Premonition

1972 "Where do your nightmares end? and realities begin?"
4.6| 1h23m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 01 November 1972 Released
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Info

A hippie student and his friends share deadly premonitions.

Genre

Horror, Mystery

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Premonition (1972) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Alan Rudolph

Production Companies

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Premonition Audience Reviews

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense
Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Portia Hilton Blistering performances.
gengar843 This enigma has heart. Humble start, following a folk minstrel, who then breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience. A truly astounding desert expedition sequence, mainly due to the eerie soundtrack. Strange dreams. Touching moments. A ridiculous post-Woodstock music rave. The only complaints I have are (1) it's padded, and (2) the ending simply trails off, notwithstanding a standard double-ending.Re padding, a bit much repetitive squabbling. Re the ending, this is where I took away points. I really believed the end of the world was nigh throughout, so I was taken aback when Andy was so easily dispatched and that was that. But then comes the double-ending, an announcer building up some tension about further deaths, and finally we find the flowers proliferating, as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and so forth. That part seemed tacked on as a nod to propriety, but without that ending there would be a dull thud.
Rodrigo Amaro "Premonition" (aka "Head") is a living proof that you don't need much to make a decent horror film with a limited budget as long as you know what you're doing and you know how to built suspense and thrills without overcomplicating with your story. What appealed to me the most in this film was that it was a compelling drama with glances of horror rather than creatures/gore shocker show common in the 1970's. Disciple of one of the godfathers of the Independent Cinema, the late Robert Altman, the undervalued Alan Rudolph started his director career with this film which is far from everything he would make in the years to come (examples: the unconventional romcom "Choose Me; "Mortal Thoughts" (1991) and "Afterglow"). Anyway, to the heart of the matter. It tells the story of three musician friends who start to have recurring dreams that predict their deaths, and the probably cause in at least two of the guys is that they made some experimentations with a drug plant found by one of them during a mysterious expedition on an indigenous territory. The leader of the group desperately tries to make them stay sober and focus on their music but getting rid off of those images won't be that easy."Head" (as I prefer to call it) is a concrete drama about addiction and how it affects not only the addicted person but everyone around him. I think the horror, represented in the fuzzy, noisy and scary images of a group of small women slaying the men, is just a way to approach viewers from such a story. You care about the characters and what they go through, it looks real and not some imaginative and complex monstrosity. Rudolph doesn't need much to haunt you, sure it has that 1970's B horror movie kind of feel, stiff acting but there's some strong effects as well - the use of sound itself in the dreams and the expedition sequences are terrifying. I liked Carl Crow's performance as the main character, he was the most convincing on scene, and sad to know that it was his last performance - no much information about what happened to him except that he died at a young age.There's plenty of things to be learned with this film, film students pay attention to it. It's conciseness is very hard to be found these days. The version available comes from a poor VHS version but manageable to watch nonetheless. 7/10
anxietyresister Yep, this is it.. a new candidate for my worst film of all time. A dopey hippy touches a skeleton of an old Native American while out in the desert with his buddy, and he starts getting disturbing visions. Nothing however, could be as disturbing as this self-indulgent crap, which is wall to wall with bad folk music, painful dialogue and acting so bad it has to been seen to believed. The plot is completely incoherent: Just what is the point of all those endless flashbacks featuring angels? They mean NOTHING.Never has there been a more annoying on screen presence than the character portrayed by Carl Crow, who is just like Bob Dylan.. except for the intelligence and talent. His mumbling platitudes about life and love will have you climbing the wall in seconds, and we have him to 'thank' for the dreadful opening song. Oh joy.To be honest, after the first 30 minutes I couldn't stomach anymore of the pain. Off the TV went, and I hurried into the garden to do a spot of weeding. Ignore anybody who says they enjoyed it, because they are lying. This is a movie destined to float through history, unloved and unwanted by everybody. It's only possible function is as an extreme form of torture for enemies of the state. Even then, it might be a bit much.. 0/10
InjunNose I last saw this movie about ten years ago, so my review will probably come off as a bit sketchy. Briefly, "Premonition" centers around a group of hippie musicians who discover some unusual red flowers, smoke them, and experience terrifying hallucinations. Or ARE they just hallucinations? As a horror film, "Premonition" is very understated--almost too much so. (Much of the script is preoccupied with character development but the characters are dull, so you never really feel involved with them.) But what it lacks in excitement, it more than makes up for in terms of atmosphere and mood. The "hallucination" scenes are quite disturbing and, as the members of the hippie troupe start to become obsessed with what they see under the influence of the red flowers (and with what it all could mean), the viewer is overtaken by a flesh-crawling sensation of slow, certain doom. This is precisely what I look for, but find so rarely, in a horror movie. "Premonition" was never easy to find, and will be even less so in the post-VHS age. But if you ever run across a copy, snatch it up. The soundtrack is terrific (even the corny, ersatz-folk theme song is used to chilling effect) and perfectly complements the general theme of the film...i.e., the nature of reality and what lies beyond the limits of our normal, everyday perception. Congratulations to Alan Rudolph for putting together a creepy, effective, one-of-a-kind genre picture!