Half-serious drive-in flick from Fanfare Films has two teenage girls, driving up the coast from Southern California, picking up a handsome hitchhiker; he's a soldier experiencing disturbing flashbacks from his time in the Army, Meanwhile, the police are searching for a serial killer who targets female hippies. This may be one of the earliest movies of the Vietnam-era to imply that soldiers who kill on the battlefield could wind up with damaged mental states once they've returned home. Unfortunately, the movie is so amateurish that no underlying message can rescue it. Michael Ontkean proves to be a self-assured young actor, and Ralph Waite amusingly turns up as a hippie guru with mutton chops, but the young ladies are one-dimensional and unlikable. The cinematography is by David M. Walsh, who later became the go-to director of photography on some of the most popular films of the decade (his wavy, green-tinted flashbacks would be witty under different circumstances). * from ****
