PREVIEW Break out your go-go boots for this four-day flashback to Los Angeles’ 1960s experience hosted by Dominic Priore, author of Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood and Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece. It kicks off with the 1968 counterculture grab-bag You Are What You Eat, a freeform documentary encompassing both the LA and San Francisco hippie scenes, plus appearances by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, David Crosby, Tiny Tim, Paul Butterfield, the Hells Angels, the Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls Too (an actual place), and notorious (and soon to be killed) SF dealer Super Spade. Next up: Roger Corman’s ’67 chestnut The Trip, in which Peter Fonda takes a heavy ride through the windmills of his mind. That same year’s lesser-remembered Riot on Sunset Strip, produced by the inimitable Sam Katzman (1967’s Hot Rods to Hell, 1953’s Killer Ape), tells the shocking story of reckless youth Andy (Mimsy Farmer), looking for kicks you-know-where to escape her broken home. Bummers ensue, not helped by a surreptitious acid-dosing freakout and the fact that Andy’s dad is an LAPD chief! Two great garage bands, the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband, perform onscreen in this epic about those daring (as the advertising put it) "teenyboppers with their too-tight capris." Finally, Chris Hall’s 2006 Love Story documents the brief rise and long fall of Arthur Lee’s Love, the cult-adored psychedelic pop band.
"RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP" film series runs Thurs/28–Sun/31 at the Red Vic Movie House. See Rep Clock for showtimes.