Grindhouse Releasing forever won my heart when they put out Gone with the Pope, and now the guy who worked on that (Hurt Locker editor Bob Murawski) is back with another passion project of B-movie restoration, An American Hippie in Israel. It’s said to be a masterpiece of hippie-sploitation cinema, and I don’t really know what that means, but this synopsis almost made me free love in my shorts:
Originally filmed in 1972 by director Amos Sefer, AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL stars Asher Tzarfati as a dope-smoking Vietnam vet wandering through an insane desert landscape of “machine-gun wielding mimes, robots, bloodthirsty sharks, free-loving debauchery and poignant anti-war monologues”.
Hmm, I was on the fence when I heard about the machine gun mimes, but the sharks and the free-loving debauchery really pushed me over the edge.
The 3-disc set is available on DVD/Blu-Ray now on Amazon, and it’s playing tonight in Nashville, this Saturday at the Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park in Houston, and coming to New York November 29th. For more dates, check out GrindhouseReleasing. But don’t be surprised if your girlfriend disappears into a sweet van that weekend.
(beware brief nudity at 54, 1:06, 1:30, and 2:42)
No one can overpronounce “shit” like Asher Tzarfati.
