Do you know why I’ve never done acid? This movie right here. After all, it has an “inspired by true events” square up in the end credits.

After a series of seemingly unconnected murders in Los Angeles, only one link keeps coming up: every single person took the same strain of LSD called Blue Sunshine. The sins of the past decade are ready to come back and destroy the “Me” decade.

Zalman King — yes, the same man who got your mom all tingly after you were put in bed and she watched Showtime’s Red Shoe Diaries — plays Jerry Zipkin, a man accused of the murders who — in true giallo-style — must clear his name. That’s because he was at a party where the murders may have started, complete with a screaming Brion James and Billy Crystal’s brother singing Frank Sinatra songs before he starts throwing women into the fireplace.

If it turns out that you took Blue Sunshine, chances are that you’re about to lose all your hair, go crazy, and start killing everyone in your path. Of course, no one knew this ten years ago when they were all dosing on it back in college. Chromosomal damage can be a real b, you know?

How can you not love a movie whose title is spoken by a parrot? One that has a climactic disco shootout? Or is it so 1970s that it ends up speaking for pretty much the entire decade?

The self-medicating Dr. David Blume, the hard-drinking and hair losing John O’Malley, and Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Major Don West from Lost In Space) are all caught up in the grip of the bad trip. The effects sum up Flemming’s political campaign: “In the 1960s, Ed Flemming and his generation shook up the system. Now he’s working within it.” He has become the system. It’s as if the children in Manson’s famous quote- “These children that come at you with knives- they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” — are even more dangerous when fully grown.

Goddard isn’t the only TV star that shows up, as Alice Ghostly (Esmerelda from Bewitched) makes an appearance.

Writer and director Berman would lend his strange style to other films such as Squirm, Remote Control, Just Before Dawn, and the odd true crime TV show Love You to Death, which starred John Waters as a Grim Reaper attending weddings of partners who would soon kill one another.

The director claims that two major TV networks expressed interest in purchasing the film as a “movie of the week.” The opportunity to get double the budget was appealing. Still, after seeing the edits that the movie would need to be able to play on network TV, Lieberman decided to produce this for theaters.

The Synapse release of this movie comes in a gorgeous box, overstuffed with extras. It starts with a 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative mastered in Dolby Vision that has a new surround sound mix supervised by director Jeff Lieberman; two audio commentaries with Lieberman, who also contributes an introduction; an archival 2003 interview with director Lieberman; “Lieberman on Lieberman” video interview; Channel Z “Fantasy Film Festival” interview with “Master of Horror” Mick Garris and Jeff Lieberman; Fantasia Film Festival 4K Premiere Q&A with moderator Michael Gingold and director Jeff Lieberman; two anti-drug scare films, LSD-25 and LSD: Insight or Insanity?, courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive; Jeff Lieberman’s first film The Ringer (remastered in 4K by Synapse Films from the original camera negative); trailers; a stills gallery; liner notes booklet by Lieberman, featuring a chapter on the making of Blue Sunshine from his book Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker from the Golden Age; a limited edition fold-out poster and limited edition remastered CD soundtrack.

Order it ASAP from MVD.