(Minor Spoilers) Trveling to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco to find her hippie brother Steve, Bruce Dern, pretty but hard of hearing Jenny Davis, Susan Strasberg, get's hooked up with a number of local hippie musicians and an high hippie Guru. The Hippies soon get her addicted to their free love and drug lifestyle that in the end almost cost Jenny her life.

Not that hip with what's happening Jenny falls for smooth talking Stoney (Jack Nicholson) ,by reading his lips, and ends up being bedded down by him at his pad together with a number of his other girlfriends.

Turned on to dangerous hallucinogenic drugs not only by Stoney but hippie Guru Dave(Dean Stockwell) who thinks he's the real deal, when it come to the free-love hippie lifestyle, that his fellow hippie Stoney's isn't. Jenny's brother Steve it turns out is on the run from a gang of thugs who dislike his free-love philosophy. When Jenny and her hippie friends Ben & Elwood, Adam Roarke & Max Julien, together with Stoney go to the junkyard, where Steve had made his home away from home,their attacked by these goons who try to rape Jenny. In the end they gets their butts kicked in by the suddenly non-peaceful but hard hitting hippies.

The fact that Steve, and artist, has his masterpiece on display at the Warren Gellery ,where Stony & Co. are staying at, has him sneaks in at night in order to retrieve it. Confronted by Stoney Steve is told that his sister Jenny's looking for him.

Complety blowing his cover Steve's trapped in a burning building by the thugs who've been looking for him and ends up possibly killed. Were never really shown what happened to Steve much less told just why these thugs were so hateful to him. Since he was just one of thousands of hippies in the city who shared the same ideas that he did; so why did they single him out for special treatment? Jenny is later turned on by Dave, who should have know better, on acid that blows her mind and causes Jenny to drift out on the dangerous Golden Gate Bridge.

With Jenny staggering onto the bridge's roadway and about to be run down and killed by the oncoming traffic Dave, in a moment of redemption for what he did to her, heroically saved Jenny's life but at the cost of his own.

Pretty good film about the 1960's counter culture with guest appearances by the popular late 1960's musical groups "The Seeds" & "The Strawberry Alarm clock". With Jack Nicholson looking more like an extra from the Mel Gibson American Revolutionery epic "The Patriot" then a 1960's type hippie.

This is a film that I had absolutely no interest in seeing. However, a friend offered me the DVD and said I would like it--even if I already had seen and hated THE TRIP (which was also on the same disc). Well, I must say that I was very surprised as I did actually enjoyed it--probably because viewers can see what they want in this odd film. For those who look back longingly to the 60s and its drug culture, the film is like a glorious flashback. And, conversely, for those who felt the late 60s went way overboard and glamorized drug use, then they will probably see the film as a having a good anti-drug message! Imagine, two opposite camps enjoying the same film for entirely different reasons! Oddly, this "hip" film was produced by Dick Clark--a man who described himself in the documentary included with this film ("Love & Haight") as a "total square". Also, it was very unusual to note that all the lead actors were in their 30s--quite a bit older than the actual hippies of the day.

The film begins with Susan Strasberg arriving in San Francisco to find her brother. However, it seems as if he's just disappeared and so she ends up shacking up in a wreck of a home with Jack Nicholson and his friends--many of which are in Jack's band. Here, there is lots of free love and drugs as they all dig being in a happening city. While Susan does look for her brother, it's all rather episodic--with lots of exceptional music (by the Strawberry Alarm Clock) presented in a way almost like a series of music videos. Eventually, she does find her brother (played in a bit part by Bruce Dern) but tragedy strikes thanks to LSD and other mind-altering drugs.

For an American-International drug film, the production had amazingly good production values. And, if you don't particularly like the plot, you can look at the whole thing as a small time capsule of the era. This would make an excellent double-feature with ALICE'S RESTAURANT. Worth seeing, that's for sure.

Finally, as Ms. Strasberg played a lady who had hysterical deafness, there was one odd note. When the bands were playing she said that she didn't dance because she was deaf. Perhaps hysterically deaf people don't, but deaf people in general love to dance--particularly if there's a strong bass--which this rock music had in spades!

Two of the quirkiest actors of the last half century, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern have roles in Psych-Out about a young deaf mute girl who goes to San Francisco searching for her brother and falls in with some hippies. Nicholson being one of the hippies and Dern being her brother.

This film was produced by Dick Clark who was always known as the world's oldest teenager and Clark back in those days tried to stay as close to the youth scene as possible. Psych-Out was his attempt to break from the rock and roll scene that typified the Kennedy administration and get down with the hippie era. He was even behind the times here because in 1968 it was getting a lot edgier and the music reflected it. Imagine not a single reference to the war in Vietnam in this film.

It was also supposed to be a message against the use of LSD by the young. I don't think Dick got the message through though. The testament of a lot of drugged out people ten years later was better received.

Susan Strasberg is the deaf mute girl who is looking for her brother who has now become some kind of crazed religious zealot. Nicholson is part of a group that plays rock which also consists of Dean Stockwell. He and Stockwell both get ideas about Strasberg.

In the meantime poor Dern has gotten the ire of some rednecks and why they have it in for him as opposed to others of the thousands of hippies moved into the Haight-Asbury district back then is never really made clear.

Both Nicholson and Dern spend a lot of time working on the distinct mannerisms and speech patter that made them most imitatible in the future. Nicholson wrote the script, but all this film proved is that Jack may have found out he should stay in front of the camera.

Psyched-Out is a glimpse of the Sixties as seen through the eyes of the Fifties.