Gurus: Shelley in Camp (1968)

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Gurus: Shelley in Camp (1968)

The '68 film Wild in the Streets had a helluva cast: mad Shelley Winters as a hippie convert then chewing up the scenery, Hal Holbrook as a shrewd politico seething as only Hal could do; Richard Pryor, Ed Begley . . .

Crazy story too: through the machinations of political manipulators a nation turns itself on its head and vote in a president who is a young rock singer who then legislates to put anyone over 30 into concentration camps and feed them LSD. 

It was a classic exploitation film of the hippie/activist/rock era (it pushed all the buttons of youth revolution, assassination, big government, acid and so on) and one of the songs from the soundtrack -- Shape of Things to Come by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill -- actually made the US top 30.

But this little piece -- when Winters is in a re-education camp on acid -- is just a period-piece of guitars and sitars performed by some anonymous Hollywood studio musicians.

Much more of it and you'd be climbing the barbed wire too.

Here just as an excuse to show you the shorts in the clip below. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

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