1966)
What should a person’s rational response be to a world that is completely indifferent to their wants and needs? In Daisies, the solution is to be as debauched and wicked as the worst the world has to give. The movie revolves around two young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, who are hippie anarchists that revel in satisfying all their carnal desires, no matter the cost. All good things must end, however, and the two must navigate life when they can’t keep the party going.
Daisies is one of the most renowned examples of the Czechoslovak New Wave movement, sometimes known as the Czechoslovak film miracle. These films – Daisies included – frequently used dark and bizarre comedy, followed dysfunctional youths, and included surreal visuals.
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