Rainbow Bridge (1972)

oh, how those criticvs love to rip apart low-budget movies outside the box. In '70, that expression was unknown but the hippie culture was still going strong (though after Altamont, Kent, State, Isle of Wight, and losing Janis Joplin, the surge lost a lot of momentum).one attractive feature is that viewers cannot make headz or tailz of this film until about the fourth FULL viewing. plus...and this means kudos the creative side: we are never sure if the actors are actors! now, that is acting! and directing! we have our hippie-corporate head liaison visiting the Meditation Center in Maui...just to see how the money is being wasted. Pat Hartley, very sexy in her hippie-tight jeans, makes the trek....she encounters many obstructions of the establishment, on the way.she falls mesmerized by the true love, peace, contentment - dreal *harmony* she finds. her enthusiasm is then further increase when the man, THE hippie musician icon of the day, Jimi Hendrix arrives to rock out! Hendrix's performance is the centerpiece of the film, but it comes well *into* the proceedings. a great performance.baby boomers, esp. those a tad too old for Elvis and just young enough for The Beatles, invite yourself to join the peaceniks.

I was only 2 when Jimi Hendrix left this earth,as well as Janis Joplin. (Age 3 for Morrison). As I grew up,I discovered why these people were so important to the music of the times as they were. 3 people who for 4 amazing years captured the mood,sound and feelings of a generation.Hendrix,in whatever format or context you may hear or see him in,is worth owning. Even for an imperfect movie like "Rainbow Bridge". Why? That's easy,this movie while certainly a test of one's patience,captured the last Hendrix gig on film in July of 1970,short as it may be.The live versions of these Hendrix classics are really pretty good,I wont go as far as saying better than Woodstock or Jimi at Monterey but close. I'm not a die hard fan or anything but I know the difference between a good showing and bad one. Speaking of good & bad,I do agree it's a very misleading and dishonest thing that video/DVD packagers do when they put out things like this. Of course people will think it's a Hendrix concert but, if they stopped long enough to read the back of the case (like my brother did) they'd know it's actually a "movie". It's no different then when "Car Wash" was put out on video and they put Richard Pryor's picture on the cover (he's only in it less then 10 minutes,unlike Jimi who at least (in person) is in the last 30 or so. If he wasn't in this,certainly this movie would be a forgotten entity and probably only on old VHS tapes.As for the "plot" or "story" of the film? It's really not much of a story but it's almost a documentary like look at what the hippy counter-culture was all about. Their ideas of world peace and freedom to be what one wants to be and live like,are ideas I could agree with. I didn't even mind the scenes of skinny-dipping which teach body acceptance. Those kind of ideals are still being sought out today and have a lot more meaning in the long run....but! When they started spouting about how they've seen UFO's and the Government is conspiring to hide it from America or started to become a bit redundant in things they said before,I could only roll my eyes. I found the hash smoking scenes to be rather pathetic,drug use is definitely something I can never agree with. Sixties,seventies or anytime. I could only laugh at the African American couple looking at the camera and singing,as if they escaped from the play "Hair" or "Jesus Christ Superstar". Silly. So,overall this movie is really just worth having for the music & last concert of Hendrix's life,if you were there for those times or you just like movies that are really offbeat (or off the beaten path in this case). 8 stars for both Jimi Hendrix and a few plausibly presented ideas or ideals. The rest is just water under the bridge of time. (END)

To begin, it would be a mistake to approach viewing this film as a "Jimi Hendrix film." As I understand it it began as a documentary about the Rainbow Bridge meditation center. When it was filmed nobody knew Jimi's death was but two months down the road. The film was supposedly bankrolled by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (qv) -- the loosely knit communal family that first delivered mass quantities of high-quality LSD and Afghan hashish to the western world.That said, the film could have benefited from some better writing and editing. Still, we are provided a window upon a moment in time and space when a positive vision of what might have been was still alive and progressing. Take the film and appreciate it. There will be no more like it. As strange as it appears at first glance it is valuable historical footage that is like none other. The Hendrix footage is just a bonus -- the icing on the sunshine-frosted cake.

and/or the heart and the mind, a term, antahkarana, in Sanskrit or a yoga. This rather pretentious title for a "cosmic surfing film" features surfing by Mike Hynson, a surfer who's model with low rails resembles a thin Phil Edwards model(Endless Summer fame), and his Maui buddy Les Potts (hashish inside the surfboard) at small Maalea (highlighted by a Greenough inspired inside the tube looking out sequence), a red-hot David Nuuiwha (U.S. Champion) doing sideslips and smooth turns, B.K.(Sunset beach legend), Herbie Fletcher(the guy perpetually arching on the nose off the point at San Onofre), and others filmed upside down and backwards to resemble a drug experience. Surfing is used as a metaphor for "the spirit of 1969" or peak of the counter-culture or drug deluded "revolution" that a few of us experienced. The film explored sexuality, drugs, yoga, aliens from space, music, ecology, nutrition, astrology, and science during an extended "rap" discussion by an ensemble of acid laced hippies, a philosophic young follower of yoga, a obviously deluded earth-mother talking about our "space brothers", and an interesting scientist. Of course, the best rap is by a drunken Jimi Hendrix, which is printed on the inside sleeve of the out of print "Rainbow Bridge" album on Warner-Brothers. You can find it for about $25 on EBAY. The film features "Dolly Dagger" as she arrives in Los Angeles, hitchikes to San Diego airport, down the Pacific Coast Highway through Laguna and San Clemente, past Black's and Swami's, enroute to Hawaii. She has been sent to "inspect" the Rainbow Bridge Meditation Center on Maui to make sure no one is wasting money, which is a laugh. During this trip the film mixes sound and scenery to pull off visual metaphors. For example, you hear a 747 airplane as a seagull takes off from the beach, a dog barking as a drill instructor marches recruits, et. al. Once on Maui, Dolly Dagger gets high, and pops around talking drivel with the other hippies. She is obviously an uneducated moron, and was a famous groupy. If you read a few of the books on Jimi Hendrix, one of them documents in her in detail. She is most famous for her ability to score drugs and sucking the blood from the finger of Mick Jagger. She is also buck-toothed and ugly. How did Hendrix fall in love with her? Anyways, the film climaxes with an outdoor concert by Jimi Hendrix. This is Hendrix at his best, near the end of his days, as Mitch Mitchell slams at the drums along with the lackluster bass of Billy Cox. Despite the absence of Noel Redding; this is the best footage of Hendrix in concert you will ever see. If you are a Hendrix fan, I suggest you fast-forward to the concert. If you want to see the surfing, there isn't much. The film needs to cut everything but the surfing and the concert. The soundtrack album on Warner Brother is worth buying, too.