VOTD 12/11/2025

 Charles Gross: Blue Sunshine OST (Mondo)

Purchased used at Vinegar Syndrome

Am I writing some spoilers for a movie that is nearly fifty years old? Maybe, should that concern you. It's probably nothing you wouldn't read in a two sentence IMDB description.

Blue Sunshine is a low budget shocker/horror film from 1977. The plot involves several people suddenly becoming bald and going on psychotic, murderous rampages. What is discovered is that five years prior, all of them had ingested a particular batch of Blue Sunshine LSD. The dealer, played by Mark Goddard, was now running for Congress. 

Mark most famously played Major Don West on the original TV series Lost in Space. I know he did other TV work but I can't recall ever seeing him in another film role. As a young child I fanatically watched LIS (in syndication by that time). I guess I wanted to be Will Robinson, played by Billy Mumy. He seemed smart, his home was a flying saucer and his best friend was a robot. Sounded like the life to me! I spent hours doing drawings of, Will, the robot, and of their ship the Jupiter II. 

I haven't seen Blue Sunshine since the days of VHS rentals, so it's been a few decades. I remember liking it. At the time, I don't think I understood that it's probably inspired by the Manson Family murders. If not directly, it's certainly Manson-adjacent. I'm sure there's a list somewhere of post-Manson, hippie-response movies from the 1970s. I Drink Your Blood comes to mind first, Messiah of Evil another, in addition to movies more directly based on Manson. 

I've recalled Blue Sunshine quite a few times in the past five years. Why now? I've been thinking about all the people in the news who are COVID vaccine skeptics and deniers. People who would rather put their faith in medical quacks who recommend ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine than trust peer-reviewed science. (For the record, those are real and useful medications, ivermectin if you have scabies. And I am throughly skeptical of the medical industry but put my faith in medical science itself.) They fretted about what will happen to those who took the COVID vaccine. "What will happen long term?" 

And hence, I would think of this movie. Maybe in about another year, hundreds of thousands of us will all lose our hair and become rampaging murderers. 

Me and my twisted little brain. 

The soundtrack! The music! Some good creepy orchestra, percussion, and synth cues. A few moments of lounge pop music. Though I'm calling out the composer on one cue: it's masked, but one of the selections clearly picks up on John McLaughlin's "Sanctuary" from the second Mahavishnu Orchestra LP. I hear you! 

I wonder if McLaughlin ever saw this? Oh, probably not.