Neishon

I guess I’m going through a bad movie phase, and by bad I mean totally flippin awesome.

So I came across this one courtesy of a friend, but finding the movie in its entirety has proven quite difficult. Here is one man’s adventure to come across the movie that is “An American Hippie in Israel.” I found his blog after scouring the internet trying to find a place to buy this film. It’s some random myspace blog and it’s the most concise lead I’ve found and it explains well the dedication many people have put into trying to find this Hippie. In fact no one even knows who the original director or actors are. But just read this to find out the whole story:

“On The Trail Of ‘An American Hippie In Israel’
After stumbling across the “An American Hippie In Israel” trailer on YouTube earlier this year, it’s become kind of an obsession with me to try and find this never released, long lost, long forgotten 70s oddity.

It’s not listed on IMDB, type it into Google and the only thing you get back are people looking for it as well, there’s no solid information anywhere about this mystery film.

The trailer for it surfaced a few years back when it was featured on the DVD release of “I Drink Your Blood”, from the Grindhouse DVD label, featured in their Coming Soon trailer section of the bonus features. Just the title alone is enough to make you do a double take, but actually watching the trailer is a truly unique experience, one which I won’t even attempt to describe, simply watch it below.

Grindhouse announced they would be releasing The Hippie at some point in the future (along with the equally sort after “Gone With The Pope”), but ever since then everything’s gone quiet from them, infact they don’t seem to have released any DVDs for a couple of years, there doesn’t seem to even be a website for the label.

So the trail went cold for a while, but with all treasure hunts you mustn’t give up. So every once in a while I throw the title into Google and see what comes back.

Then one day there’s some news, a 35mm cinema print has turned up for sale on ebay, unfortunately I’ve missed the actual auction and I only find out about it from an online forum discussion about it.

The seller’s write up listed the print as being in pristine quality, looking as if it had never been projected, he’d played the print recently and said it look brand new. Just knowing that The Hippie had been projected and watched recently in the world made me feel so much better.
Now the print ended up going for just over $500 dollars, which is a good price for such a rare find, prints can go for way more.

Other people have been looking for this film so there was quite a lot of talk about this print, one person had emailed the seller and asked is he knew anything about the Grindhosue release. The seller replied and said that he’d recently been intouch with Grindhouse to ask if they wanted to by the print, they replied and said they had higher quality materials that they were working from for their release. Which is great news, but could really mean anything, they don’t seem to have released any DVDs for a couple of years, so I’ve no idea when, or if, the DVD will come out.

One interesting point is that the seller was asked one very important question on the auction page, which he replied to:

Q – Is the onscreen title “An American Hippie In Israel”?

A – Yes, that’s the onscreen title.

This really helps a lot, as one of the theories going around, as to why there was no information at all about this film, was the possibility that Grindhouse had re-titled it; hence why no one could find any details about the original version. That now seems to have been settled, though we still have no idea who the Hippie himself is played by, or who the director was, as nothing is listed on the trailer beyond the films title.

Now, I’m not totally sure about the next point, but it’s possible that the winner of the auction could be another DVD label, one of the people on the forum discussing the print said he though the winners name was that of a DVD-R label, though that’s unconfirmed. If that’s true then it would be very possible for them to put out a DVD made from the print, it might not look perfect, but it would still be a great watch.

I do like to think about what I would have done if I’d been able to buy the print, if I had enough money it would have been simple to win and then get it shipped over here. Then book a slot at Mr Youngs and have the UK premiere of The Hippie, 30 odd years after it was made, would have been a night to remember.

So that brings us up to date, there’s hope, a print surfaced, now someone else owns it, it’s possible they might put it out, plus we still have the possibility of the Grindhouse DVD release. That all brings me one small step closer to actually seeing this most obscure film.

Will it be any good? That’s not really the issue, it could be terrible, but I get the feeling it won’t be, the trailer just looks too entertaining, watch it for yourself and decide. ”

And here it is, “An American Hippie in Israel.” There’re boobies in the trailer!

I’ll try and find some more sweet movies for you Ninjas,

-Travis NN